Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

76 thoughts on “For the Senate Finance Committee’s attention and study — common sense suggestions for tax reform to remedy the FATCA discrimination of *US-defined US Persons Who Reside Abroad*”

  1. Schubert, I love your story and the way you got your CLN. Who of us had ever been told decades ago anything about a CLN? I have never heard until today you tell of your dad’s support of your actions / he was I’m sure very proud of you.

    Also family harassment — after my indictment, the local FBI goon visited my father (who worked for the US post office) and threatened him with loss of his job and pension if he didn’t tell my address in Canada and report me if I ever showed up on the doorstep. My father got into a roaring argument with the guy (who had been his high-school classmate), comparing the FBI to the KGB and the Gestapo. And my Dad had up until that time always been a Republican and had served in the US armed forces in WWII. (He then telephoned me, reported this to me, and ordered me never to come to his funeral when he died, because “sure as hell those bastards will be waiting for you behind the grave stones.”

    In those times, it was absolutely meant as a threat / punishment when we were told in Calgary that if we became Canadian citizens (which my then-husband and I did in 1975), we would thereby be losing our US citizenship. Nobody from the US informed me any different than what I had been told in that conversation (and I guess I missed it all in the media). I agree with your dad’s views — and yours. I’m very pleased the Carter amnesty came before your dad’s death so you could indeed attend his funeral!

    PS: I’ll always be grateful for our early conversations and your advice and encouragement in my naïve days of doing very wrong everything that could be done wrong!

  2. Obtaining a CLN imposes threats of confiscation and detainment at the border if one is deemed a covered expatriate, or tax-dodger. Fortunately for draft resisters, none were relegated to second-class citizenship in Canada for not having a CLN, as many USP’s are today.

  3. Back in the day, US CBT was virtually unknown to anyone so by definition very few would have left because of that. Before the dawn of the digital age it was very difficult to even learn about CBT, let alone enforce it. (Seriously, what person would have wasted their time boning up on US tax law after escaping to Canada? Can you imagine a newly arrived draft-dodger dutifully filing a US tax return?)

    Remember the old Vietnam era “America-love it or leave it” so loved by red-necks? I think the present day confluence of CBT and FATCA has now become the modern day equivalent, i.e. pay your “fair share” or renounce.

  5. @Schubert: I remember thinking when I first heard about Carter’s amnesty that I wouldn’t be applying for amnesty from them; the US should be applying for amnesty from me. The threats received by my family and friends from the FBI did nothing but strengthen my resolve.

    Unlike some of my friends who went for the program and spent (sometimes substantial) time being “processed” (i.e. jailed in a military prison), I gave the whole thing a pass. A few years later I got word from my US source that somehow I had been granted an “administrative” discharge. That was the end of my US military “career”, and at that point I was off the wanted list and free to travel to the US. I never did figure out how that happened. I can only speculate that they had so many dodger/deserter cases they were trying to clean up the mess because it looked so bad. Nowadays they just lie about the number of renunciations.

    I still have that document. It is surely just as precious as a CLN. You are the only person I have ever heard of who got their CLN without a visit to a US consulate.

  6. @Maz: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all get a CLN without a visit to a U.S. Consulate?!?

    When Ladybug posted the letters her husband received followed by his CLN in the mail (from I think the late 1970s), it twigged something in the back of my mind. I remembered coming home twice from work to letters from the U.S. Consulate with that letter. I thought “What’s this for? I already know I’m not a U.S. citizen.” I thought the letters letters were meaningless and threw them away.

    I believe there is a strong possibility those were followed up with a CLN sent by registered mail to my address in Vancouver. However, by then I had moved to Ontario and I don`t believe they would have been forwarded to me.

    I wrote to the Vancouver Consulate and asked if they still have copies. They told me they could not release the information under Freedom of Information Act. I replied that made no sense because it was personal information about me.

    I then wrote the State Department in Washington two and a half years ago. They claim they are still looking,but keep delaying the “expected completion date.“ In one of my calls, they pointed out these records are over 40 years old. I told them I also applied for records from the same time period from the Canadian government and had them in less than three weeks. There was silence on the other end of the line.

    I am not optimistic I will receive anything from them. In fact, I do not even believe they are looking. If they do find anything, I expect they will not send it to me.

    The punishment now is to withhold CLNs as much as they can– unlike decades ago when the punishment was to issue them.

    That, my friends,is exactly why I do not trust them and will not set foot in a U.S. Consulate. I know two other draft dodgers (not on Brock or Sandbox) who to this day are terrified of the thought of going to a U.S. Consulate.

    Poor Shadow Raider. I fear we have hijacked the post about his superb submission with our Vietnam era memories.

