The American Citizens Abroad Global Foundation has just launched its educational program with a forum/debate on the merits of Citizenship-based taxation vs. Residence-based taxation.
This is a full day event, sponsored and organized by the ACA, that will be held at the University of Toronto on May 2. Registration and Information
UPDATE re booking accommodations:
My understanding is that the speakers will be staying at the Holiday Inn 280 Bloor Street West in Toronto phone 416-968-0010.
At the moment all rooms at this hotel are booked up at the central reservation service for May 1, but I called the hotel and arranged for a University rate of about C$130 night plus tax. There are 20 or so rooms still available at that May 1 date (many more for May 2). The rooms cannot be held for us but you can book now until all are taken.
To book a room you email cn312res@whg.com and request a $130 room for the RBT vs. CBT conference. You also have to provide a code. I asked the conference person to choose between RBT vs. CBT and she came up with the correct answer RBT (!) which will be your code.
If you are interested in coming to the conference I would book right away.
To my knowledge, this is the first public debate — worldwide — devoted to this important topic.
The speakers will include academic tax specialists Bernard Schneider and Michael Kirsh, who have different approaches to the taxation of US citizens abroad, with the program moderated by Toronto lawyer John Richardson.
Dr. Stephen Kish, who co-authored with Mr. Richardson a submission to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (see below), will be the academic host.
Bernard Schneider:
The End of Taxation Without End: A New Tax Regime for U.S. Expatriates, Virginia Tax Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2012, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2186076
Michael Kirsch:
Revisiting the Tax Treatment of Citizens Abroad: Reconciling Principle and Practice, October 23, 2013, Florida Tax Review, (Forthcoming), Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper No. 1457, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2346458
Richardson/Kish:
John Richardson, Willard Yates, Stephen Kish, Request for Tax Rules Changes for U.S. Citizens Overseas: Submission to the Senate Finance Committee, January 2014, http://citizenshipsolutions.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/RichardsonYatesKishJan232014SFCSubmission.pdf
Keynote Speakers
Prof. Michael S. Kirsch, Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
Dr. Bernard Schneider, Teaching Fellow, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London School of Law
Phil D.W. Hodgen, International Tax Attorney, Hodgen Law Group PC, Pasadena, CA
David Kuenzi, Certified Financial Planner,® Founder, Thun Financial Advisors, Madison, WI
Charles W. Cullen III, Certified Financial Planner, ® RBC Dominion Securities, Inc., Halifax, NS
Neil Sinclair, Chapter Chair, Amcham Canada – Ontario Region
Closing comments: Jackie Bugnion, American Citizens Abroad, Inc., Director of Tax Team
Hooray! Great news. Thanks!
?Could we pin this article at the top of the page – to stir maximum attendance….and press interest….???
This will go a long way in increasing awareness about CBT and RBT, at a very opportune time.
This has been in the works for sometime, and congratulations to those bringing this debate to a wider audience. I hope it gets some attention.
Were anyone to study the issue, they couldn’t support CBT for long. Prof. Christians articles are quite cogent and well reasoned on the subject. Treasury itself admits that they spend more than they collect trying to get at non-resident taxpayers most of whom owe nothing beyond aggravation and paperwork.
Even that, I am afraid, misses a central point. A significant building block of any prosperous society is the degree of confidence and respect for the rule of law which exists. Consider, to posit two stereotypes (which are at least partially true) the Italian who for centuries has elevated tax avoidance to an art and who was only admitted to the G7 when they re-cast their economic statistics to include the black market vs England where people line up just because somebody happened to stop in the street to check their watch! Any law which is manifestly unreasonable and routinely ignored is dangerous because, like an acid, it corrodes the legitimacy of ALL laws. Instead of a reflex of obedience, a reflex of contempt and resistance is fostered. CBT is well past that point. Returns are filed by fewer than 5% of those obliged to file them (a Treasury study from the late 90’s had about a quarter million expat filings vs estimates of 7 million plus for the expat community). Congress hasn’t spent ten minutes actually trying to figure out how CBT might be imposed with a modicum of fairness – they haven’t asked how they might make it so as not to prohibit retirement planning, owning a small business with non-American partners, dealing with wild currency fluctuations creating artificial capital gains, etc. Instead, Congress has engaged in one-upmanship trying to fashion still more ridiculous, discriminatory and oppressive laws which are disguised Bills of Attainder aimed at one or the other unpopular bogeyman like Edward Savarin but actually threatening millions of quite innocent people. All of this has created a legal framework for the expat which – changing the topic slightly – is virtual compulsion to relinquish (something which the USSC said Congress cannot validly do). The point however is that any thoughtful legislator would realize that this framework is creating headwinds for the US which far outstrip any accounting of revenue to say nothing of the injustice of the matter.
