Well, I hope that our technical problems have finally come to an end. Problems Wednesday were about changing our domain registration to a new ISP (internet service provider), which required time for “prorogation”. I myself didn’t have access until Thursday morning. Then the normal Brock traffic simply overwhelmed our shared server service which was promoted by the ISP but turned out to be thoroughly inadequate for our needs. That’s when we started getting the account suspended message–and no, that wasn’t because you put some bad language in a comment. So we had to change to a new platform which is more robust and will hopefully carry us into the next year.
For those naysayers of Isaac Brock–and boy do we ever have them, I have a message. Take for example Kim Moody, who wrote:
In today’s day and age, anyone with a microphone and access to the Internet can provide their opinion, and while free and open democracies need freedom of speech in order to function, sometimes the loudest opinions are inaccurate, incomplete and, in the FATCA world, inflammatory.
Who could she mean but the Isaac Brock Society? Have we not used our free speech to say that people like Kim Moody have no business in Canada collecting taxes in our sovereign nation on behalf of the serial rights abuser called the United States of America? Is she not paid handsomely to enforce IRS compliance on innocent Canadian citizens? So isn’t that act itself inaccurate, incomplete, and inflammatory.
I have this to say to the Kim Moodys and to the Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his merry band of thugs: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” Our new platform is now sufficiently powerful to handle the traffic that you folks are going to force our way.
In the meantime, I had a number of messages from loyal Brockers. One said, “I am going through IBS withdrawal. It is worse than being an alcoholic.” Another claimed to be happy it was down because reading posts here destroys optimism. Another, who works in a psychiatric hospital, said that their emergency room was quite overwhelmed with Brockers who were beside themselves. I am so relieved that we can provide once again the only treatment that seems to work against the disease of clinging US nationality. Welcome home.
@Petros and @All:
Petros: SO glad the site is back up.Thanks for everything. And thanks for our website warrior, whoever he is.
All: I , too , felt IBS withdrawal!
With the Fiance Committee voting yesterday on amendments put forward, I was anxious to have IBS accessible.
I hung out and posted over at MapleSandBox, who put up links to the committee video so we could watch the conservative mps betray all Canadians and their American family members.
Carpetbaggers is a term I would use of the IRS compliance industry in Canada. Very appropriate.
“The term [carpetbagger] came to be associated with opportunism and exploitation by outsiders.”
Perfect description of Roy Berg and Alex Marino of Moodys.
“An outsider who pretends to be an insider is a carpetbagger; he’s a person who tries to take advantage of a group by joining it only for his own personal benefit.”
That Roy Berg is a special human being.
@Petros
Just want to thank you for this wonderful site and the community it has spawned.
I know you said that you did some of your PHD studies in Switzerland. If you ever return you are very welcome here.
@ Petros
Please disregard my e-mail. When your FB message said Brock was back and it wasn’t on my computer I thought that message might mean there was something I had to do on my end to connect to Brock again. My tech-lite husband said he wasn’t sure about “Account Suspended” but to be patient because it would probably work itself out. Of course, true to form, I was not and demonstrated that I probably need to go into an AA meeting to work through my Brock withdrawal issues.
@ OMG
Glad my tip about how to get to the latest comments worked out. Of course when a post has the blue number of comments below the title you can click on that too. It’s just that some like “consulate2” don’t have that option so then you have to go the delete part of address bar and reload route.
@ All
I’m still working through my politico anger issues about yesterday’s FINA committee debacle re: the proposed amendments so rather than risk spewing 4-letter words I’ll just say this has only made me more determined to donate even more to the Charter Challenge whenever we get the go-ahead for that. Brock withdrawal and politco anger issues all in one day — yipes!
Watching yesterday’s hearing got me so pissed off I told my husband we are definitely voting NDP. I told him I’m going to go with him to the voting booth next time there’s an election and make him promise he’s going to vote NDP not Conservative. I said I’ll know if you’re lying to me and life will be hell from then on.
