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
———————————————————————————————–
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
Passes 13.5 million gross page views (12.9 + 0.6)… that certainly seems to be accelerating to me. Exhilarating too.
Pingback: U.S. law professor: “FFIs turned out to be Treasury’s best lobbyists for #FATCA” – @Cdnbankers | Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty
@all
You are welcome to use my “fatcats” http://s27.postimg.org/osshgt783/fatcats.jpg to support our cause. I can see them on a greeting card, a Christmas card, a poster, a letter heading, an email. Don’t hesitate to change the caption if you want.
@ cornofthecob
Thanks for the jpg. One of those mean, low-down, unpatriotic, ungrateful fatcats bears an amazing resemblance to what I call our neighbourhood therapy cat. She makes her rounds seeking laps and offering licks and purrs in return — most appreciated, especially by me. Anyway next time she comes around for a housecall I will check to see if she has a “Made in the USA” tattoo hidden beneath her soft, shiny fur coat. I do hope she was born free because otherwise I’d be accused of aiding and abetting a fatcat fugitive.
@badger
I hear you!
I think they must be rather surprised, all things considered. A morsel we can all enjoy a little bit more everyday. Though any actual date remains to be confirmed, we grow ever closer to seeing them in court.
@cornoffthecob: Well done! Thanks. Loved the fat cats!
With the election on Tuesday, I was wondering of it would be appropriate for ADCS and IBS to prepare an open letter to key Senators and Congresscritters as to what expats expect in regards to FATCA.
As they say, call in the marker time?
Solely to get the juices flowing and thinking what is possible, along the lines;
1.) Defund FATCA implimentation fully or for enforcement against non-residents.
2.) Amend FATCA to exclude non-residents.
3.) Strip the Secretary of FBAR authority and index the reporting and exempt whole countries and exempt non-resident expats.
4.) Scrap FATCA is favor of GATCA
5.) Amend 8 US Code on loss of nationality and add in such things like voluntarily voting in a foreign election with the intention to relinquish to make it EASIER for accidentals to relinquish!!
6.) Eliminate the renunciation fee or make it equal to the fee to either renew a passport or the fee to gain US Citizenship.
7.) US Senate hearings that the IGAs violated the advice and consent of the Senate.
@ George Good points, As Calgary411 has suggested, there should be something in the US code to allow for people who are non-residents of the US but born on US soil or born to US parents elsewhere to CLAIM the US citizenship, if they want it, when they are adults. They would have to be fully informed of the tax obligations before making this claim. We need to remove the forced “citizen at birth” claim on us. This was part of INA 350, before Oct 1978 except that it had a time limit between the years of 22 and 25 or the citizenship was lost. The whole thing was repealed but had they considered that people might not want the US citizenship they could have left it open to claim if you wanted it, this is how I initially thought it worked. This would eliminate the US citizen = tax slave situation as it would be a choice.
@HEARTSICK, A simple solution would rely upon a term/phrase misused by many Brockers.
Brockers mistakenly think that children are registered at Consulates which is not true, they are simply getting a Report of Birth Abroad.
Citizenship should be by Registration as practiced by much of the world!!!
You may have an entitlement to citizenship but it would not be effective until Registration!!
@ George That sounds similar to what the Irish do. I can claim Irish citizenship because my grandfather was Irish, they don’t consider me Irish until I make that claim however.
Stephen Kish’s question:
“I often ask what IRS non-compliant Canadians will do when FATCA turns them over to the IRS, and have yet to receive a straight answer. I have always wondered how many will be resisters (a handful only?).”
My answer:
I will be a resister like Gwen but I will be utterly devastated if there turns out to be only a handful of us. That’s too sad to even contemplate because it’s been the belief that I am not alone that has kept me going.
count me in as a resister
i think there are many of us that will be considered this if the day comes
I also fear it may just a handful of resisters.
Where are they? Just one loonie from each “U.S. person” in Canada would give us the funds we need with enough to take us all the way to the Supreme Court.
If people do not care enough to donate with all the media coverage we had, I fear they will not resist.
Please, if you are reading this and haven’t donated, please join our Resistance. Donate now.
count me in on both counts.
Stephen, your question…
I’ll say it again, as I’ve said before, I am a resister on behalf of my son and all others like him (and of course their families), some without a voice, who by reason of lack of ‘requisite mental capacity’ are ENTRAPPED into a *supposed* US citizenship as defined by the USA, with all the consequences and ongoing costs of compliance of US tax and reporting. Their likely only taxes owed would be related to items not addressed in the Canada/U.S. Tax Treaty, such as the Canadian Registered Disability Savings Plan, RDSP — contributed to by All Canadian taxpayers so that Canadian taxpayer money transferred to the US IRS. I will continue to be a resister until there is some common sense change in U.S. tax law and the Department of State reverses its stance:
*Someone without ‘requisite mental capacity’ (in addition to those with a developmental disability) would also include those with age-related dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease, as well as persons with a severe brain injury resulting from such as a stroke or some kind of accident.