  7. @Maz57 There are a couple of other former draft-dodgers who got CLNs by mail around the same time, who I know of, but yes it is pretty rare. Most didn’t feel any need to write to the State Department as I did (and I deliberately waited about eight months after my actual relinquishing act, to time the letter for July 4, 1976 for their bicentennial celebrations), and as we know there never was and still isn’t any legal requirement to notify them except for actual renunciation (i.e., swearing an oath of renunciation) — only now you won’t get a CLN from them without a face-to-face interview, no matter which of the seven relinquishing acts you perform. The “processing” for deserters was pretty inconsistent, I gather … I know someone who finally turned himself in at the border a few years ago, spent a weekend in a military stockade, and then was released with a dishonourable discharge and now crosses the border regularly with no problem. But he went for a couple of decades fearful of crossing the border, though as with most of us his family came up to Canada to visit periodically so he had no real need or desire to go south — at least until parents and older relatives started getting terminal illnesses.

    @Lynne. I remember postage stamps at 2 cents and twice-daily home deliveries, once on Saturdays. Boy have those times changed … I also remember my Dad practicing speed-sorting of cards with addresses into slots in a cardboard box at home, to practice for a test for a promotion (he was what in Canada Post would be called an “inside worker” and not a “letter carrier”). I don’t think anyone except at the very local (and very small-town) level hand-sorts mail these days, it’s all mechanized pretty much I think, now that almost everyone uses zip or postal codes. He never made it to postmaster, but he was the local “superintendent of mail” which I think was 2IC after the postmaster.

  8. My husband had not been indicted, or even received a draft notice, when we escaped. We were concerned that since he was no longer a student, and had refused a job working on a defense dept. contract for his stated reason of his opposition to the Vietnam war, he would soon be summoned. Besides the draft issue, we were both vehemently opposed to the war and in general to the overall U.S. foreign and domestic policy.
    Although he never received a draft notice, the FBI visited our parents, probably shortly after receiving our 1040 forms from Canada, demanding that they cooperate with pressuring us to return to the U.S. , . They threatened my father with the loss of his security status, and they told my mother and in-laws that they would apply similar pressure on their employers.
    Apparently they each told the FBI to go away, and nothing happened. There were just too many ciminals hiding out in Canada performing un-American activities to target everyone’s family. My husband heard from a friend who stayed behind that at a family picnic, his uncle stated “I have two sons I’ll be proud to sacrifice for my country”, at which point the friend’s grandmother strode over and hit him – hard.
    We didn’t trust the Carter amnesty, but after about a year, and after receiving our Canadian citizenship, my husband did travel back for his mother’s funeral with no complications. After that, we did travel back, using our drivers’ licenses (no passport needed) for rare family visits.

    Before that, I didn’t want to travel even on my own, even though I obviously was not a draft dodger. We’d heard of cases where the wife of a resister, visiting her family in the U.S., was detained as an “accomplice” and charged a huge fine to be able to return to Canada. Since the FBI obviously knew enough about me to threaten my family, I didn’t want to take a chance.

    by the way, Schubert1975, besides giving their American employees information about their U.S. tax obligations, my husband’s employer also asked their American employees eligible for the draft to keep secret their (U.S. based) employer’s name. He wasn’t allowed to tell his or my family, or the reason for the secrecy, although it was easy to guess.

    Now the U.S. government expects expats or overseas Americans to trust them on the FATCA issue, IRS leniency, etc. They’re still a very large, ugly spider enticing a very naive fly.

  9. Schubert: It was a village Post Office. One full time Post Master (first my mother, then my stepfather), one part-time employee (my grandmother).

    No home delivery. Letters were sorted into mail boxes.

    The Post Office was the community hub where everyone met and shared the village news of the day. Old folks met for coffee and hung out in the lobby every morning until the first mail arrived. Kids stopped on the way home from school to visit my Mom and Gram (and later my stepfather and Gram.) Then at the end of the day, people stopped on their way home from work after the second mail truck arrived to get the afternoon mail and learn what the kids and old people were up to.

    Now I`m an old person and there is no Post Office to hang out in. Social media has replaced it with hidden identities sharing news in a global village

    Those were the days, my friends…

  10. Queenston, Schubert1975, Pacifica777 –

    You have just conspired to provide a stellar Brockish example of transmuting what your head imagines into generalized specious factoid on the basis of no solid evidence. Thus are legends born. Counterexample to supposed danger of apprehendable Vietnam-era US person entering Canadian US consulate to renounce citizenship can be found in Montrealer Jack Todd’s memoir The Taste of Metal : a Deserter’s Story (2001). The essence of science is disproof of unsustainable hypothesis. QED. Brock can be so redolent of witless aether and phlogiston. Warning to all: beware the chaff and the guff.

