UPDATE January 24, 2015: THIRD OF FIVE LEGAL BILLS PAID
[We now have a NEW POST taking us up to May 1, 2015. This post will be retired from service.]
On August 11, 2014, Constitutional Litigator Joseph Arvay filed a FATCA IGA lawsuit in Canada Federal Court on behalf of Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen, the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty (en français), and all peoples worldwide. Read Alliance’s Claims and comment on our Alliance blog.
Chers amis et donateurs,
Ensemble, nous avons atteint notre but : ramasser les fonds nécessaires pour payer la troisième des cinq factures légales de notre poursuite judiciaire.
Ramasser 300 000 $ provenant de petits dons est un exploit tout à fait extraordinaire et nous invitons notre gouvernement canadien, ainsi que tous les autres gouvernements qui ont piétiné les droits de leurs citoyens, à en prendre bonne note.
Chaque jour, nous nous rapprochons de notre but. Déjà, nous avons ramassé plus de la moitié des fonds nécessaires pour payer les frais légaux de notre poursuite contre le gouvernement canadien et l’entente FATCA.
Si nous avons parcouru un si grand bout de chemin, c’est grâce à nos deux courageuses plaignantes, Ginny et Gwen, à nos donateurs provenant du Canada et de partout dans le monde, ainsi qu’aux administrateurs des sites Internet Isaac Brock Society et Maple Sandbox. Ils permettent tous à nos voix d’être entendues.
Merci !
L’équipe de l’ADSC
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Dear Friends and Supporters,
Together we have reached our goal of paying off the third of five retainer fees for our Canadian FATCA IGA lawsuit.
Raising $300,000 from small donations is a pretty amazing achievement and we ask the Government of Canada, and those other governments who have also tossed away rights of their citizens, to take notice.
It’s still a marathon, but we are more than half way to pay off the Federal Court legal costs.
We have come so far because of our brave Plaintiffs, Ginny and Gwen, our Canadian and International donor-supporters, and the administrators of the Isaac Brock and Maple Sandbox websites who make it possible for our voices to be heard.
Thank you all,
—The ADCS-ADSC team
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When I read about the burden falling on “average people” I asked myself what is the definition of average? I consider myself pretty average in most ways, but I’m not in any way typical of the donors to this cause. I don’t even live in Canada – and never have. I live in Poland and I am now in full compliance – as best I can tell – so FATCA won’t change a thing for me. Moreover, this law suit won’t do much good for me even if you win. I am retired, so what I own is what I plan to live on for the rest of my life. It cost me a fortune in legal costs to get compliant and I am back to working now to try and recover some of that cost. Yet I still live in fear that they will come back and impose penalties that would allow them to legally steal everything I have.
Sadly, the America of today is not the one I grew up in. It has been taken over by liars and thieves who go by titles such as the “honorable senator”, the “honorable commissioner”, and the “honorable secretary.” Sadly, the average American has no idea that this is even going on. They believe the things they are told and their honorable representatives are telling them that rich people in America are stealing their money and hiding it in Switzerland. They are told that FATCA is simply a law designed to help those honorable people get that money back, and those who oppose FATCA are the crooks with something to hide. So support this law and, and by the way, re-elect us for our good service.
So, now I continue to pay thousands of dollars every year to an attorney in the United States to file IRS forms proving that I owe nothing to that country. He is a good attorney and he charges so much because he has so much to do. He earns his money honestly, just as I do. So this year I simply added an extra $500 dollars to my compliance budget and sent a check to ADCS. Think of it this way; we pay our Police to fight crime – why not pay lawyers to fight this crime on our behalf? We send money to Japan to relieve suffering after a terrible natural disaster – why not help relieve suffering from this man-made disaster? What ADCS is doing need not be directly for the benefit you or me. It doesn’t even need to be for the benefit of Canada. What ADCS is doing is for the benefit of everyone who believes in basic justice and human rights. In that regard, I am average; so count me in.
@Jim
Fantastic comment. Just out of interest, why don’t you renounce and stop the bleeding?
@Jim, “Sadly, the America of today is not the one I grew up in. It has been taken over by liars and thieves who go by titles such as the “honorable senator”, the “honorable commissioner”, and the “honorable secretary.” Sadly, the average American has no idea that this is even going on.”
I relinquished and had a five figure legal bill for that relinquishment, it was not a run of the mill relinquishment.
Yes, Average American does not have a clue as they are the lobster in the pot and there was not much to notice sitting in a pot of cold water. Sadly, the water is getting hotter but slow enough so they do not notice.
Some friends and family in the homeland are starting to get it but most are blind that the city on the hlll had its lights turned off because the power company was not paid.
