This week I had a chat with a kind donor to our Canadian FATCA IGA lawsuit. She is a Canadian citizen who has lived in our country for more than four decades.
I asked her (as I now ask many) to predict what Canadians will do when the FATCA law identifies them and turns them over to a foreign country.
This Canadian told me how she will respond when her neighborhood bank turns her over to the United States Internal Revenue Service. She said:
“First time visitors to the “Isaac Brock” and “Maple Sandbox” websites are regularly advised to “Read, read, read before you take any action” when you discover that the IRS wants you.
Generally good advice, I would say, except that I would change the channel a bit and say “Read, read, read, and then take NO action“.
I would strongly urge people to read, read, read, and then take the time to live with the injustice, the absurdity, the absolute moral bankruptcy of FATCA before they commit themselves to any course of action.
Live with the feelings of unfairness and discrimination that surround FATCA; let the oppressiveness of the situation really take hold. Then take a deep breath, and another, let the fear subside, and then let the outrage and anger come forth and “Just say NO”.
We all know that the whole premise of FATCA (Citizenship-Based Taxation) is fundamentally wrong, so why do so many of us so readily agree to participate in a system that is “wrong”? Fear, anxiety, expediency, whatever?
When I am faced with a really complex situation that is impossible to figure out, and FATCA would be one of those, I try to pare things down to fundamental principles that let me see things more clearly. Really, in my mind, FATCA is no different from the scenario of the school yard bully.
The Harper Canadian Government should have stood up to the U.S. bully’s threat of sanctions and said “No”. It didn’t.
Canadian banks and financial institutions should have refused to become agents of the IRS. They didn’t.
Our Members of Parliament should have challenged the government to address issues of sovereignty, privacy, and equality of ALL Canadians. By and large, with a few notable exceptions, they didn’t.
So now it’s my turn; it’s my turn to stand up and say “No”. And I will.
I will refuse to fill out any “foreign” tax information forms, I will refuse to give my financial institutions any information on place of birth, and, if necessary, I will lie with an absolutely clear conscience.
I will refuse to let the bully play in my yard.
I realize that this is a course of action (or inaction) that might make some people feel uncomfortable. But, speaking personally, I feel much more uncomfortable being forced to do things that I know are wrong, and I know that FATCA is wrong.
It’s just wrong, plain and simple. So I’m not doing it.
I am now, and will remain, willfully non-compliant. End of story.”
@George
Please be more specific. What are the possible consequences of lying?
I have many possible paths, in my situation. But lying might well be the simplest, cheapest and easiest option. Since I don’t believe in the hereafter, I’m not too concerned about the moral cost of telling untruths.
Heartsick
From what you briefly wrote you will never be in a position of having to lie a out yourcitizenship
You are not a us citizen you are Canadian in Canada regardless what the us may or may not think and that is supported by international law
Do the banks lie? Well, lets see… yes you can have that mortgage of 350000 to buy that house even though you make 44000 per year. Yes you can also have that new car too.. OOPS here comes 2007 please Mr. President, bail us out, we simply made a mistake. We will fly to see congress in our company jets and be really really careful not to get caught next time…. Bankers have all lied to cover their asses and most never got charged let alone, even caught. You all need to stand up to corruption and protect yourselves as your government fails you even more….
@ George Although I do not consider myself to be a US citizen, my US birthplace does identify me as a “US Person” with no documention to prove otherwise. I was absolutely shocked to find out this year that the US was claiming me and my siblings as US citizens. We now live under a very dark cloud. I did not consider it to be a lie when I signed a “getting to know you” form omitting checking the box: “US citizen” this year. I did panic at first until I realized it was not really a legal form.
@George, re:
“Whitekat
A person needs to put themselves in a position so they are not lying because you will get caught up in a lie?”
Not necessarily. Yeah, lying can cause HUGE problems in many instances, but not all. One must choose ones lies carefully – not just from a morality perspective (which is where I have been arguing from), but also from a consequence perspective.
I think that we should have a new word for ‘good lies’ because people cannot get their head around the fact that not all lies are bad. The word ‘LIE’ automatically conjures up an image of a bad deed even before one knows the circumstances surrounding the lie.
What if we called them, ‘non-facts’? Will this remove the bad stigma from saying a ‘non-fact’ in a situation where the truth will cause more harm than a ‘non-fact’?
