Levin, McCain call for U.S. to refrain from FATCA negotiations with Russia
Without agreement, Russian banks face 30 percent tax on U.S. investments
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
WASHINGTON – Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., today urged the Obama administration to continue to refrain from further negotiations with Russia on compliance with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act until Russia ends its aggressive and destabilizing actions toward Ukraine.
Russia is among nations that have not yet reached FATCA compliance agreements with the United States. Banks that fail to comply with FATCA are subject to a 30 percent withholding tax on U.S. investment income, including earnings on U.S. Treasury securities that are an integral part of the global financial system. Senators McCain and Levin believe that at this time of mounting tension in Ukraine, the U.S. should use more tools in its tool kit – including FATCA – to further deter Russian aggression.
“We should not be negotiating with the Russians to help them avoid FATCA’s sanctions at a time when Russian forces are threatening and continuing to destabilize Ukraine,” Levin and McCain write in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Refraining from negotiations for Russian banks to avoid the 30 percent FATCA penalty “would place financial pressure upon Russia, and help reinforce diplomatic efforts to avoid military action.”
Levin is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has extensively explored the use of offshore banks in avoiding U.S. tax compliance. McCain is ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.
The text of their letter follows:
April 29, 2014
The Honorable Jacob Lew
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20220
Dear Mr. Secretary:
The purpose of this letter is to urge the U.S. Department of the Treasury to continue to refrain from negotiating with either the Government of Russia or certain Russian banks regarding compliance with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), until the Russian Government honors its diplomatic obligations and takes steps to diffuse tensions in the Crimea and Ukraine, including by withdrawing Russian troops from the border region.
According to recent press reports, the Treasury Department recently suspended negotiations with the Russian Government over how Russia’s more than 800 banks, as well as its other financial institutions, will comply with FATCA’s disclosure obligations. If those financial institutions fail to register with the Internal Revenue Service and obtain a Global Intermediary Identification Number (GIIN) by July 1, 2014, they will be out of compliance with FATCA, and will become subject to a 30 percent withholding tax on any U.S. investment earnings.
We should not be negotiating with the Russians to help them avoid FATCA’s sanctions at a time when Russian forces are threatening and continuing to destabilize Ukraine. Declining to negotiate GIIN assignments needed to avoid imposition of a 30 percent tax on U.S. investment income paid to Russia’s financial institutions would place financial pressure upon Russia, and help reinforce diplomatic efforts to avoid military action. If we do choose to negotiate, we should at least ensure that negotiations do not benefit those Russian financial institutions that have substantial Russian government funds, or have Russian government officials on their boards or in their leadership, or otherwise help support disruptive activities in the Crimea or Ukraine.
FATCA sanctions provide a powerful, nonmilitary option that, when added to the other financial sanctions already imposed, could help deter Russia from continuing its threatening actions against Ukraine.
Thanks for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Carl Levin John McCain
@George, Badger and Calgary411:
What we have here with Levin and McCain’s vicious threat is as you all have stated, open aggression by the US to the world entire via FATCA.
You mention OECD. Well, they are licking their chops at the prospect of getting their turn at kicking the cat in Sept.
The New American’s Alex Newman has reported on OECD, FATCA and the relation to world dominance via tax authority.
Bottom line in reading the OECD plan to be implemented in September of 2014 is that CBT is restrictive for their purposes, so RBT will be the norm for them. They intend,and detail that intention in their proposal to be implemented. This is paid for by $100 million of US Taxpayers dollars and the head of the OECD proposal and staff have a tax free salary to implement their evil scheme.
In short they intend to impose a FATCA like scheme on every country in the world via GATCA the granddaddy of all tax schemes.
EVERY individual, corporation, entity on the planet WILL send ALL their information to the OECD panel ( among those on the panel will be thug and dictator countries who are delightfully rubbing their hands together at the prospect of getting all this information on everyone and everything everywhere. THEN they will impose taxes and will punish harshly anyone who resists and/or refuses to comply with heavy ‘penalties’ !
FATCA is just the softening up. GATCA gets to the real heart of the matter regarding taxing authority worldwide.
This is evil on a scale so huge as to boggle the mind. Countries who value their borders, their sovereignty and their way of life better wake up and take steps to stop this economic octopus.
I never thought I would say such a thing, but Putin may well be the catalyst to bring all this down around their cloven feet!
What this does do that is postive, as you all have commented here is that the issue of sanctioning Putin’s associates and trying to sanction Putin himself and the remarks by Levin and McCain exposes their real intent.
Ukraine has already been invaded and the coup was successful by ousting the legitimate President of Ukraine, who fled to Russia for safety, wherein the Banker was installed as interim Prez.
This was done to fleece Ukraine because they did not want to join the EU.
That would mean bailins and other means of fleecing the population
that the Ukraine could not and did not want to afford. Russia offered 40 billion as a bailout of the Ukraine government. EU offered 15 billion and that included control of all banking. Ukraine refused. The coup commenced immediately.
As in Libya and Egypt OUR Western governments did this.
We have to ask the question: Just WHO is running our governments?
When Canada actually signs an IGA KNOWING the laws it breaks in Canada with no regard for the privacy or freedom of those within it’s borders they are sworn to defend, just WHO is making the decision to do these things.
When our leaders go to the G8 ( now 7) and G20 . What is decided there and by whom? And why would our leaders feel more bound to THEM than to their oath of office of the country they represent?
It would appear to me that Putin ( and China) know full well and also know how to deal with them.
It astounds me how fast the US is going down — with its tax aggression abroad, its crazy gun laws at home (see Georgia for the latest), among many other things. It’s sad and scary that our own Canadian government is aiding them — with the FATCA IGA, and now sending six aged CF18 fighter jets to Romania as a farcical “show of force” with NATO.