  11. You fail to mention how your sensible recommendations will:

    1. Increase jobs in USA
    2. Increase revenue to Treasury
    3. Reduce the tax burden of small US businesses (which was the intention of the HIRE Act)
    4. Drive growth, innovation or other benefits in the U.S.

    Without pointing these out, I do not see why your recommendations should be adopted by those with the power to do so.

    Why?
    – Career officials (Dollarcrats) can thrive from a complex & burdensome tax code
    – Elected Officials won’t get any significant electoral benefit

  13. @Polly First, an apology to Shadow Raider for hijacking this thread with discussion of the draft dodgers. Sometimes it seems Americans will never get out of Vietnam–and perhaps they won’t as long as boomers are alive.

    Your simple question raised an important issue. Where are they? How can we find them?

    It is not clear exactly how many draft dodgers or deserters immigrated to Canada during the Vietnam War. Wikipedia says:

    Canadian immigration statistics show that 20,000 to 30,000 draft-eligible American men came to Canada as immigrants during the Vietnam era. The BBC stated that “as many as 60,000 young American men dodged the draft.”[10] Estimates of the total number of American citizens who moved to Canada due to their opposition to the war range from 50,000 to 125,000[11] This exodus was “the largest politically motivated migration from the United States since the United Empire Loyalists moved north to oppose the American Revolution.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War#Draft_dodgers

    Immigration during that era was not limited to draft dodgers. Many more immigrated due to opposition to American policies. Some of us came for education and remained. I came for education for a year. I moved back to the U.S. briefly, but quickly realized I simply didn’t fit anymore, so I returned to Canada.

    Some immigrated to Canada after serving their time in Vietnam. Some immigrated to Canada even though their numbers placed them very low on the draft lottery.

    Others immigrated after completing undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. degrees. I remember reading that era was the largest brain drain in U.S. history.

    Here is an article with a shocking statistic I had not read before. Slightly more young women than young men moved to Canada during the Vietnam era.

    http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/observer/story.html?id=df918abb-1f78-469a-9a02-97f1844ef46a

    I had always thought I was an anomaly.There were, of course, young women who came with husbands or boyfriends. There were also women who came on their own or who married Canadian men so maybe the stat does make sense.

    Looking for an answer to your question, I discovered there is a recently published book, Welcome to Resisterville.

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/welcome-to-resisterville-tracks-american-draft-dodgers-of-west-kootenay-1.2981850

    It reports on the alternate lifestyle that developed in one B.C. community:

    “This was a really different set of values that they represented. They were American, so that was one initial concern, but they were also young and they had entirely different lifestyles,” said author Kathleen Rodgers, a University of Ottawa sociology professor.

    “They dressed differently. They did their gardening in the nude. They swam in the nude. They were eating tofu and were vegetarian, so they were certainly different from the rest of the people that lived in the region at the time.”

    I didn’t garden in the nude (actually I didn’t garden at all.) I didn’t eat tofu. I do have memories of Vancouver’s nude Wreck Beach (Is it still there?)

    There has also been a documentary End of the Road on another B.C. Community with a large number of war resisters.
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/draft-dodgers-of-lund-b-c-subject-of-upcoming-documentary-1.2962312

    The reports are that about half of the draft dodgers remained in Canada after Carter Amnesty. (I thought it was much higher). Add to that the numbers who immigrated for other reasons and we have a huge group who resisted the U.S. decades ago. We need to find them and get them in this fight now.

    The Vancouver Sun reported this about Brian Bailey:

    And his vitriol towards the current U.S. government is as unchecked as his long grey beard. “The only way I can describe my reaction to the American government is that I want to throw up whenever I think of it.”

    He said that in 2006 under Bush rule, but Brian, don’t throw up. Fight back!

    Where are Brian and all the others? How do we find them? Is anyone willing to take this on as a project?

    “Where have all the young men (and women) gone?. Long time passing…

  15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War — has sections on American War Resisters in Canada, with subheadings: Draft Dodgers, Deserters, including:

    Jim Green – Vancouver city councillor and mayoral candidate
    Michael Wolfson – former assistant chief statistician at Statistics Canada[9]
    Wayne Robinson – the father of Svend Robinson, former Member of Parliament
    Eric Nagler – Children’s entertainer on The Elephant Show.
    Mike Fisher – A founding member of Heart – a popular rock/pop band[27]
    Jesse Winchester Singer-songwriter.
    Jeffry House – Lawyer
    Bill King – musician and organizer of Toronto’s Beaches Jazz Festival[28]
    Michael Klein – physician, member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, spouse of Bonnie Sherr Klein, father of Naomi Klein and Seth Klein[9][25]
    Michael Hendricks[25]