I ‘lied’ to my friend recently. I told her I liked her new hair cut. Actually I think it looks bad. Maybe I should have told her the truth.
heartsick,
I say good for you for not checking the box “US citizen”. It shows you do not consider yourself such. (The box you checked did not say “Were you born in the USA?”.)
NativeCanadian,
Justice based on crime that is “crime crime” as in this article?
We are standing up for what we perceive to be just in the Canadian and US litigations against the enforcement of FATCA on people who have chosen to completely make their lives in other countries, do not consider themselves US citizens and are never planning to return to the “homeland” to live. US citizenship-based taxation is the injustice when the rest of the world taxes on residence. Two wrongs or 7 million wrongs do not make a right.
What, then, is a “Noble Lie”? One statement here says “These include a belief that the state’s land belongs to it even though it was likely acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than the accidents of birth.”
I am US citizen, because my parents were US citizens, but I was born in Germany. I lived most of my life in Germany except for 5 years when I actually studied and worked in the U.S.
I never heard of anything about FATCA and necessity to file US taxes. I never filed them when from Germany, beucase nobody told me. And I still keep my US passport for visits to America from time to time (I cannot use my German passport to travel to the U.S.)
What to do next? I opened my bank accounts on German passport/id card only. Is it pretty safe to continue to remain oblivient?
@JimBeam
I am puzzled as to why you cannot use your German passport to travel to the U.S.
@ Calgary411 the box identified my citizenship as Canadian and then asked to check “all that apply” followed by a box for “US” or a box for “other”. This was a “Get to Know You” form from one of the big banks. I will not have the same option if the question is about my birthplace or status as a “US Person”.
Who knows, JimBeam, what will be safe and what will not be safe and for how long? Some in Europe are right now losing their banking privileges because their passport (whether German or Canadian or US) says “Born in the USA”. Your birth to two US citizens in Germany makes you (according to US law) a US citizen and your holding a US passport based on that says it is your choice to have claimed and be a US citizen. A US citizen is subject to exceptional US citizenship-based taxation law. You may have to eventually make another choice than being oblivious because you are not now oblivious — the US definition for you might now be willful as you now know. Do you want to remain a US citizen to be able to have certain rights of US citizens along with all US citizenship obligations and consequences or do you see yourself as a German citizen (by birth), never planning to return to the USA to live. What master do you wish to serve? Soon enough you may not be able to serve both.
Think of joining the fight against what is happening to you and others in your situation — http://www.adcs-adsc.ca/. A decision in Canada may be the basis of decisions around the world.
@Sasha: Unfortunately, if you are US citizen you must use US passport to travel there, they won’t let you go otherwise.
If the question becomes “Were you born in the US?” then there is a problem. You can still maintain your status as a Canadian only unless you accept that you are a US citizen and subject to US law rather than Canadian law. It is very difficult for all of us to get straight in our minds (Am I a Canadian or Am I an American — how do I define myself?), so we need the litigation to determine who really is our master / whose laws we are to obey — US law because Canada has allowed Canadian law to be overridden by a foreign (USA) law? If you consider yourself a Canadian as I consider my Canadian-born son Canadian, then stand up and say I am Canadian. Stand up to your discrimination by national origin for as long as you can until the Canadian litigation determines whether you are indeed a “US citizen who happens to reside in Canada” or “a Canadian citizen with all the same rights as any other Canadian, no matter their national origin or the national origin or their parents / grandparents”. Hopefully, we will one day be able to determine who we are and to what country we pay all of our taxes and get our benefits — not defined by some old geezer Senators and Legislators in the US, a country that is not ours.
@calgary411 : Thank you I will consider joining you in this fight soon.
I am settled and all my ties are in Germany now. I don’t even know English as great as I know my mother language German, ha. However, I do like the US passport for convenience. It is a like a nice backdoor, should something change in my life I am free to go live to America. So I cannot say for sure I am never going “back” to America.
Let me ask you a question. How many ordinary people like me are getting caught and punished? I was trying to Google up some cases, but I could only find a very few ones mainly some super rich dudes who hid their assets in Switzerland.