He never reads this message board so he gets all his info second hand from me. I try not to tell him too much since I don’t want him to become so enraged he can’t function. Somebody has to work for a living and this FATCA stuff can be all consuming.
I said I know the NDP probably can’t win an election but at least we can try to make sure that if the Conservatives do win they don’t have a majority government.
I reminded him that the Conservatives will be the reason he doesn’t become President of his company if FATCA isn’t defeated. He’s got at least 5 more years to go before becoming President. I hope by then FATCA is long dead and gone.
He agreed with me that we would vote NDP at least the next go around.
@Em,
We are working every day on the ADCS legal challenge website and hope to have it up next week, and begin receiving donations.
Please keep that anger simmering.
The Conservatives have declared war on a million Canadians plus their non-US tainted family members. We could easily be talking about 3 or 4 million Canadians who are directly affected by FATCA.
Who gives a shit about conservatism if what the Conservatives have done causes your family to go bankrupt.
I may not like NDP or Liberal politics but they’ve never done anything that could destroy my family.
Many American media are protecting FATCA. Even magazine like the Atlantic has people in there to protect FATCA. Most American are still clueless about this law.
to all the Canadians, if you want to know why MP’s vote with their party and seem to not understand anything that they are told by anyone but their party, you should read “Tragedy in the Commons” by Alison Loat and watch a few of her interviews on YouTube.
Our parliamentary system is broken and the interviews in the book that Loat conducts with former-MP’s from every party indicates that many of them are uncomfortable and frustrated by how little influence or thinking they are allowed.
This is not to excuse the Cons but to point out that we Canadians think we are represented when we are not and there is no indication that any of the parties are any different when it comes to whipping votes.
The problem is that so few people get involved in grassroots issues – like we do here at Brock – so they don’t know how the system works, who to talk to or how to remedy things. And there are so many issues all the time that most folks have no idea that something is taking aim at their lives until it explodes in the middle of them. There is no warning.
As far as it goes rules wise, the NDP are the only ones who can do anything in the House of Commons and they are limited by numbers. We may have a multiparty system but with a majority govt, it hardly matters. This coupled with the fact that the Canadian PM is probably the most powerful head of govt in the world where democracies are concerned (yep, the truth and I was shocked by this too), it’s a wonder we aren’t more of a vassal to the US than we are because Harper and the PMO have far more power and say than most of us realize.
I’m also glad to see you guys back up. I know I’m not as gabby as I used to be, but I still like to lurk, and learn.
Maybe I’m a bit paranoid, but I was wondering if you guys were intentionally shut down for a little while.
@Stephen Kish:
Your Comment:
“We are working every day on the ADCS legal challenge website and hope to have it up next week, and begin receiving donations.
Please keep that anger simmering.”
No problem keeping the anger simmering, just like Em. After watching that Finance Committee vote I could teleport to Ottawa on the anger fueled by the results of that meeting!
Stephen, you just say where and when and donations will be forthcoming!
And Thank YOU as well for all you do.
It was common in the past for Brockers to think of themselves as annoying little mosquitoes. Well maybe not any more. Thanks to Keddy and the other Cons and their vote against all sane amendments to the ignominious IGA I think we will become hornets. They should not have messed with the Brock hornet nest.
@Stephen Kish, so what is donation goal to be able to start the challenge?
There is a chance that Kim Moody is right. Lets say the IRS is smart. They start getting data Jul 1st. They could just go after anybody with high incomes. Those we lots of money. Nobody cares about them. They are assumed tax cheats anyway. It’s well worth all their costs to try and extract crazy FBAR penalties etc even if the targets really didn’t hide much income. Their only problem is getting their tax laws rules unconstitutional or something like that.
Lets say they ignore loads and loads of small fish. Costs are too high to get them and you can get them later when their ISA or bank accounts are bigger. They could make their lives hell and take a bunch of their money. Politicians will care about them though and the news reports will be bad.
