Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

15 thoughts on “Latest from Steven Mopsick”

  2. Let’s not forget that FATCA’s initial intention was to catch resident Americans hiding money offshore. With the IRS’s current lack of funding, the IRS will have to prioritize their expenditures and any stray from their initial mandate is difficult to justify. It seems that the IRS has created a Streamlined specifically for non-residents here, which I believe will pretty much be rubber stamped, unless of course certain criteria gets you flagged, let’s say having previously filed a US tax return from abroad. Let’s face it, someone born and lived his entire life abroad will be a lot less scrutinized than someone who moved abroad after working in the US for several decades. So in other words, the less plausible your ‘reasonable cause’ plea sounds, the more you’ll be scrutinized. For those with something to hide, how plausible your story is will depend on how finely the agent’s bullshit detectors are tuned, or how desperate the IRS is to clear the backlog of non-resident filings.

  3. And then there is this:

    http://rt.com/usa/167088-wikileaks-tisa-secret-trade/

    From the article:
    The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals – mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt – into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers,” WikiLeaks said in a statement. “The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data.”

    Additionally, the current draft also includes language inferring that, upon the finishing of negotiations, the document will be kept classified for five full years.

    In Australia, journalists at The Age reported that experts say the proposed changes included within the WikiLeaks document “could undermine Australia’s capacity to independently respond to and weather any future global financial crisis.”
    Dr. Patricia Ranald, a research associate at the University of Sydney and convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, told the paper that the documents suggest the US wants to “tie the hands” of other governments, including allied ones, by way of sheer deregulation.
    “Amendments from the US are seeking to end publicly provided services like public pension funds, which are referred to as ‘monopolies’ and to limit public regulation of all financial services,” she said. ”They want to freeze financial regulation at existing levels, which would mean that governments could not respond to new developments like another global financial crisis.”

    Earlier this week, US Trade Representative Michael Froman said the TISA deal was already well on its way to being put together.

    “The basic framework of the agreement is in place, initial market access offers have been exchanged, and sector-specific work in areas like telecommunications andfinancialservices is in full swing,” Froman said, according to Reuters.

    The document published this week by WikiLeaks is dated April 14 — two months before Froman last weighed in on the progress of the negotiations and six months after his office hailed previous re-write to the proposal. Along with representatives from Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey and dozens others, American policy makers will met in Geneva, Switzerland later this month starting June 23 to begin the next round of negotiations.

    In secret. Plotting and planning and Canada is involved.
    Really, what will they think of next! We should shudder to ponder.
    And then get madder than Hell!

  4. Do not make the mistake in believing the IRS what it says or promises. Look at the way this “lost e-mails” case is being handled. Listen to the interviews on Fox News and you’ll know what I am talking about.

  5. @furiousAC
    Yeah- I read about this too and mentioned it here. What would we do without Snowdens and Assanges? Without freedom of press? What would we know that is happening to us?

  6. note that OVDP FAQ 52.2 was deleted.

    FAQ 52.2: Taxpayers who are foreign residents and who were unaware they were U.S. citizens.

    Example 1: The taxpayer was born in the U.S. to parents of foreign citizenship. She grew up in a foreign jurisdiction, unaware that she had been born in the U.S. She has a $60,000 account in the foreign jurisdiction. She has never filed U.S. returns or FBARs. She became aware she was a U.S. citizen when she had to get a birth certificate in order to obtain a passport from the foreign jurisdiction where she resides. Unless she decides to opt out, she is entitled to the reduced 5% offshore penalty. Subsequent to learning of her U.S. citizenship, taxpayer took no action with respect to her foreign accounts that would disqualify a U.S. taxpayer from the 5 percent penalty under paragraph 1, above (this means the penalty returns to the 27.l5% penalty of everything she owns)

  7. It’s like the spider telling the fly to come in, why would you want to support the notion of CBT by filing? Yes the Commissioner can’t change the law, but it’s up to him whether to enforce CBT or not. Surely from his point of view, CBT is ‘expensive’ money trying to collect across over 200 jurisdictions with different legal systems across the world.

    He’d be better to promote tax reform for the Homelanders and compliance from them. Homelanders are 100% in his control, while Expats are not. Commissioner go back to your office and do better.

  8. @Mark Twain

    When I saw that they had reworked the FAQs, I wondered if that was still there. Thanks for checking Glad you have preserved the history.

    @FuriousAC

    So, I guess the TISA takes it place with the TPP and FATCA as more boring acronyms that most citizens of the world will be unaware of . Where is John Oliver when we need him?

    I love the quote. “If you want to do something evil, do it inside something boring.”

  9. @Mark Twain – So she has to pay $3000 to get back in the IRS’s good graces even through she should not be subject to CBT from the get go.

    My feeling is if the IRS ever hopes to get large numbers of ‘suckers’ filing from abroad, they’re going to have to give them a total free pass around GO. Otherwise the IRS will have the vast majority of expats stuck somewhere on the Monopoly board never making the turn around GO with 99% skipping JAIL.

    Why should someone have to pay $3000 when they’ve owed ZERO taxes to start with?

  11. Well…they can just “kiss my booty” as far as I’m concerned. If they want money up front, they can just “keep waiting”.

  14. FATCA is a long term gamble for the US Congress. As the BRICs work at de-dollarisation and move towards the RMB, confidence using the US Dollar as a stable currency whose rules don’t change overnight is being damaged.

    For the US Congress, even if down the road they decide to repeal FATCA, why should the BRICs go back using the USD? Once the USD loses those ‘customers’ they won’t come back and the USD will be finished as a sole reserve currency.

  15. @Don:
    Yes, why should the BRICs go back to using USD. Their entire aim is to get away from using the USD.
    Only trouble is, what the heck does that do or will that do to the CDN dollar?
    Just today, questions abound about why gas in the states is so much cheaper that gas here. Some such answer was that the US put their gas from the Bakken into the system before we ‘put our gas in the system in Canada’?? Huh? Does that make sense to anybody?
    Our gas goes up by two cents a litre IMMEDIATELY on bad news from the ME!
    I am with Ezra. What the heck is wrong with Canadian oil ‘Ethical Oil’
    instead of oil from Saudi Arabia. They have been hijacking us for decades . Why do we let them and why do we let the Canadian gas companies fleece us constantly? An oil rich country like Canada and we are paying the highest gas prices on the continent.
    Meanwhile environmental whackos are flown in from NY and around the world via Rockefeller to protest OUR efforts to get our gas and oil to multiple markets instead of one very unreliable and political market.
    As with FATCA and Keystone Pipeline we are vulnerable to the political whims south of the border simply because our govt does not have the backbone of a wet noodle.
    Even with a LOT of support from many in the states, we still act like a whipped puppy.
    Even the US is fed up with the criminality of the IRS and it is coming to a head. Anybody could see the corruption yet our govt lays down and makes a mat of itself and throws us all under the bus and then runs over us.

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