UPDATE: Here is the podcast: John Richardson interviewed on AMI “Contact” May 25, 2014.
Tune in this Sunday at 7 and 10 p.m. when Contact examines the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. The US legislation will require American expatriates to report their financial accounts held outside of the United States. This legislation will also require foreign financial institutions to report to the Internal Revenue Service about their American clients.
Some have criticized the legislation as an invasion of privacy and Canadian sovereignty. In some cases, people with Registered Disability Savings Plans are fearful the legislation could adversely affect them.
May 25: Under the controversial US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act all non-US financial institutions, including Canadian banks, must make information known about financial accounts owned by US expatriates. Some have called the legislation an infringement of Canadian sovereignty. Toronto lawyer John Richardson discusses the legislation, its potential impact and his reasons for opposing it.
Hear more. Learn more. This Sunday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. make Contact …on AMI Audio.
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After its original broadcast, all Contact programs are posted on our Audio Archive.
@badger
Can you post a link to where Berg says that?
I think the story would have been more accurate if Mr. Berg portrayed himself as the mugger and Canadian citizens as the victims since he’s the one telling us what a great deal we’re getting. He’s also financially benefiting from the mugging. I’m sure he’s anxious to find many more victims among us.
He had to move to Canada to find an endless list of victims. He clearly thinks like a criminal if he thinks we’re getting a good deal by having our life savings threatened by a foreign power.
Why couldn’t Mr. Berg stay in the US and make a living? Was the unemployment rate too high or were there so many muggers around he had to find new territory?
How proud Mr. Berg must be to be an American. The US government has become the world’s biggest mugger.
Canada has to stand up and show the world that this little Grandma is going to blow the mugger’s head off with the pistol she carries in her purse that nobody suspects she has. Our pistol is the Canadian court system. If we win and the US still imposes sanctions on Canada then there will be no doubt left at all that the new “Evil Empire” is the United States of America.
Any country that would try to steal from Canada a peace loving nation would steal from the whole world.
@ Tim
Re: your question to Blaze. If you mean when and where did Roy Berg say “jingoistic hyperbolic rhetoric”, it comes from the May 13 FINA meeting. His whole sordid statement was this:
“The committee is likely going to be aware of rather jingoistic hyperbolic rhetoric admonishing Finance for ceding Canadian power, ceding sovereignty, and also encouraging Canada to stand up to FATCA. As the committee hears such comments, we encourage it to remember that FATCA is U.S. law, and the way it’s designed, it’s enforced not by the IRS, not by the Treasury, but by the markets themselves. In that, it is like a sales tax. The withholding obligation is on the person making the payments.”
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=6597204&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=2
USCitizenAbroad, I appreciate your arguments about the larger context of all of this. I really do believe that the US is so arrogant that it will push this so far as to alienate many more in the world needlessly and heedlessly, just as it has done to alienate those like the very expats that had very compelling reasons to be more amenable.
What political connections do Moody’s and Berg have in Canada? Their overweening support of the FATCA IGA suggests the Conservatives. Or maybe they just find that their interests overlap on this issue.
Though our Conservative government may feel that now it will go to the wall in order to save face, or to benefit the banks, I really don’t think that posts like Berg’s are going to help them sell it to people in Canada. His is very blatantly a US Homelander’s UScentric worldview and approach, and even among those who support the IGA in Canada for their own selfish reasons, or view it as the best of a bad deal, or ‘inevitable’, I doubt that they are going to be able to get us to swallow whole that it was actively a ‘good’ deal for Canadians. A ‘good’ deal would have been exemption from FATCA on the basis of favoured status and a long history of an extensive tax treaty.
Canadians don’t like feeling that they were forced by the US to do anything even if it is true. Having the FIs and NON-FIs riffling through their accounts and turning over data at the point of a US gun is pretty offensive. Persuading them and us that the mugging is a ‘good’ deal and that we should embrace the mugger and feel good about it is a pretty hard sell.
I note also that tellingly, he and the CBA never ever mention the CREDIT UNIONS. Wherever possible, we must all divest ourselves at the banks and only use the credit unions – even if they too must cooperate with the IGA, they are not the ones appearing before Parliament with the conduct and words of eager weasels.
We need to make clear to our Canadian MPs that there WILL be a reckoning and to the CBA and IIAC that there WILL be a backlash. The US doesn’t care what happens in Canadian or any other country’s domestic politics and party fortunes or financial systems as a result of this – they only care that they got the IGAs. So the Conservatives are going to have to live with the FATCA fallout forever, and consider whether they have just achieved something that might assist their own demise.
