Democrats Abroad has published a report of their four month study of how FATCA affects Americans. These reports have been sent to “selected members of Congress and senior officials at the US Treasury and IRS.” DA also indicates discusions with them are ongoing.
DA Report DataPack-CDNS top the list of respondents; 31.8% of those denied jobs due 2 #FATCA Senior Exec Positions http://t.co/6HNFnd4NZK
— ADCSovereignty (@ADCSovereignty) September 15, 2014
The report consists of the following (3) documents:
1. Executive Summary of 2014 FATCA RESEARCH PROJECT – “FATCA: Affecting Everyday Americans Every Day”
2. 2014 FATCA RESEARCH PROJECT – “FATCA: Affecting Everyday Americans Every Day”
3. 2014 FATCA RESEARCH PROJECT – Datapack
Thanks for the link to your latest, Victoria. NONE of us should behave like a subservient second-class citizen, burying our heads in the sand that we will not be affected. As the US and our own countries waive our rights, but we must continue the fight — we need more “bigger and wealthier persons with the guts to join us and stand up for what is right for all of us”.
My continued hope is that some will step forward to help litigation in whatever country, the only way. My limited and doesn’t make a big dent into what is needed support is at http://www.adcs-adsc.ca/.
@ YogaGirl
Your comment. Short. Spot on. I concur.
Thanks, badger. We see over and over again the punishment and the abuse wielded with USA CBT. If the US were a REALLY a caring nation of the world, CBT would be thrown out to be in step with the rest of the world. No one, but no one, has shown me any reason for CBT other than the pain it inflicts as resources are collected from US expats and the countries in which they live, work and pay their taxes for the benefits they get there. I wonder if they yet teach the fact that it exists in their schools or give immigrants to the land of opportunity a statement of their responsibilities under CBT, so different from the land they are leaving for the better life for themselves and their families. To not do so, underlines the “gotcha” of US citizenship-based tax law.
I read it all and it does mentioned people who did not know they were citizens.
Really heartrending stuff. My eyes started watering up in places.
While the sample may not be completely typical, in a way having this come from Democrats Abroad matters a lot: U.S. politics is so polarized now that liberals won’t even trust a weather forecast from Fox News. Forbes and the Wall Street Journal have done a great job of highlighting the major problems with FATCA, but they aren’t going to move the Democrats at home. This material, which makes clear to the Democrats that this legislation is hurting their own voters abroad may be what is needed for that December compromise we need.
I’m really bothered that the DA report takes such pains to point out that the respondents agreed that it was very important to find ways to stop tax evasion of US citizens, but doesn’t make the obvious point that repealing CBT would solve the problem. If they’d made the point that they wanted to stop tax evasion by US residents, I’d be more impressed. As it stands, I’m waiting for them to name names of who they’ve sent it to, and show some results.
@All, I am not a Republican or Democrat because I am not a US Citizen anymore. In the old days, I was more likely a Republican. Nor am I an American Citizen Abroad, I am not American nor Abroad.
As a caveat, to all undocumented relinquishers…..if you vote in the USA your relinquishment goes poof….
I am thankful DA came out with this report and it was stronger than I could imagine.
I also believe there is now common ground between RA, DA. and ACA. If they are brought together, the American PEOPLE will chear!!!
If RA and DA fight who is better on this issue they will both fall and WE lose. Together they both win and we win too. You might be thinking I am a Pollyanna and kumbyaya but I am NOT.
@Calgary. The only purpose if CBT is to punish people for having the audacity to choose to live outside the U.S. That has been the case since it was first implemented during the Civil War.
FATCA is the punishment on steroids.
It is hoped that CBT will be rendered unworkable by carving out resident citizens and stopping FATCA data to the IRS. The IRS would be left with very high investigation costs that recover little or no tax. Of course the IRS could fall back on their old favourite of fines.
Would a foreign government extradite someone who owes little or no tax to the US for non-filing? It remains to be seen.
@Don
“The DA’s language is weak so not to offend members of Congress.” — IMAGINE THAT?
@USCAbroad
“This data needs to be used to attack citizenship- based taxation directly. Arguing for the “same country exemption for FATCA and FBAR will alleviate the symptom but will NOT be a cure. Democrats Abroad appears to SUPPORT both CBT and FATCA but simply wants them modified so that their negative effects on those who have been given “the privilege of living abroad” are minimised.” — BINGO!
@Bubblebustin
“Has there ever been a better time for an epic battle between CBT and RBT? In this war, we need to be in one camp and one camp only: RBT. Those who refuse to condemn CBT are not our allies.” — HEAR, HEAR!
@EmBee
“My big wish – That RO, DA, ACA, AARO, RNC, DNC, etc. get together to advocate for the repeal of FATCA and advocate for replacing CBT with RBT.” — HOW TO DO THIS?
“Patches and tweaks aren’t good enough. CBT must go.” — HEAR, HEAR!