When I left the US for Canada 45 years ago, it crossed my mind that Canada might be too close to the US for comfort, and that is proving true. When the US Titanic goes down, Canada will not be able to avoid sinking with it, especially if our government thinks it can help them by lashing our small ship to theirs.
AA, Margaret Atwood, in her book Handmaiden’s Tale, thought that Canada could withstand the next US civil war.
@Petros.
If Margaret Atwood thought that I think she might have been justified at the time she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale.
No one, after reading the IGA Canada signed could think that now.
We have a chance at it if we find those who will support and defend, even against the government of the day, the rights of citizens and residents in the Charter of Rights. But , who then do we turn? Opposition parties, if they formed government would act NO differently that the government of the day. The details of the IGA Canada signed and the detailed intention of the OECD make it clear that our government officials , no matter who they are are marching to a different tune that the rights of those who elected them.
Our only hope is the Charter challenge AND those who do reside within Parliament who will sound the alarm. Marc Garneau, Elizabeth May among others who, on realizing what is being attempted , WILL give a clarion call to arms against the ratification of the IGA. Stopping it in the Senate or making it so hot as to bully the government to either amend or remove the current IGA to be implemented.
I do not know how this can be done for they ignore all calls to rectify this egregious harm.
Furious AC,
Your:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/04/22/another-important-submission-this-one-to-the-senate-committee-on-banking-trade-and-commerce-on-omnibus-bill-c-31-which-allows-implementation-in-canada-of-the-fatca-iga/comment-page-3/#comment-1597053
Showing it’s real colors – mission creep is inevitable for governments. FATCA is now an economic sanction to force foreign policy. US Persons just the excuse and thrown under the bus. The Empire strikes again.
“We have a chance at it if we find those who will support and defend, even against the government of the day, the rights of citizens and residents in the Charter of Rights. But , who then do we turn?’
We start a Canadian chapter of Oath Keepers
http://oathkeepers.org/oath/
Many here do not even know that Oath Keepers even exist so study up.
To me we definitely need to unite with these people for our own protection or start our very own branch of it so we can unite and get protection from military and police who have no intention of obeying laws that violate our rights guaranteed under our Charter and not amendable whatsoever by the recent TRAITORS in our respective governments. Stop the delusional wishful thinking. We had normal lives but they were just stolen from us and now we must stop working within this corrupt system as per what they have indoctrinated us to do. Time to really be brave, admit that the waters around us has grown and that the times they are a changing and get serious and fight them . Our lives under the USSA regime is not worth living anymore. You’ll see.
Here are just the Meetup groups. There are many others who are not in Meetup groups because of anonymity.
http://oath-keepers.meetup.com/all/
VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/user/OathKeepersOK
Many here don’t want to wake up to reality but that should not be reason to impose their opinions on those of us who no longer believe in the USSA or Canada to do the right thing
Orders We Will Not Obey
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army” – Gen. George Washington, to his troops before the battle of Long Island
http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2009/03/03/declaration-of-orders-we-will-not-obey/
Such a time is near at hand again. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this Army – and this Marine Corps, This Air Force, This Navy and the National Guard and police units of these sovereign states.
Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, peace officers, fire-fighters, and veterans who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic … and meant it. We won’t “just follow orders.”
Below is our declaration of orders we will NOT obey because we will consider them unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral violations of the natural rights of the people. Such orders would be acts of war against the American people by their own government, and thus acts of treason. We will not make war against our own people. We will not commit treason. We will defend the Republic.
Patrick Temple-West chimes in:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/29/us-ukraine-crisis-usa-facta-idUSBREA3S16220140429
See also http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/30/us-russia-asia-bonds-insight-idUSBREA3T0AD20140430 and comments there including
@Steve Klaus “Showing it’s real colors – mission creep is inevitable for governments. FATCA is now an economic sanction to force foreign policy. US Persons just the excuse and thrown under the bus.”
It also shows that unless sovereign governments stand up, FATCA will become more draconian over time.
On an individual level;
1.) More forms and deeper probing questions.
2.) Exempt accounts and entities will drop in number.
3.) Lower or no reporting thresholds.
The bond market is huge. Anything that can cause an increase in interest rates is a problem.
The bond market has stopped past presidents dead in their tracks when their policies were not liked by the bond market.
The level of debt is now so astronomical that interests rates are even more important. I think this is a dangerous game to suggest they won’t pay out the bond interest and instead withhold. Bond holders are already getting real negative returns so this is another major pain for them.
any institutions are required to buy treasuries but this can change very quickly if the bonds don’t pay out.
forty years I took the Air Command and Staff Course, there was an eight volume 1000 page study of the Soviet Union including demographics and cultural diversity. the country had over 200 ethnic groups and languages. The USSR had a Russification program in an attempt to unify the country. This was not just language courses but the transfer of large numbers of ethnic Russians to the various republics. The Russian settlers were always accompanied by political officers and KGB elements, with the breakup of the USSR everyone stayed behind and became citizens of the newly independent countries. Putin is ex-KGB, wonder if any of his colleagues kept in touch with the Russian settlers. What is happening in the Ukraine also happened in Georgia. A new Russian citizenship law will allow Russian speakers in any of the former soviet republics to claim Russian citizenship. This new law has the Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan governments that the same could happen there
In the Caligulobama is out of control dept.
Washington State threatens to secede as White House demands anti-Obama signs be removed on I-5
Anti-Obama Signs On I-5
Near Seattle Draw WH Threats
http://rense.com/general96/obsigns.html
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