Canadians with wealth enough to be Moody’s target clients may very well read Berg’s reasoning and be so offended by it that they will refuse to give him and Moody’s their business. I think he may underestimate the undercurrent of anti-American feelings in Canada. Who wants to give their money over to someone who actively goes out of their way to justify the use of FORCE behind FATCA – and the application of it to ALL just in case SOME few might possibly be US resident millionaires hiding funds ‘offshore’ – in Canada? If you’re got the funds that their preferred target clients have, there are plenty other Compliance Condors to choose from. And I can’t see that eventhey are going to be entirely sanguine about having to spend extra funds on the fees that the 8938 will entail year after year, or the additional fees to work around the constrictions of CBT on their investments and financial life. Other Compliance Condors are supportive of the FATCA IGA too, but aren’t crowing about it quite as blatantly in a blog which frequently is read by clients (potential clients beware, you could be sent a link to a blog entry, in an email with no actual specifics as to the relevance to your unique facts and circumstances – other than a salutation using your first name, and be billed at the top lawyer’s rate – recently greatly enhanced due to the panic created by CBT and FATCA – for the pleasure of receiving what otherwise is entirely publicly available content).
Berg and Moody’s and other Compliance Condors will profit handsomely from the FATCA IGA – coming and going – from those renouncing who seek their services, from those who seek to ‘come into compliance’, from those who choose to continue to be compliant, and from those who will be victimized by FATCA, and return to Canada from the US, and those newly ‘abroad’ who move up to Canada to work, and face the complications of CBT and FATCA (like all those US veterans recruited to be oil patch workers by Alberta and the US, – see also the US military veteran support for the XL pipeline http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/03/12432/api-veterans-group-goes-bat-keystone-pipline http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/taxes+create+cross+border+issues/6690233/story.html , http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/2012/09/18/us-vets-to-help-fill-albertas-labour-shortage ) .
Berg is a US Citizen and a Democrat Abroad – and only a recent transplant (temporary I hope) to Canada. He was named “Member – Board of Directors, Washington Economic Development Finance Authority, appointed by Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, 2006 to 2012”. Gregoire is a Democrat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Gregoire .
@Tim, the quote I referred to; “…. First, when a mugger demands “your money or your life,” I’m glad to exchange $35 and a Tim Hortons’ coupon for the chance to wake up in the morning. Shame on the mugger for forcing this decision on me, but a rational person would conclude that the mugger has offered me a good deal.”…..
is from here:
http://www.moodysgartner.com/fatca-in-canada-is-the-intergovernmental-agreement-a-good-deal/
@badger, do a screen capture of the link you pointed to in case Mr. Berg decides to change it’s content.
FATCA is not a one time criminal assault. It designed to make muggings and beatings forever the ‘normal’ state of things for the rest of the world. With our own government as an accessory pointing out where all the victims can be found. Changing laws to pretend that mugging can be made legal doesn’t make it so. And subjecting the victims to assault by a regime that presupposes ALL to be guilty of a crime without any evidence or warrant, or just cause.
I don’t see how it could be ‘rational’ to be ‘grateful’ to live under such conditions.
Seems to me that the rational actor would seek to avoid any contact with the mugger, go to the police and courts for remedy and recourse, look to identify and punish any accessories to the mugging (like whoever told the mugger where victims could be found), and shun anyone who advises the victim not to fret about the mugging they can expect week after week, but just be happy that they are still alive.
To me, Berg has just given us far more motivation to fund a legal challenge to FATCA in Canada.
If we waver, we just have to re-read his blog posts.
“The US is over”
I hear and read about this every day. How the dollar will plummet and everything is going down the drain. How America is “finished” and is in decline. So what does this mean? That I am supposed to not be afraid? That the threat is not imminent?
But somehow- its just not happening, the dollar value is on the rise, and USA is threatening the livelihoods of millions of Americans abroad mainly because the fines and penalties are just draconic ( and UNCONSTITUTIONAL).
I just spoke to a woman who told me of a doctor who had to close his practise because he said “the US is after me and I can’t keep everything afloat.” She told me about a daughterinlaw who was born in America but left as a baby, who married somebody, and now her swiss husband will be taxed due to their joint account. She told me that FATCA has become the biggest topic in town, and everybody is groaning and panicked. She said people were getting letters and phone calls from the banks.
So if America is so “over”- then who is this threatening the livelihoods of so many people?
I say: please Mr Bopp. Start your process of recourse. Go to court and fight this thing. Because something needs to be done yesterday. It is already happening now that people are being robbed of their lifetimes savings.
@ Tim
With glazed eyes (nightmares last night) I misread @blaze for @badger. Sorry about that. The comments today are exceptionally brilliant but I need to wake up a bit more to fully appreciate and comprehend what I’m reading. Mr. Berg will rue the day he brought that mugging image into the picture.
The main mugger here is beyond doubt the US government. It is a CBT-FBAR-FATCA-IRS-FinCEN-DOT-NSA-DHS-CIA hydra monster (a hydra monster has nine heads) but hovering overhead of this mugger monster are what we “affectionately” call the compliance condors ready to devour the last remaining vestiges of the victims’ assets and privacy. That’s just an innocent little metaphor, Mr. Berg, but you can call it “jingoist hyperbolic rhetoric” if you wish.