Too sad to contemplate if we each go our own way, knuckling under to US extra-territorial threats or going underground, instead of joining others in a strong voice to make sure the Canadian litigation goes ahead. How much are your full rights in your own country worth to you and perhaps your “Accidental American” children? It is the only way that those the US and our Conservative government define as *US citizens who happen to reside in Canada* will regain the same rights as every other Canadian — no matter their or their parents’ national origin.
@Calgary. You represent far more and it took me awhile to see that
You represent ALL children trapped in us citizenship who can not get out even with parents consent
You represent all older people who can not get out because a consulate thinks they do not understand because of age
You represent all young persons just starting off who do not have the money to buy their freedom papers
You carol have taken on that heavy burden I rest easy you are bearing that burden which I do with great thanks
Blaze the situation is so absurd most people can not grasp what’s been done to them by either Canada or the usa
But I am seeing the trickle of water now seeping out of the dam on my side of the world
I’m afraid I’m not tech savvy and have perhaps an irrational fear of Twitter, Facebook etc. I assume someone is putting out regular Twitter feeds about all this. Twitter seems to catch more attention then anything for individuals AND media.
Republicans may get elected today to enough US Senate seats to win control. If this happens, they will likely pass legislation to repeal FATCA and this will get ugly because there is more publicity to a veto override than to the normal legislation. President Obama won’t want an the embarrassing surge in renunciations to be more publicized, and the White House will seek some half-way compromise, which of course is not good enough. However, it will help some, and time will tell what the legislation will say.
@ Tom Alciere I know more about US politics than I ever knew but it is still not very much. I understand that after the election the Republicans may control the US Senate and already has control of the House of Representatives. However I have heard that the Republicans will not make a move until they elect a president. Since the President has veto power, does this impair the ability of the Republicans to make this right?
@heartsick, ” Since the President has veto power, does this impair the ability of the Republicans to make this right?”
But the President does not have power of the purse.
The Senate control is the closing of the circle to do something.
Pressure needs to be put on US Senators to simply not fund the enforcement of FATCA this would end the madness. One line buried in one Bill and there is no money to lawfully adminster FATCA.
The Senate under GOP control can demand hearings on the IGA agreements and declare they are not lawful. Once the Senate determines this has been a violation of Senate power the simplest step is to defund.
The Senate/House could work with the President to ask the Sec Treasury to bring the FBAR limits in line with inflation which he has the authority to do and also to exempt classes of people and Countries such as those that already have a tax treaty and have robust AML standards.
There is a LOT that can be done and IBS needs to start propsing ideas on the front page and we need to lobby Senators for thise that are citizens but otherwise in canada to ask our Canadian Reps to lobby the US.
@ George Thanks for the clarifications. For the first time in my life I will be interested in the US elections.
@heartsick, I am no water carrier for the GOP but on this issue they are the only game in town.
Defunding is a simple process. Each year there is a huge budget bill that is passed allocating money to all the departments.
Some money is allocated to very minute specific projects such as a road that can only be built passing from point A to point B which is pork politics to benefit a specific party.
But in a budget there can be a single line restriction on spending money. For instance a single sentence prohibiting the expenditure of any funding for the enforcement of FATCA would mean that no government employee could work on it, no computer systems purchased to enforce it, no travel expenses for civil servents to co-ordinate and no electricity to be purchased to run the computers.
But I think we would be best served by Senate hearings determining the power of the Senate was violated would be our best option and I think Sen Mike Lee discussed that.
@ Stephen KIsh
RE: “I often ask what IRS non-compliant Canadians will do when FATCA turns them over to the IRS, but have yet to receive a straight answer. I have always wondered how many will be resisters (a handful only?).”
I suspect they will respond as if they received via post an astonishing large and complicated utility bill for a property they never rented (or even heard of) in a foreign country they visited years ago. They will either ignore the bill – or question the bill and seek advice as to its collect-ability.
Based on a combination published stats and first-person accounts, only a small % of so-called “US persons who are Canadian citizens residing in Canada” have been filing US taxes and reporting forms on their Canadian-only earnings and financial accounts.
@ Cheryl
You can watch the daily FATCA twitter action by saving this link (used by compliance condor twits and many anti-FATCA tweeties):
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23fatca
I don’t do twitter (or facebook either) but I like following what others are doing there, even if it means getting used to that twitter shorthand.
Here’s the ADCS twitter link:
https://twitter.com/ADCSovereignty
And the Brock facebook link:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Isaac-Brock-Society/341446319218930
And of course the Brock youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/user/IsaacBrockSociety
We are many and we get our message out in many ways.