@BillT
“DA hasn’t proven that they are concerned about anything but votes, and frankly a lot of the problems right now are clearly the Dems fault.”– YUP!
@Blaze
“The only purpose if CBT is to punish people for having the audacity to choose to live outside the U.S.” — HOW DARE THEY LEAVE THE PLANTATION? THOSE PESKY EXPATS NEED TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON!
My Go at “best of” comments:
Tricia Moon:
FATCA: Affecting Everyday Americans Every Day
BillT:
The fact that the report makes no mention of the nearly impossible nature of complying with the IRS reporting rules while performing normal financial planning abroad leaves me thinking this is mere posturing.
John Smith:
“Over two-thirds (67.8%) of all respondents say they will take FATCA into account when they vote in November. Just 6.0% said they don’t plan on voting.” [As the Republicans have a much stronger position on repealing FATCA and RBT, one may assume that based on this response that FATCA will be a highly motivating factor for Democrats Abroad and that a significant portion of Democrats will vote Republican]
Some from anonymous:
Financial account closure: 16%; Refused new account application: 13%. Same country FATCA exclusion will not change account closures/refusals. Need RBT now!
It must have taken DA quite some time to collect 6,500+ surveys, FATCA is now really landing so one may imagine more impacts in the future than past.
@Stephen Kish-
One angle with the representative groups is to get them to publish their stories from Americans overseas. Individual stories may be quite compelling an powerful. Americans Abroad has actively requested testimonials from Americans abroad. So why don’t they publish? Privacy: I believe in the past there was a privacy option for those who submit, such as keep anonymous. Or, maybe they don’t want to share information that they feel they did the hard work to put together. If this is so we need to persuade them to publish just like DA. The more stories/compilations of stories published the better the backing for the cause. There was a comment asking for AA to do a survey/publish stories and not a politically motivated group like DA or RA.
All great comments on this post – thank you all. I fully agree, CBT must go and the country of residence exception is just a band-aid on a deep bleeding wound. Today on the Drudgereport.com there was a report that the Democrats now, per the last poll, have a slight edge in the midterms – let’s hope that the Republicans don’t blow it. If they do, and if Hillary/Democrats stay in the White House in 2016, we can all forget any real progress unless it is via litigation (sadly).
I’ve decided to give my Democratic congresscritters who are up for election this November one last chance to earn my vote. They blew me off in the primary, but I have sent them another e-mail about RBT and FATCA, pointing out that DA officially supports RBT and giving them the link to the DA FATCA study report (so it is good to have these resources to point to), and asking them what they intend to do about these issues facing Americans abroad.
If they want my vote this November, they will respond positively.
If they don’t want my vote, they will respond negatively.
If they want me to vote Republican for the first time in my life, they will piss me off by ignoring my question entirely — again.
Ball is in their court.
foo,
I hope you give them your parameters too. Every person who wants our vote, in whatever country, must communicate their stand on FATCA as, in Canada, they must also communicate whether every Canadian has the same rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other Canadian laws.
I just read the Executive Summary again. There is nothing in there how great and wonderful FATCA is. It does not appear sugar coated:”These survey results show the intense impact FATCA is having on overseas Americans.”
Only missing bit is call for action to remedy the “intense impact of FATCA” on overseas Americans.
calgary411:
I’m not going to teach them how to do their jobs. They should know how to handle constituent questions, and what consequences are likely for mishandling. (If not, they are incompetent as politicians, and hence useless to me anyway.)
I do intend to follow up later and send them e-mails to let them know why I either voted for them, didn’t vote at all, or voted against them, as the case may be.
I may only have one vote, but I intend to get as much mileage out of it as I can.
@Blaze Having looked into it, it seems that what the U.S. public has mainly disliked is wealthy Americans or immigrants taking money out of the U.S. that they had earned or, worse still, inherited from , or exploiting tax loopholes abroad. The Americans I have spoken with generally have no idea that someone with a small income, like an English teacher, is subject to U.S. tax law.
@Kish The problem with stories is also that the tax writers have stories, too, about highly unlikable Americans abroad. We need to show that the typical “American” abroad isn’t someone money laundering the proceeds from financial scams in Belize or living on their luxury yacht to avoid tax residency rules. Individual stories are great for sympathy/antagonism and easy for people to understand, but we have to show that our cases are more typical than theirs. At the same time, the data might not work: Congress was shown that an earlier OVDP hadn’t dragged in fatcats, but they ignored it.. Maybe part of the problem is that the key Senators on this issue are all millionaires. The Levins and Rangel each have over a million dollars outside their primary residence. They are wealthy people passing laws to put an end to the games that other wealthy people or their financial managers play and create laws that only the very wealthy can afford to comply with in the process. Members of Congress also tend to be in couples where the assets are in their spouses’ name, but they have generous pensions so they may not see the problems.