I have a nice life in Europe but its a simple and basic life not a life of luxury in Monte Carlo!!
My advice to anyone that is NOT an “American Citizen Abroad” is to renounce or relinquish or “finish” the relinquishment with any type of documentation proving relinquishment.
@Jim – Thank you for that eloquent post. Your statement ” What ADCS is doing is for the benefit of everyone who believes in basic justice and human rights. In that regard, I am average; so count me in.” absolutely reflects my position on the matter … and I am NOT a US Person, do NOT reside in the US yet love what the US Constitution once stood for … the foundation of that Shining City on a Hill. A City whose foundation has been and is being undermined by forces that seek to en-shackle and then destroy.
@Jim,
There are people like me who donated who live in the US, As an immigrant I face many of the same problems expats face. Myself and my wife earned money abroad many years ago in the UK. My wife put a lot of her money in ISA’s. The US government took a large chunk of that money and eat two years of my life with their ‘straightforward process’.
Obama said I should pay a little bit more and he was right except the ‘little bit’. I want their liberal dreams to come crashing down before we get worldwide minimum taxation so they can just take whatever they want.
@Neil, though its a small consolation, your experience that we have now experienced with you on these boards has been absolutely helpful and beneficial!!!
@Neil – you speak of the coming of Minimum Taxation …. my friend, that is now here in Jamaica … EVERY business, registered or otherwise, is required to pay a Minimum Income Tax EVEN IF THERE IS NO INCOME. If the business is dormant, not trading at all, losing money … does not matter …. there must be quarterly payments of Minimum Income Tax … Which is NOT refundable if you do not owe any Income Tax for that year. One argument given for this by our idiot Finance Minister was that the Government still had a cost to review your Income Tax Returns even if there is no Income Tax due …. so they want the Minimum Income Tax to offset this cost. Sick in the head does not begin to describe it …..
@nervousinvestor,
Sounds bad. The minimum tax I worry about is worldwide. Obama might say that everyone in the world should pay their fair share. No matter where you live you should be paying 30% or whatever on your income. By colluding governments can get together and refrain from competing on taxes. This way you can’t vote with your feet to get away.
Obama has said that state taxes are different. People can leave the state. He has said that corporate taxes are different. Corporations can leave the country. Not income taxes though. People can’t leave. Of course they can but the barrier is high. The liberal dream to be able to take the money from the rich in a way they can’t get away and have to pay.
Jim: Thank you for your profound comment. We do, indeed, hope that our Canadian lawsuit and parallel efforts elsewhere will do nothing less than change the world for the benefit of all people. The world must be rid, once and for all, of the scourge that is “citizenship-based taxation”.
Today Canada’s parliament opened feeling solemn and contemplative to how the laws they pass can affect the world’s view of them, and in words similar to this, stressed the importance of passing good, well thought out laws.
Parliament is now hearing from Canadians how the FATCA is not a good, well thought out law. Thank you ADCS, and more importantly, Gwen and Ginny.
Jim from Poland,
Thank you so very much for adding your ADCS donation into your yearly budget and explaining to us the reason why you do this. This IS a man-made disaster that we all need to stand up for no matter where we reside,
You are so, so correct and another who lends your wisdom here.
@Bubblebustin – I do not condone any sort of violence and I do not expect that this society would condone such yet it MUST start to sink in to even the thickest heads on earth that bad laws beget bad results. The law abiding (and in this I do NOT include the crazy shooter in yesterday’s horror in Ottawa) WANT to obey JUST laws. There comes a time when Laws cross the bar of being JUST Laws and become UNJUST ones. It is at that time that Political Rulers (they are supposed to be Representatives btw) cross the Rubicon and become Tyrants in their attitudes and behavior. That is why we MUST honour the fundamental purpose of a Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms … to circumscribe exactly where the powers of the Political Rulers and the Civil Service end … to define the point at which the behavior of the Political Directorate and the Bureaucracy become ultra vires the Constitution and thus null and void.
I couldn’t agree more. We must be vigilant to those who would have us trust their word that they want to preserve our society as it is, then set about changing everything as we know it.
@Nervousinvestor
“I do not condone any sort of violence”
I don’t condone violence either but I become, well, nervous whenever I hear politicians refer to anyone as a “terrorist”. When I hear the word “terrorist”, I tend to see that as code for “we’re going to use the actions of this one–or small group of–nuts as an excuse to restrict everyone’s civil liberties”. That causes me to be nervous regardless of whether I do or do not personally consider that “terrorist” is a good word to describe the villain in question.
