[We now have a NEW POST taking us up to February 1, 2015. This post will be retired from service.]
THE AUTUMN 2014 UPDATE
Dear Donors,
Together, we reached our goal of $100,000 to pay the November 1 legal bill 11 days ahead of schedule!
Thank you Canadian donors from coast to coast and our friends from around the world for your generosity, support and determination — and especially for not being afraid.
The name of our non-profit corporation is the “Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty.”
We were very deliberate in including in our name the word “sovereignty”, which forms a cornerstone of our Claims against the Government of Canada.
Canada and dozens of other countries throughout the world gave into a bully because their “leaders” were afraid of harm caused by a trading “partner” — and they gave their sovereignties away.
Help us convince by example the Leaders and Governments of all countries worldwide that they should return their sovereignties back to their Peoples.
Please continue to support our lawsuit.
“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” (Helen Keller)
— Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen, and the ADCS-ADSC team
Chers donateurs,
Ensemble, nous avons atteint notre but d’amasser 100 000 $ pour payer notre facture légale du 1er novembre 11 jours d’avance !
Un gros merci à vous, donateurs canadiens, et à nos amis de tous les coins du monde pour votre grande générosité, soutien et détermination. Et surtout pour votre courage.
Le nom de notre organisme sans but lucratif est « l’Alliance pour la défense de la souveraineté canadienne ».
Nous avons choisi délibérément le mot « souveraineté » puisqu’il constitue la base fondamentale de nos revendications envers le gouvernement du Canada.
Le Canada et des dizaines d’autres pays se sont pliés devant l’intimidation des États-Unis parce que leurs « leaders » ont eu peur des menaces de notre « partenaire » commercial. Ils ont donc vendu leur souveraineté à rabais.
Aidez-nous à convaincre les dirigeants et les gouvernements de tous ces pays qu’ils se doivent de remettre leur souveraineté à leurs peuples.
S’il vous plaît, continuez à soutenir notre cause.
« Seuls, nous pouvons faire si peu. Ensemble, nous pouvons faire beaucoup. » (Helen Keller)
— Ginny, Gwen et toute l’équipe de l’ADCS-ADSC
DONATE to www.adcs-adsc.ca (ADSC en français).
Catching up here and there on “summer time”, I noticed the thread Aug 4-5 about UK census data. The numbers don’t remotely surprise me given something like a quarter million tax returns sent in from outside the US overall and the KNOWN census data in just a handful of countries which dwarfs that total. Clearly, only a relative handful of “potential” Americans (or “clinging Americans” or what-have-you!) are even minimally tax compliant to the point of actually filing a tax return with the IRS. I don’t say “tax compliant” since, given the numerous conflicts between US tax law and virtually every other regime, it is likely that a substantial number of the overseas filers have filed returns riddled with what the IRS would consider errors. My guess is that the IRS only selects for audit a random number of big fish out of that pile because none of the others will be worth their while.
A further number needs to be subtracted, particularly from the UK census data, and that is true transients. London is a big financial centre and many banks, law firms and accounting firms will have Americans on temporary posting in the UK. These will have work visas and very likely show up in the census data. As true transients, they are very likely a substantial portion of the “compliant” Americans in the UK. It is not unreasonable to expect that of the 30,000 or so “compliant” Americans in Britain, perhaps two-thirds will turn out to be transients on work visas of a couple of years or more. There are thus EASILY more than 100,000 Britons – dual citizens, accidental “Boris Johnson” types, Americans married to Britons and permanently resident, etc – who are potential objects of the US dragnet and who are not “tax compliant”. With about 250 working days a year and processing two CLN’s per hour (16 per day), they should be able to get the job of flushing these people of their unwanted fiscal visitor in 25 years or so.
