[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 50 (Wednesday, March 25, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1901-S1956]
From the Congressional Record Online |through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TEXT OF AMENDMENTS
SA 621. Mr. WICKER submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by
him to the concurrent resolution S. Con. Res. 11, setting forth the
congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year
2016 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal
years 2017 through 2025; which was ordered to lie on the table; as
follows:
At the appropriate place, insert the following:
SEC. ___. DEFICIT-NEUTRAL RESERVE FUND TO REPEAL THE FOREIGN
ACCOUNT TAX COMPLIANCE ACT.
The Chairman of the Committee on the Budget of the Senate
may revise the allocations of a committee or committees,
aggregates, and other appropriate levels in this resolution
for one or more bills, joint resolutions, amendments,
amendments between the Houses, motions, or conference reports
relating to fairness of United States taxpayers, which may
include the repeal of the provisions commonly known as the
Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, by the amounts provided
in such legislation for that purpose, provided that such
legislation would not increase the deficit over either the
period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2020 or the
period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2025.
Hat Tip to Tim
This is NOT a repeal of FATCA but an amendment to the Budget Resolution. If this passes, what it essentially does, to the best of my understanding, is to instruct those putting together the budget for out-years to figure in repeal of FATCA. That essentially means coming up with about $800M per year, which is what it was essentially scored at. Chicken feed by Federal budget standards.
If this passes, it would really help set the stage for FATCA’s repeal, if not in this Congress, maybe the next one.
I’m making some checks on the status of this. Stay tuned, dudes and dudettes.
@Jim
I changed the title as soon as I saw your response.
Thanks for keeping us informed on this!
To all Brockers…it’s time to keep up the pressure…and submit a letter to the Senate Finance Committee for RBT and FATCA repeal by the April 15th deadline…mine goes out this weekend.
So FATCA was actually budgeted to recoup only $800M per year. That’s versus its justification, which was the estimated $70B-$100B-$150B annual offshore “lost” tax revenue.
Even if I’m mixing apples and oranges a bit, imagine what this magnitude of discrepancy says about the whole train wreck.
@Shovel
Yes, even by its own criteria, FATCA is a total flop. Aside from the astronomical compliance costs, it doesn’t cover *corporate* accounts, a huge proportion of the money supposedly stashed offshore. Also, re the billionaire “fat cats,” it won’t catch even one unless he’s really, really stupid. FATCA doesn’t cover real estate, gems, bullion, fine art, and maybe some other “hard assets.” Even a minimally intelligent gen-yoo-wine tax evader with substantial resources could put them into non-covered assets.
@Jim @Shovel
By their own estimates, doesn’t this means there’s as much as another +$149B hiding somewhere else? Even you piggy bank’s not safe!
CSPAN is currently reporting that voting on these amendments could go on past midnight Washington, DC time. Currently it is just after 12 noon DC time.
These congressmen were there when this became a problem even though the act was old, nobody cared about it until the Obama congress in two years ruined the country.
@bb & JJ
Piggy banks would be non-covered assets. It’s all the accidentals, etc. who have the non-covered asses.
Jim Jatras, thanks for the splaining…….
there is a methodical process to getting anything passed in Washington.
A placeholder is step one……
Bravo on this first step.
This link also from Tim:
…says Urge Your Senators to Vote Against
but you can just AS EASILY Call your senators TODAY and urge them to vote YES on Amendment SA 621 to the Senate budget bill.
The main switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.
You can also click here for a directory of Senate phone numbers: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
good
hey Jim–while you’re at it, how goes your FOIA request that you made ages ago? the administration still stonewalling you?
Related:
House Ways and Means Committee Passes Bills to Reform IRS
http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/tax-practice/house-ways-means-committee-passes-bills-reform-irs-74108-1.html
H.R. 1058, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights Act of 2015, would enshrine the Taxpayer Bill of Rights,
Lets not forget #10: Right to a Fair and Just Tax System. So about fairness not just ‘the law is the law.’ I wanted to get a few more rights in there such as: Right to Reasonable Compliance cost for tax owed.
H.R. 1026, the Taxpayer Knowledge of IRS Investigations Act, would provide taxpayers with information on whether they were being investigated by the IRS and whether the investigation was open or closed.
H.R. 1105, the Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015, which would eliminate the estate tax
Re: repeal of FATCA. It could go the same way enacted: removal attached to an unrelated bill, undebated, and just passed.