@Dash1729 – You are right of course. And remember the old adage from the 1970s .. one man’s Terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter …. terms used frequently in the African context.
What was that other “revolutionary” statement ….so beloved of President Obama and his Chicago gang …. “Never let a Crisis go to waste” ? Use that crisis and the fear in the populace to get past things that the people would never otherwise condone.
Here’s an excellent CBC article that has relevance to our government’s state of affairs as far as balancing freedom against security, and the difficulties law enforcement thankfully have in overcoming the laws that protect our freedom. A conversation I was involved in yesterday on Facebook revealed that there are a frightening number of Canadians who’d willingly surrender everyone else’s privacy to some degree in order to “get those terrorists”. There’s so far some hope that they can’t make those decisions for all of us:
“We luckily don’t live in an authoritarian regime with a government that can monitor all our actions and movements and communications. It needs to have good grounds to interfere in individual lives. So that means every now and then, somebody, somewhere, somehow may slip through the cracks.”
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/ottawa-shooting-the-challenge-of-stopping-homegrown-attacks-1.2809671
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Across the pond in the EU, I ran into three persons who did not have a clue……..
Conversation starts off about accent then do you know about F-A-T-C-A.
First comment is to research online. Then I explain the problems, penalties, account closures…..
Blood rushed out of persons faces…..it was like being at a doctor and getting bad news….
Also ran into a fourth person who kind of starts talking in code about the problem as they knew….
The good news is that word is getting out but I am no longer sure of the OMG process.
I relinquished almost a decade ago, it was very intentional and done when not many did it. Afterwards I never carried my past on my shoulder and always avoided talking about America as I thought no good would come from that. So I am a pre-FATCA relinquisher…….
What are the post FATCA OMG stages of grief and in what order?
I would think first shock and denial as some of the persons denied their country would do this to them, then I assume panic, then I assume downright anger and lets go burn a flag on the fourth of July followed by screw them bastards.
Can anyone enlighten me?
@ George “OMG stages of grief”
Yes you have it about right:
1) shock
2) denial or disbelief (in my case that the US would do this to me, a country I have had nothing to do with for almost 50 years and left as a child),
3) fear panic upon discovering the tax obligations and the associated bankrupting fines.
4) frustration in explaining to family members who believe that the US will “do the right thing” because so many people are involved (at least in Canada), and now
5) anger and fear alternate. US laws were changed and no effort was made to inform me, I acted in good faith, they did not. The US has made it difficult to renounce and is probably in violation of its own laws. Doing nothing elicits fear and so does the thought of entering the US tax system with no assurances that you will be treated fairly.
This takes a hold of your life in a way that only people in this situation can understand. I chose not to claim (meaning it was taken away when I came to Canada) this citizenship as required by the US law we were told about, many years ago. That should be recognized as grounds for renounciation. I don’t care if they changed the law because people complained about losing their citizenship, what about those of us that did not want it?
It seems most of us are having real problems with the “acceptance” part of the grieving process – thank goodness!
You comment that family members are sure America will do the right thing. For me, that’s what has been lost in America. That used to be a quintessential American value – and it is still talked about endlessly, often nostalgically. But there has been a sustained and conscience decision to avoid doing the right thing as long as doing the wrong thing makes more money – I’m not talking about Wall Street, I’m talking about the department of the Treasury.
We have problems with the acceptance part of the grieving process, for sure. For one reason, it would make us different persons than who we perceived ourselves to be all our lifetimes. We are standing up for values and rights — OURS and all other so-called *US Persons* in the countries where their law is supposed to be for us as well as all others, no matter national origin.
People often talk about an America of the past when it was run honorably. I’m curious if the people who have this opinion could be specific–I mean actual dates–as to what time periods they mean when they say America was run more honorably than it is now. This claim has been made more than once here and it often sounds more like warm, fuzzy nostalgia than something that is justified by the facts.
Just to name a few:
In the 2000’s there was the invasion of Iraq seemingly unjustified by the events of 9/11.
In the 1970’s there was Watergate.
In the 1960’s there was Vietnam and also brutal government crackdowns on those who opposed Vietnam.
Up to the 1960’s there was racial segregation and up to the 1860’s there was slavery.
In the 1950’s there was McCarthyism.
In the 1940’s there were the Japanese-American internment camps and the only use ever of nuclear weapons in anger.
The nostalgic view of America’s past is, I feel, largely unjustified. The true picture is one of a constitution expressing noble values set against a government which has always had a tendency to behave in a corrupt manner if not kept honest by citizens (and, often, Canadians) fighting aggressively for their rights.
I should have added a sixth step: Resentment. I don’t think “Acceptance” will ever be a part of this grief process.