There are easy ways of transitioning to RBT without upsetting the apple cart unduly. For 99.9% of Americans, there would be no difference whatsoever. A simple prospective change along with adoption of rules similar to the “tie breaker” rules in various tax treaties would provide plenty of robust and workable rules to ensure that people don’t play fast and loose with residency. The issue would then become: what of the past fifty years where 5% have filed and 95% have not?
My suggestion for that – and I know nobody who matters will be listening! – would be to provide quite simply that non-resident taxpayers who have paid any tax for the last [ten] years are entitled to a credit to be used against future tax they would owe were they to return to the US. Since any residency test is likely to be strict (domicile more than temporary absence), it could confidently be assumed that few would actually be coming back in any event and the cost would be minimal. For the 95% who never filed, give them an option of either (a) coming clean with ten years worth of filings under the Code as it stood (perhaps eliminating some of the sillier penalties, eg FBAR); or (b) paying a simple lump sum based on their net worth (say 5%, for example). People would have a period of time to make up their mind with those who choose none of the above being able to vote with their feet and get a CLN without threat of exit taxes and the rest. Simple, civilized. Turn the page and drive on.
Awesome! I hope the forum is video recorded (and PLEASE with much better sound than the CCLU symposium) so we can all watch it on youtube or something like it. Thank you, ACA, and ALL of the organizers and participants. CBT is IT, the whole crux of the problem. For any newbies here, please watch the ACA’s video below.
Fantastic. I look forward to seeing the video or transcript.
If I didn’t live so far away I’d be there in an instant! I am also looking forward to any video or transcript of the session.
Grateful thanks to those who conceived of and organized this event.
CBT needs to be exposed to the rigours of air and light (and heat) – revealing the festering dirty linen of the overweening exploitation by the US in its practice of taxing and extortionate confiscatory penalizing of people with no US economic connection for their lifetime and beyond – based on random non-economic personal characteristics such as DNA (parentage) or birthplace, or on some historical artifact such as a long expired and entirely worthless greencard (PR status) – and resting solely on the shaky and arrogant assertion, that the mere fact of the existence of the US benefits us all (including many who are mere children), no matter where in the world we reside (Cook vs. Tait,1924). That is coupled with a US exit/expatriation regime of a severity which is designed to punish and confiscate even non-US made and held assets – imposed also on those born and/or living their entire lives abroad, who seek to formally sever any last, even merely symbolic or vestigial connection with the US
Guess its obvious what side of the debate I’m rooting for.
Has Dick Harvey been invited? I would fly to Toronto just to blow one feather his way.
Kirsch is almost as bad. I would and am flying in for it.
There is quite a good discussion going on in the comments over at the Franco-American Flophouse blog about Victoria’s trip to Washington for Overseas Americans week.
Although I understand that many of the Canadians cursed with US indicia are not the least bit interested in the goings on at Overseas Americans week. But some of the issues discussed in the comments should be of interest.
http://thefranco-americanflophouse.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-lay-of-home-land.html
@Anne Frank
That was really well written. Thank you!
“Any law which is manifestly unreasonable and routinely ignored is dangerous because, like an acid, it corrodes the legitimacy of ALL laws. Instead of a reflex of obedience, a reflex of contempt and resistance is fostered. CBT is well past that point.” — Hits the nail right on the head and explains why so many expats are renouncing/relinquishing US citizenship or just plain going into hiding.