JC, and the removal could be by making some teeny tiny amendment like changing or substituting one word or like deleting a comma……
Question is, if FATCA is indeed repealed, what happens to those intergovernmental agreements? Canada, UK, etc., are still bound by law to collect American bank information until each of those 120+ IGAs are individually repealed.
Trying not to get too hopeful here. After all, how many full-throttled attempts have there been to repeal the Affordable Care Act? Democrats and others may see all these moves as political stunts. I place slightly more hope on the Senate Finance Committee. My husband and I have already sent in our letters, as well as some scathing letters to Elizabeth Warren.
Barbara – my letter will be sent into the Senate Finance Committee by Monday…hope many more do as we are and take this positive action.
Thank you for posting this glimmer of hope, Tricia, and thank you, Jim Jatras for your constant vigilance on our behalf. I will watch this development with keen interest. My letter to the SFC is in the package being sent by Tricia and Stephen, et al.
I’m confused. It appears that the Senate passed the budget in the middle of the night, after a long day of tabling amendments. But most amendments, including the FATCA one, apparently never made it to the floor, and thus were excluded. I can only guess that at 3:00 in the morning, Mitch McConnell was tired and called for a final vote without considering further amendments so he could go home and sleep.
You can see it here:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-concurrent-resolution/11/amendments?pageSize=100&page=4
Amendment 621 is listed (without description) under “Senate Amendment Submitted”, but not under “Senate Amendment Proposed”. Note that 622, right above it, was approved by voice vote. Amendments were not tabled in numerical order.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-concurrent-resolution/11/amendments?pageSize=100&page=5
now on page 5
Up until 8:00PM most observers expected that ALL amendments would be voted on but after that hour the Dems started to slow walk the voting.
The Wicker amendment didn’t make it in or even get voted on.
The FATCA-Mythspinning machine leaps into action:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/237110-endorsing-tax-evasion
March 27, 2015, 03:00 pm
‘Endorsing tax evasion’
By Rebecca J. Wilkins
“..The U.S. loses an estimated $150 billion in tax revenue each year to tax haven abuse – a revenue shortfall that honest taxpayers have to make up. About $40-70 billion of that revenue loss is from individual tax evasion…”
.”To oppose FATCA is to oppose transparency and cooperation and take the United States out of its leadership role in combating tax evasion. The United States Congress is faced with a choice. It can stand for openness, transparency, and honesty – or for tax evasion, secret bank accounts, and subterfuge.
In the geeky tax world, we often refer to FATCA as FATCATS. It helps us remember the acronym. The FATCATS are the ones with those offshore bank accounts. Will members of Congress protect them? Or will they stand with American people?
Wilkins is the executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.”
Same old bullshit numbers pulled out of someone’s, er, pocket. And this deliberate lie makes me sick; “The United States Congress is faced with a choice. It can stand for openness, transparency, and honesty – or for tax evasion, secret bank accounts, and subterfuge.”
Right, that’s why the US Treasury signed IGAs that they have no authority to enter into, and why US banks do not and will not be providing EQUIVALENT RECIPROCAL information to other countries on all accounts held in the US. And why the US hasn’t and won’t sign on to the OECD CRS. No mention of the dirty secret of US extraterritorial taxation based on who your parent was or the geographic location where your mother gave birth…..
Let us remember those US resident homelanders who I am sure want a more transparent system – as long as they have the inside track on jiggling the rules for their own benefit:
ex. Take the Pritzker family trusts:
“……President Barack Obama’s nomination today of Chicago businesswoman and Forbes 400 member Penny Pritzker to be the Secretary of Commerce, her family’s legendary use of hundreds of offshore trusts to protect its wealth from taxes and the prying eyes of the Internal Revenue Service…..”……
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2013/05/02/pritzker-family-baggage-tax-saving-offshore-trusts/
‘Pritzker Trust Dodges Illinois State Income Tax’
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2014/01/02/pritzker-trust-dodges-illinois-state-income-tax/
Plenty more material where that came from.
Yet, local legal everyday accounts in Canada – held where we live, to hold post tax wages, pay bills, save for education, disability, retirement, etc. are to be reported to the FINANCIAL CRIMES ENFORCEMENT NETWORK, because the US treats the education savings of a child in Canada with a US born parent as so much more likely to be ‘offshore’ assets belonging to a tax evader than say, the US resident owners of the family trusts like those of the current Commerce Secretary.