I haven’t seen any numbers on tax returns sent in from Canada or passports issued out of Canada by the US consulates. I have seen published census data (2011) that came in well under 500,000 of American origins. That number is hardly surprising as the census question included such boxes as “Irish” , “French”, “English”, etc – most people would naturally include their ethnic origin if they deign to answer and few consider “American” to be an ethnic grouping. I have seen immigration data that shows just under 500,000 coming into Canada from the US between 1965 and 1995. While some of these will have died, others will have come in before (my case) or after, in addition to children born of US parents. I have never been uncomfortable with the 1 million number for Canadians with “US indicia”. The total number of US foreign-issued passports being just over a million, it is obvious that a large number of persons with US indicia living outside the US neither carry a US passport nor file US tax returns. If the US embassies and consulates in Canada had to work on even 500,000 CLN’s, they would take about 100 years at the UK rate. However, with consulates and embassies able to spread the job among several offices, I would guess they could get it done in about 25 years as well! Of course the Federal Register is going to need more paper – time to stock up on paper companies!
@Anne Frank – If you have a wonder down to Grosvenor Square the US embassy looks for like a fort with concrete barriers and barbed wire around it, not very inviting.
It would be interesting if there was any legal way to force the US government to process CLNs in a more timely manner.
The danger is if the US changes the definition of US Indicia to catch data for example logging into your UK internet banking too often with a US IP address then anyone could become a US person in the bank’s eyes.
So you’ve got someone goes down to Florida and stays over six month, logs into their UK bank account to check whether their salary/pension has gone in, pay bills etc., and the bank data-mines the dates from the first login to some target date, you’re now a US person and your bank account gets reported.
So as the US moves the goal posts to gather more and more data that 100,000 figure will continue to grow. Anyone UK only, US only, or dual citizens can become a victim of FATCA.
In future all that will be required to get caught out with FATCA is to have a pulse.
That’s the message that needs to get out.
Just discovered (while on holidays that included a swing through Ottawa) that the U.S. embassy sits immediately across York Street from the Canada Revenue Agency HQ. This placement of the CRA has worked out perfectly for expansion of land considered U.S. territory in Canada.
Shovel,
Thanks for the interesting observation. Amazingly planned?
@George, re; “…All I can say is brother/sister, I am with you, I am with you.”
And with you!
The dollars required for this plunge are massive. I get the feeling that there are several people that read this site and have contributed. But at some point, this group can’t manage to raise the next amount of funds required. Are there actions planned to connect this challenge with other interested groups so that their membership could be involved in raising? What about a kickstarter campaign?
@ Brian
The group has done a whole bunch of research on crowd funding and there are certain things we have found:
Kickstarter is ONLY for arts projects such as painting, design work and movies.
Indiegogo can be used for political fundraising, but it is based in the US which a lot of the Brockers and Sandboxers did not like. In addition we had to choose whether we would set a goal and only get the money if we reached it, or get whatever we raised. We would have to pay a 9% fee if we chose the “get whatever we raise” option and did not make our set goal in addition to the 3.5% fee from PayPal payments. If we chose the “get whatever we raise” option and DID meet our goal we would pay them a 4% fee plus PayPal fees. Obviously, we would not choose the “if you don’t raise the goal amount you get nothing” option as that would be counter-productive.
There are numerous other crowd funding sites that we have looked into, but rejected for one reason or another, be it the fees they charge, the methods of payment they have available, the country of origin or the number of other campaigns hosted, which would mean our campaign would get lost.
In the end, we decided that the best and most optimal choice was to have our own crowd funding source by creating our own website, and only having to pay PayPal fees and banking fees rather than pay an additional 4-9% on the money we raise.
Really, there is no difference between our site and other crowd funding sites, except that we are a ONE issue crowd funding site, which in the opinion of the board and myself, is the best option for our issue. We need every penny we collect to go to the necessary funding and do not want any of it going to third party administration fees.
The bottom line is that we MUST ALL promote our ADCS site EVERYWHERE. That is really the best and most optimal thing we can do. So everyone, please write letters to every local paper you can think of to do so.
Just FYI, we have a Google Adwords Ad as well as Facebook paid posts going on all the time as well. Each of you can also post widely on Facebook and Twitter. The more this message gets reposted and retweeted the more people will become aware and come to our site and we hope DONATE!
“We would have to pay a 9% fee if we chose the “get whatever we raise” option and did not make our set goal in addition to the 3.5% fee from PayPal payments. If we chose the “get whatever we raise” option and DID meet our goal we would pay them a 4% fee plus PayPal fees. Obviously, we would not choose the “if you don’t raise the goal amount you get nothing” option as that would be counter-productive.”
