RepealFATCA.com Roundup: News and Commentary on the Approaching FATCA ‘Train Wreck’
March 20th, 2014:
This RepealFATCA.com bulletin rounds up some important news and commentary from around the world on the looming July 1, 2014, “train wreck” of the “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act” (FATCA). The headlines:
1. Even Tax Compliance Experts Decry Looming “Train Wreck,” Impossibility of Meeting IRS’s Requirements.2. Treasury (Inadvertently) Admits FATCA is a “Fishing Expedition.”3. Lack of “Reciprocity” Fatally Undermines Both FATCA and OECD “Information Exchange.”4. Rob Portman (Ohio): Big Pickup in Senate for Repealing FATCA.5. Canadians Fight Back.
Some US tax facts for Tom from a CNN article in 2013:
“The top 10 percent of taxpayers paid over 70% of the total amount collected in federal income taxes in 2010 … The remaining 90% bore just under 30% of the tax burden. And 47% of all Americans pay hardly anything at all — a fact that got Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney into political hot water last year.”
So Tom, you should be preaching the pooling of resources to your average fellow American resident in the US since they are the one’s not paying their fair share. Maybe if the average American resident actually paid for the services they receive, you all wouldn’t have to chase foreigners to pay for stuff you use.
@Everyone: I’m certain Tom Hunter is so proud that United States shares the elite distinction with Eritrea to be the only two countries in the world to stalk anyone born there for money for life.
I think Tom hunter is too close to Tommy Hunter who is a Canadian. Reading his comments, he seems to simply be plugging his ears to reason and blaming anyone with the USA disease who doesn’t live in the USA for the failure of the USA. Circling the drain as the ultimate government failure looms, they try to grab at anyone they think they can. Well, they cannot bully Russia and will see they cannot bully the PEOPLE of Canada. The Canadian government. will lose more than Flaherty over this. Heads will roll when EVERYONE finds out about the USA’s dirty little secret. Investments will leave and the Red White and Blue will sink. All their own fault!
@Tom Sometimes Tom, when people haven’t a clue what they are talking about they shouldn’t say anything at all. For example you say ” So sorry this law was written so well, as it has become the model for governments across the world.”
Not really Tom. Other countries don’t tax their citizens when they live outside of the country and have no holdings there. Other countries have stated their many objections to “this law” but, the U.S. press doesn’t tell you about those objections. For instance our finance minister wrote a letter when this “law” was first mentioned as being applied to Canadians which strongly objected to this being implemented here at all. The real reason other nations are “going along” is because the U.S. threatened sanctions on friendly neighbours if they didn’t go along. Otherwise, no other nation would have done this. It costs them millions to implement and has little to zero benefit to nations who tax on residency as the vast majority do.
Furthermore, a lot of your comment is assumption and quite insulting. You’re basically saying every expat and our spouses and children who are not even American are U.S. tax cheats. Many of these people have never set foot on U.S. soil. No this law is not “so well written” It’s causing a lot of collateral damages to people who would never owe one penny to the U.S. in taxes, it is violating the laws of other nations, it is causing a LOT of anti Americanism abroad due to the above reasons and frankly you need to get out of your bubble more. The foreign press has covered the problems with this U.S. “law” being shoved over the border of every other nation in the world upon threat of sanction. We call it bullying here in Canada. You know because we have a Prime Minister not a POTUS and a Parliament, not a congress.
The U.S. needs to mind to it’s own business, go after YOUR tax cheats who live within YOUR borders and for that matter minding your own business on a lot of other matters would do the world a world of good. Your comment is full of American hubris and ignorance. I’d love for you to come directly here and see the people you are so boldly making your comments to online. We’re not American tax cheats and yet we are being harmed by this. In order for you to ignore that collateral damage you have to engage in a lot of cognitive dissonance.
The people you are talking about who “caused this” Well, they lived in the good ole U.S.A. not France, not Canada and not Germany. They were U.S. citizens living in the U.S.A. Yet they are not really being “gone after” the way we are anymore. Our kids are though. Comments such as yours are the reason American kids have to back pack around Europe with Canadian flags sown onto their backpacks. You know so people won’t think they are American. That should tell you something. How about you go chase the upwards of 50 percent of the people living inside your country who don’t pay taxes and leave the rest of the world alone. Btw, you don’t necessarily think you have the right to make laws for the rest of the universe do you? Please stop calling yourself informed if you do think so.
@ Tom Hunter:
Here is the tap root of the US problem of not collecting taxes owing by resident US citizens:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/01/30/irs-hunts-u-s-citizens-residing-outside-the-u-s-while-many-u-s-residents-pay-no-income-tax/
It’s laughable that such a huge tax base of over 330M US residents leaves your country with a 17 trillion debt. I remember the shock I felt when I learned from my US-born husband’s family that US income tax rules allow deduction of personal home mortgage interest and numerous other deductions unheard of in Canada.
And recently, a light went on for me with a curiosity I felt as to how my US relatives (through marriage), who were in middle-class jobs in the US, similar to ourselves in Canada raising children, etc, seemed to be in a much better financial position than we were. One bro-in-law even laughed at me when he said his tax rate was at most 15%, while ours was closer to 35-40%, initiated at a lower income level.
So, sir, unless the US administration focusses on changing laws to tax according to the true cost of operating a country, instead of getting re-elected, the country will not survive. Clean your own house first, and you may be shocked at how much loose change falls out.
Here’s a possible new development regarding an IGA with South Korea from Tax-News:
South Korea, US Agree Text Of FATCA Agreement
If this is to be believed, then the US is now promising genuinely reciprocal IGAs. Probably the reporter has it wrong or the South Koreans haven’t read the small print.
Susan,
As far as I know, there is no mention of anything actually called “citizenship-based taxation” in the U.S. tax code. There is, however, wording in Section 210 which refers to taxation of “a citizen or resident of the United States”. This wording was cited as the basis of the landmark Supreme Court decision in the “Cook vs. Tait” case of 1924 under which all of us labour to this day.
It is unbelievable to know that the misery of millions could be immediately mitigated by the removal of the words “citizen or” … two words … literally the stroke of a pen which would take a nanosecond to perform.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=265&invol=47
@Johnson
The writer may be assuming that the reciprocal agreement is really reciprocal and that both countries tax the same way.
Tom Hunter is nothing but a grunt. You can easily see this grunt is government employed feeding off its trough. Everybody outside the trough is a evil-doer and Tom is there to save all the Joe Plumber 47%ers.