The purpose of CBT was, and still is, to punish people for emigrating from America. Americans abroad don’t use US public goods and services. Americans abroad don’t have representation in congress. All those “horizontal equity” theories posited by so called academic experts in taxation policy don’t hold a drop of water when the simple question is asked, “what about horizontal benefits in return?” Oops, forgot about that.
CBT, FATCA, FBAR, Exit Tax, and the Reed Amendment violate human rights of expats on many fronts, to include the US Constitution, International Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the Constitutions and Charters of the countries where expats are living.
I hope some smart Brockers in Canada attend the Forum/Debate and ask these tax policy experts some of the hard questions that really need to be dealt with. It is their theories and recommendations that the JCT uses to justify its policies for raising money.
Em,
My understanding is that the CBT debate will be videotaped and I will pass on your comment about the sound quality.
Only a limited number of people can attend a conference, and the real impact will happen when the video is seen by many.
I really hope that everyone who has an interest in the topic, and lives within driving distance of Toronto, will attend. We need people like Tim who will fly in to make good points and challenge the experts.
@ IRSCompliantForever
Thank you. The Friday session of the CCLU symposium was great but when they switched to a different venue the next day there were sound problems. It is so hard in real time to put together a sentence in your head when you only hear part of it. I am really looking forward to the CBT vs. RBT debate. I’ve already picked RBT as the winner but then I feel I have earned that bias.
@All
Regarding the questions about this event being videotaped, the answer is YES. I plan to drive down from Ottawa to record the entire event with professional video and audio equipment, as I did for the FATCA Forum a year ago.
Assuming we have the same degree of audio support from U of T, we should expect sound quality similar to that of the FATCA Forum recordings (also see sidebar for the same link). To the best of my knowledge, there were no complaints about the audio for that event.
Following the CBT vs. RBT Forum, it will require a few days to edit and upload the presentations to YouTube for the wider audience. I fully anticipate a great deal of interest in this event and will make every effort to post the recordings as quickly as possible.
Thanks, Deckard.
I agree with Em — pity you weren’t hired for the recent CCLA Privacy sessions.
Has anyone else had trouble getting a payment go through for registration? I have tried over and over, both with credit cad and paypal and it just won’t work. Have not ever had this happen before. Just thought I would check and see if anyone else has this issue before contacting them to check their set up.
@ Deckard1138
Thank you for doing the sound. You did a good job with the Toronto forum. I’m feeling confident now that I’ll be able to hear the CBT vs. RBT debate. BTW is 1138 from the movie THX 1138? Just curious.
@ Em
Thanks for your compliment, I appreciate it. In answer to your question, the 1138 is indeed from George Lucas’ THX 1138 while Deckard was the protagonist of Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner. I needed some kind of number to go with the name, thus the resulting dystopian future mashup. Poignantly, that fictional future now feels uncomfortably like our very real present.
Tricia, I just passed on your comment about the registration to the ACA.
@All & IRSCF
Got it to go through on IE. Seemed to be a browser problem. Wouldn’t work on Chrome.
Thanks IRSCF!
I’m thrilled to be able to update my situation. I am able to fly to Toronto to attend this session after all!
For those of you who have attended and organized such things is there any probable chance that a session like this would be canceled? Since the session is only a month away I will need to make my arrangements extremely soon. Also, I am unfamiliar with Toronto and wonder if there are any good, moderately priced hotels in the vicinity of U of T.
Thanks for any suggestions!
@Muzzled, the conference will happen.
My understanding is that the speakers will be staying at the Holiday Inn 280 Bloor Street West in Toronto phone 416-968-0010.
At the moment all rooms at this hotel are booked up at the central reservation service for May 1, but I called the hotel and arranged for a University rate of about C$130 night plus tax. There are 20 or so rooms still available at that May 1 date (many more for May 2). The rooms cannot be held for us but you can book now until all are taken.
To book a room you email cn312res@whg.com and request a $130 room for the RBT vs. CBT conference. You also have to provide a code. I asked the conference person to choose between RBT vs. CBT and she came up with the correct answer RBT (!) which will be your code.
If you are interested in coming to the conference I would book right away.
This debate is great, but I can’t help thinking that it should be happening in a US congressional hearing, not in the University of Toronto.