Yes and this type of funding paradigm creates a dilemma for the contributor too. Do I send money directly to the organization knowing that for sure they will then get 100% of the payment? Or do I participate via the indiegogo campaign, knowing that it is absolutely that some money will be taken off the top by indiegogo (which I don’t like since at the beginning of the day it is MY hard earned money), but OTOH I might help them reach their goal?
It is a dilemma I’ve faced while contributing to other opportunities too.
Thanks, GwEvil, for outlining the reasoning.
It seems to me that if the media would give this issue the coverage it should have and needs to make it a “legitimate issue” regarding the loss of Canadian sovereignty and loss of rights for a segment of the Canadian population — not only the stories of why people are renouncing or relinquishing to cement in people’s minds that this is because of taxes (and they don’t get past that) — potential donors would see that extra-territorial FATCA law legislated in countries outside the USA, combined with US citizenship-based taxation and our own financial institutions and government CRA becoming arms of the IRS, is detrimental to every Canadian. It is very detrimental as well to the US itself.
ADSC needs to be mentioned in as many comments as possible in articles, columns, Op-eds, and blogs about FATCA, CBT, Renunciation etc.
I have heard the number “13 million” being thrown around for green card holders. Are they being addressed here? Although a fair share of expats will be compliant, I could imagine that a whole lot of green card holders who have returned home didn’t have a clue.
Polly, No one seems so far to have mentioned FI due diligence (like account applications) that have questions aimed at identifying green card holders but if there are 13 million that is a trove for the IRS and maybe they have a plan to ferret that info out eventually?
@Gordian
Probably stupid like me… I had my bank accounts address changed when I was moving around to the US when i was not living in the US but paid US taxes in the US for stuff I had/have there made cause my siblings are living there so they could monitor my bills & such… thought nothing of it… GC holders probably did the same thing so that will drop when they do their searching… or GC holders that transfer money back & forth from home country to the US or vice versa… many ways to catch us stupid immigrants who thought nothing of it… cause I ain’t no citizen of the US but a legal visitor yet we are labelled a citizen… with no say or vote… who the heck heard of CBT…. I didn’t…
@Gordian
I`m thinking of being addressed to aid our cause here, financially.
Pingback: The Isaac Brock Society | Human Rights Complaint on behalf of ALL *U.S. Persons Abroad* has now been submitted.
Republicans Overseas FB page is well worth a look. The RNC is starting to rally against FATCA. Let’s hope they gather speed just like Issac Brock. Things are looking up!
The Republican’s advocacy of residence-based taxation is great news. It gives us some hope of change were it really counts, in the US homeland. However, like the Supreme Court challenge, any political change is most likely years away and doesn’t help us deal with FATCA today.
(Quick aside for the US spies looking at this….VERY UNFORTUNATELY…) I have a “kryptonite card.” I get Social Security statements sent to my home address annually. They know where I am.
An extremely important comment that piggybacks on “THE BRAVE PLAINTIFFS NEED YOUR SUPPORT.”
Once the lawsuit is filed and these individuals are named publicly, we as in WE, have taken on the responsibility to bring this to a final conclusion which means financial support for litigation, emotional support and again financial support for litigation.
The money can not run out once the suit has started!!! WE owe it to these people and their families.
It does not matter if you are Canadian in Canada or Irish in Ireland, WE must support the plaintiffs once the first round has gone off.
@ George
I absolutely agree. Those who gave up their anonymity and security to become plaintiffs deserve our full support and our gratitude — all the way to that Supreme Court date. The way I see it, every dollar that I send to ADCS is one less the IRS can try to steal. Most important for me though is to take a stand against the unrelenting usurpation of our freedom and privacy. This is our opportunity as well to send a message to our politicians that it is not acceptable to throw away our nation’s sovereignty. Stephen Harper and his corporate cronies might be smitten by the idea of the New World Order but believe me there is nothing noble about that global agenda.
Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen formally commenced litigation today in Federal Court of Canada.
Working on post.
God bless ginny and gwen
Great news, Stephen. Much gratitude to Ginny and Gwen. Go ADCS!
Thank you, thank you, thank you Ginny and Gwen. Will be with you every step of the way! This is so very exciting….and OFF WE GO!!!!!!
Bravo, Ginny and Gwen!!! Thank you!! We are all behind you 110%