@badger
Fatca is not a criminal assault….. its a torture for anyone who has the US taint… Homeland gov’t seems to feel they are all powerful & great… that everyone wants to be them. If it was so great… why do people want to destroy them? They seem to feel they can do no wrong…. its their way or the highway… they rule the world… no… all they do is make ex-pats & non-americans have more reason to hate them. Berg is an american trying to profit off the backs of canadians/residents with the help of the canadian & US gov’t. I bet no one on this mb ever thought that having the US taint was a big deal… we use to cross the borders like we would pay a toll on a bridge… US has no friends… They have countries they help with aid who put up a face of friend but would stab u in the back as soon as they can. We got a PM who thinks he is the homelanders BFF. Never thought my canadian gov’t… who I always thought stood with me… not against me… is a traitor to all
RE: The Roy Berg Mugging Blog
This can be downloaded in pdf format for future reference. I just did that and I’ll use it as future fuel to inspire me to fill the charter challenge fund’s account even more when it is set up. I feel like a feisty granny all set to whack a mugger with her cane before letting him get away with that pension money in her purse.
@omg
I have downloaded Berg’s file a well as the equally offensive one written by Kim Moody.No worries about it getting lost and the transcript from the May 13 FINA meeting is not retractable either. LOL
Roy Berg’s mugging for FATCA. Not a pretty sight.
I sent a few tweets to Roy Berg, including this one:
Lynne Swanson @LynneBlaze 21m
Proud American @RoyBerg1 boasts what #FATCA is.
Mugging of honest Canadian Grandmas http://bit.ly/1tCfcRF
Reply
Delete
Favorite
@ bubblebustin
Yes indeed. Joe Oliver plugging for FATCA, Darren Hannah smugging for FATCA and Roy Berg mugging for FATCA. The trifecta of unpleasant visages.
LOL, Em. Trust you to parlay that into something more interesting!
@Blaze
Can you tell if you’re being blocked on twitter?
@BB: I don’t know. How does one know if one is being blocked on Twitter?
I think it may be time for an Em jingle,,,,,,
plugging
smugging
mugging
tune?
good question.
Just_Me might know…
@ Blaze
Take a peek here for a great Granny-Mugger cartoon.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhenEldersAttack
After reading some of Blaze’s tweets all I can say is I’m glad she’s on OUR side!
@omg I’m just trying to do my job as Chief Jingo of Canada.
I wonder how much Berg was paid for that article……….. This is all smoke and mirrors and pure propaganda BS.
Again, probably in the wrong place, sorry. (Forgive me I am old and unfortunately resemble Blaze’s photo of the mugged granny at the moment).
I sent an email to Yue and his response: (Nothing you don’t already know but what a lovely fellow. Boy I so wish I was wealthy and have enough to give to both the Canadian and US challenges. I did not included his attachments but I can if anyone is interested. It also makes me rather ill to hope for the Pubs to get the big house).
…………”Attached please find a copy of Why We Decided to Open a Legal Front Against FATCA. Attached please also find a copy of contribution form to FATCA legal action fund. You can donate confidentially since we are not required to report your contribution to the FEC and the IRS if the contribution is less than US$5,000 and to a C4 organization like Republicans Overseas Action, Inc. Furthermore, you can donate anonymously by refusing to fill out our contribution form and mail a cashier check to: Republicans Overseas Action, Inc., The National Building · 1 South 6th St. · Terre Haute, IN 47804. Please share this with your friends.
In August, I will introduce a RNC resolution in support of Residence Based Taxation (RBT) to do away with double taxation on overseas Americans during our Summer meeting. We want to chop off one FATCA leg at a time between now and 2016 in order to render it inoperable while lay a foundation to get RBT into the 2016 RNC National Platform so it could be an election year issue. This will give us time to put a Republican President in the White House in 2016 and maintain a majority in both House and Senate. We can introduce RBT and restoration of citizenship for those Americans who were forced to give up their American passports due to FATCA as a package to repeal FATCA legislatively in 2017. This plan will require a Republican President’s leadership, but It can be done!”
Might we want to inundate somebody down there with letters re their talking points?
Why did we decide to open a legal front against FATCA?
“It is our preliminary opinion that the potentially meritorious claims are a violation of the treaty
power, an 8th Amendment Excessive Fines Claim, and a 4th Amendment Search and Seizure
Claim. . . . We believe that these 3 claims form the basis for a successful suit that would stop the
damage that FATCA and FBAR have inflicted of U.S. citizens.” Superlawyer James Bopp, Jr.
Is it too late to stop FATCA’s implementation since it will take effect on July 1, 2014?
Definitely not.
Most constitutional challenges succeed after implementation of laws because that is when damages occur and constitutional challenges can be raised.
FATCA can still be taken down by through either court or congressional action.
Mr. Bopp took down McCain-Feingold after it had been in force for eight years.
Mr. Bopp only had one (1) action against McCain-Feingold. Our legal action has at least three (3) constitutional claims against FATCA.
Court or Congressional actions have a successful history taking down laws AFTER their implementation.
So there still is hope despite the often touted “FATCA is here to stay”.