You ask a question that cannot be well answered – YET. We will see what happens with the IGAs that our countries signed with the US to implement FATCA and the turning over of all of our private financial information either to our country’s tax agency to then go to the IRS or directly to the IRS from our local country’s banks (which the US deems as our “foreign financial institutions). Financial institutions are right now supposed to just be searching their own databases for US indicia. If your bank’s records show you only as German and you don’t show there any US indicia, you may not have difficulty unless or until you have to open a new account — and are asked the “US” citizen question. You need to think ahead how you will deal with that new reality. If you want to privilege of being free to go to live in America, there are consequences and responsibilities for that US citizenship that you are no longer oblivious to. Will your “gift” of US citizenship be your golden goose or will it be your curse?
@calgary : Thank you. Interesting input.
Maybe I should have posed my question a little differently. Do you personally know any of your friends, also US citizens living abroad, that were not compliant and oblivious to the US tax regime and who got caught and penalized?
It is just for my own curiosity, I personally don’t know anyone so I wonder if you do. I wonder if we are talking about possible threats for the future or if this is something that is already happening.
@Calgary411 ” If you want to privilege of being free to go to live in America, there are consequences and responsibilities for that US citizenship that you are no longer oblivious to.”
Yep, well said. If you want to dance you need to pay the band.
@JimBeam, no knowledge of overseas minnows being picked out. Only minnows jumping into the bait nets voluntarily. The question would be if you live in a country that has a mutual collection treaty.
Regardless, the era of dual US Citizenship is likely over.
No, Jim Beam, I personally know of no one who has YET been caught and penalized, but I do know of those who have entered the so-called “amnesty programs” the US has put out there, into which some have wrongly entered as to enter is to say you are a criminal. Wrongly having entered, I do know of those who have been penalized and some who have fought successfully to have those penalties reduced, taking them years of their life and lawyer and accounting fees to do so. The US keeps throwing out more versions of their programs, each of which must be analyzed very carefully before entering. I also think it quite a penalty to “get caught” being “US Person Abroad” and deprived of your banking and perhaps your mortgage or the renewal of your mortgage because banks, rightly so, want nothing to do with US Persons. There are examples on this site and in submissions to government representatives in our various countries outside the USA. My personal penalty was $42,000 in US legal and accounting fees, including immigration / nationality lawyer fees for advice on how my son who has a developmental disability and is thus entrapped into US citizenship can expatriate. The answer — he can’t. For my family, that is the biggest US penalty of all.
It is also a penalty to Canada as I hold a Canadian Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP). That and the Canadian Registered Education Plan (RESP) in which parents invest for the future education of their children, as well as the Canadian Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) are considered by the US to be “foreign trusts”. The ordinary-Joe Canadian taxpayer helps fund the grants and bonds that the Canadian government contributes to the RDSP and the RESP. Those taxpayer funds, most from those first-class Canadians that don’t have a US taint, went from their Canadian taxpayer pockets to my son’s RDSP on which I had to pay the US IRS $3,661 in US tax. Why doesn’t my country, Canada, consider that eeping from the Canadian Treasury to the IRS a penalty on all of Canada, to say nothing of the loss of this country’s sovereignty?
@ Jim Beam
You ask how many are being caught and punished. My take is that this is a work in progress and while things may be relatively quiet now, the ax will fall in the not-too-distant future once all this extorted information starts coming into the hot greedy hands of the IRS & Dept of Justice.
Jim Beam. No one in your situation, I.E. Born outside the “Homeland” and not a wealthy celebrity has been caught or punished. The IRS doesn’t have any way of knowing that you exist.
P.S. Lots of people who were told they were US citizens travel to the states on other passports.
.
Guys thank you!
@Duke : Well, I already got U.S. passport about 8-9 years ago when I traveled to the U.S. the first time. Then I lived in the States for around 5 years doing my Master’s degree and working at the same time. During that time I filed U.S. tax returns as a resident.
JimBeam OK I should have said The IRS doesn’t care about you.
Two kinds of lies. First, the bank holding your mortgage can call it in (?) and foreclose on your house if they find you guilty of U.S. Personhood. You need your house. Lie to them until this mess is over in ten years or the mortgage is paid off. As for your savings plans, if they close them out bring the cheque to one of the local credit unions and open your savings account there.
@Tom. Lies are bad. Where have you been?
@Steve:
Laos does not have an IGA and some banks there are not FATCA registered.
http://non-fatca-banks.com/la.html
Ditto Cambodia: http://non-fatca-banks.com/kh.html
Likewise Myanmar: http://non-fatca-banks.com/mm.html
Viet Nam has no IGA but I have not listed their banks yet.