@Anonymous Online surveys make compiling information very quick nowadays.
@USCAbroad They would probably have to bring in some sort of an exit tax like Canada has to make the system work politically.
write your congressman and tell him/her how you feel about this issue and what you want him to do in return for your vote! I did on several occasions.
@Tricia Moon mentions “nearly impossible nature of complying with the IRS reporting rules”.
This strikes a chord when I think of Form 8938, which I only learned of this year. As an elderly UK-US dual citizen, born and continually resident in the UK since I was a child, I have a lifetime’s accumulation of financial accounts, many dormant or with £0 balance, but this produces over >50 that must be reported on FATCA-inspired Form 8938. Each Form 8938 continuation page has the space to report just one account. The pdf of the form can be downloaded from the IRS web site, but it is impossible, so far as I have found, to make copies of the continuation page so that I can easily complete them at my keyboard. And what counts? May I ignore the small positive credit balance in my gas & electricity supplier account, where they pay 3% interest amounting to a few dollars a year? Might it be a foot fault not to report that account on Form 8938 and the interest on Schedule B? I suppose that in theory, I could be “hiding” money there by deliberately over-paying my energy bills.
Much worse are those UK mutual funds that I bought for my retirement savings (not knowing about PFIC rules), and my employer’s contributions to my workplace pension plan – all messes because of inadequacies in the UK-US tax treaty. It has been comical trying to get help from IRS helplines in London and Philadelphia. Typical was a recent call, in which an advisor told me “No one understands Form 1116. Ignore it. It is really only for high rollers and big shots.” On another occasion I was again told, “Ignore Form 1116. Just write down what you think you owe us and we’ll tell you if you are wrong.”
By comparison, it takes only a few hours to complete my UK self assessment tax return, all done at my computer with HMRC’s web tool. On occasions that I have had a query, a phone call to HMRC has been answered helpfully, and they phone me back if they are not immediately able to give an answer. My UK tax bill is much greater than a person living in the US would pay on the same income, but UK tax compliance is without the many days of work, anxiety, sleepless nights, and on-going fear of penalties.
Elsewhere on this site I have seen people refer to US tax filing expense as consuming “LCU”s and have wondered that this acronym means. I know there is such a thing as “local currency unit”. Does LCU also mean “lifetime c**p unit”?
@foo: Did you get any response at all from your elected officials in the past? I got nothing.
@ricard: “nearly impossible nature of complying with the IRS reporting rules” was me, and this is the thing that has me the most angry. The treatment of mutual funds & RESP/TFSA accounts is completely unreasonable. My feeling is the MINIMUM the US needs to do is make it possible for a normal person who is a long-term nonresident to file the return easily & without penalties for investing in typical savings accts.
The reason I’m upset about this right now isn’t so much about me as it is about my kids. I don’t want them facing a lifetime of this crap, but I really don’t want them to have to renounce either.
@BillT:
I got one response from a primary candidate, who didn’t answer my question directly but at least acknowledged that there are problems to be looked into, mentioning support for the House bill to form a committee to look into the problems facing Americans abroad. So I voted for that candidate in the primary — and it was actually a very close one! …but the candidate who won that contest was one of the many who did not respond to me at all.
So I’m not at all inclined to vote for the primary winner this November unless I hear something, and something positive, to my latest e-mail.
@BillT:
Took the words out of my mouth.
Does FATCA violate the German Constitution?
Article 3
[Equality before the law]
(1) All persons shall be equal before the law.
(2) Men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall
promote the actual implementation of equal rights for
women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages
that now exist.
(3) No person shall be favoured or disfavoured because of
sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith,
or religious or political opinions. No person shall be
dis favoured because of disability.
https://www.btg-bestellservice.de/pdf/80201000.pdf
How on earth does FATCA discriminating against origin possibly conform to the German Constitution?
Regardless whether the German Constitution applies to German tax law fully, FATCA is not a tax law. It’s an information sharing agreement, shouldn’t it be subject to the German Constitution?
Any German solicitors out there?
I’m going to show my ignorance of the US political system and ask: If you are a US citizen not resident in the US, how do you vote in the mid-terms? My understanding is that USCs abroad vote only for a president which isn’t done in the mid-terms.
@Kathy – Mid-terms refer to the general election between US presidential elections. In Congress, you have the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Representatives have to run for re-election every two years while Senators are every six. Therefore all Representatives run every two years, with about a third of Senators.
The significance of the mid-terms is the balance of power can change from one party to the other in either the House or the Senate affecting the President’s ability to pass legislation or have his veto overridden.
Difference from the UK where you basically have all MP’s elected every 5 years.
@Kathy – Also USCs can vote in the mid-terms as long as they’ve registered to vote in their last place of residence in the US. Voting from outside the US (which I’ve never done), is somewhat of a pain in the neck having to deal with your local city or town hall.