We worry about all the people caught up in this but maybe they will actually leave them alone. How many homelanders don’t file tax returns and the IRS ignores it because they know it’s not worth it to go after them?
I want them to go after a lot of people so the whole things falls to pieces but maybe they will be smart about this and milk it slowly.
This is my current worry.
Do we have any examples of them going after small fish? Small fish who turn themselves in get killed but that’s a cheap process for them.
Regarding technical matters, my e-mail isn’t back up yet. (If you’ve e-mailed me in the past day or two, that’s why you haven’t heard back.) I’ve set up a gmail account to use in the meantime – pacifica.isaacbrocksociety@gmail.com
And regarding technical matters, thanks so much Petros and our Web Developer for all your work on the upgrade! Having a stronger platform that can serve more users simultaneously is really important as we get more and more people using the site as FATCA is becoming more widely known.
I don’t want to jinx Brock by saying this but since it blinked in on my screen earlier today I have given it a good workout and it does appear to be quite robust now. Thanks Petros and Helper for guiding Brock through another set of growing pains. WE ARE STRONG. WE ARE THE BROCK.
@Neill, no, there is no report of how minnows who don’t go through OVDI are treated if audited – none – zero. I’ve been looking and didn’t find a thing.
@Neill, I am not sure what the July 1st start date actually means. Onboarding? The timeline says reporting doesn’t actually start till mid 2015.
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Summary-of-FATCA-Timelines
@noone, Yep your right. I was getting mixed up with the 30% withholding start.
So what do you think? Will the IRS just go after the big numbers and ignore everyone else?
@noone, July 1 2014, means nothing other than that Canada will no longer be a sovereign nation as of that day. Don’t worry, no one will notice.
@Neill, I think you’re right that the IRS will only go after big fish at first, once it starts receiving financial data under FATCA and IGA agreements. That will be all they can handle at first and it’s consistent with the stated rationale for FATCA. As you say, who will care if they go after wealthy people.
But once the data sharing practice is established, there will be nothing to prevent them from gradually going after people with less wealth. Their real goal with FATCA, I’m sure, is to try to force all “U.S. persons” living outside the U.S. back into regular compliance with U.S. citizenship-based taxation. If they can achieve that goal, they stand to acquire a lot of revenue with their taxes on things that people’s countries of residence don’t tax on, and of course there will be the penalties they can extract for past non-compliance.
As long as other countries allow the U.S. to continue to practice CBT, the U.S. will extract all the wealth from those countries that it can via its citizens who are resident in those countries.
@Neill @noone
I think u are correct… they will go after the big ones.. how they define that.. we won’t know.. maybe million dollar plus… Then they can take their time to get the rest of us… with a database available to them… every alphabet organization can pick & choose who they can get the IRS to go after them… Or better yet… the treasury can get us… I guess…
Basically… we are playing a guessing game… either way… they have all the info on us.. right or wrong info… how do we defend ourselves if its wrong… how do u know they won’t sell the info to say… another country… or better yet… collection agency… unknow factors… Yep… I am pissed & all these things are just bouncing around… My greatest fear is that all this info is stolen… what then… our lives will be worse then before…
It seems logical that they would go after the wealthy first, since they won’t have the manpower to audit/go after every name they’ll get. The question is are they going to go after US residents or non residents or both.
And the second question is is every non compliant person going to receive a nice reminder letter from the IRS that they need to file. Automating that process can be pretty easy and efficient.
Third question is once they get tons of data about non compliant people, are they still going to scrutinize past quiet disclosures, when they have names of people they know are non compliant.
It’s a matter of efficient resource utilization. Now, they haven’t proven to be very smart, efficient and focused on the right problems in the past. So their behavior is kind of unpredictable. I guess we have a year to wait – unless there’s an injunction that prevents the law to be applicable in the US.
And that leads to another question. If the American Overseas super lawyer prevents FATCA to be applicable until it’s settled at the supreme court, will the countries that have signed an IGA still honor their part and send the data?