    Starting in 1965, Canada became a choice haven for American draft dodgers and deserters. Because they were not formally classified as refugees but were admitted as immigrants, there is no official estimate of how many draft dodgers and deserters were admitted to Canada during the Vietnam War. One informed estimate puts their number between 30,000 and 40,000.[8] Whether or not this estimate is accurate, the fact remains that emigration from the United States was high as long as America was involved militarily in the war and maintained compulsory military service; in 1971 and 1972 Canada received more immigrants from the United States than from any other country.[8]

    Interestingly, it also says:

    Missing-text controversy

    In February 2009, text on how both draft dodgers and resisters of the Vietnam War were ultimately allowed to stay in Canada suddenly vanished from the [ Government of Canada’s] Citizenship and Immigration [web]site.”[24][32]

    Originally, the Government of Canada website had contained the following statements:

    …”Starting in 1965, Canada became a choice haven for American draft resisters and deserters, …Although some of these transplanted Americans returned home after the Vietnam War, most of them put down roots in Canada, making up the largest, best-educated group this country had ever received.”[24]

    The above statement (now gone from the website) was part of an extensive online chapter on draft resisters and deserters from the Vietnam war, which was found in the larger online document,”Forging Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, 1900–1977″[8] It was originally posted on the Government of Canada website in the year 2000, when the Liberal Party of Canada, led by Jean Chrétien, was in power and responsible for the content of that website. But “in 2009, the Harper government [took] a much dimmer view of dozens of U.S. soldiers who’ve come north after refusing to serve in the invasion of Iraq. Some had already been deported to face military jail terms ranging from about six to 15 months.”[24]

    The removal from the Citizenship and Immigration website occurred in the same month that its multi-party counterpart, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration was debating that issue: On February 12, 2009, that multi-party committee passed, for the second time, a non-binding motion reaffirming Parliament’s earlier (June 2008) vote which recommended that the government let Iraq War resisters stay in Canada.[33] A month and a half later, on March 30, 2009, the House of Commons again voted in a non-binding motion 129 to 125 in favour of the committee’s recommendation.[34][35]

  16. usxcanada: My husband, and I also, to a lesser degree, were definitely Brockish many years ago, but I don’t think you were speaking about people who were faculty members or otherwise associated with Brock University, a fine university in St. Catharines (end of commercial).

    You’re right, of course, that some comments here and in other web sites, media, and on the street, are based on unsubstantiated rumors or speculation. Unless they’re presented as documented fact, however, they should be read as opinion, comments, personal insights into possible motivations for behavior.,

    When I described personal experiences of my parents and in-laws being visited by the FBI I was not relating what my head imagined. I also heard accounts of intimidation and interrogation by U.S. agents at border by war resistors in personal conversations. I suppose they may have lied, but I had no reason to believe that. Fear of entering U.S. embassies was based upon their status as U.S. territory, and reports in newsletters and other media of embassy staff holding, intimidating, and threatening draft dodgers who entered, Whether or not all of those reports were accurate is something we can research now from a distance of 40-50 years, but these fears, justified or not, influenced the actions of people who left the U,S. at that time. Accounts from family, friends, and personal acquaintances are not factoids made up from what my head imagined. I suppose that I might have been conked on the head in 1968, dreamed everything between then and now, and have the delusion that my dreams and nightmares actually happened, but my husband, children, and grandchildren are evidence that something happened during those years to get me from where I was then to where I am now.

    I’m not sure how examining the accuracy of certain reports, or questioning the justification for fear-based actions taken in the late 60s through the mid 70s, helps Brockers or others discuss the role of CBT motivating renunciations. Comments referring to the Vietnam era highlight the unknown number of Americans who shed their citizenship and became Canadians then for reasons other than America’s CBT. Just as some comments here stating that CBT has been the major cause of renunciations are not factoids made up from the imagination, neither are comments explaining that people may have been afraid to formally renounce at an embassy.

  17. @Calgary I noticed that too especially the information that was removed from the Government of Canada website. I’m glad Wikipedia has it.

    @usxcanada like Queenston said, looking at a U.S. Consulate today may be very different than a draft dodger or deserter entering it in 1969 or 1970. It is from that experience that some today will not enter a Consulate.

    I do not have that concern about going to a Consulate. However, my experience in 1973 and another in 2004 taught me they cannot be trusted. I will not give them my name and address to pass on to IRS. I have no idea what they would do with it now or in the future, but I personally will not take the chance based on past present issues.

    The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.

    The U.S. Consulate’s past behaviour tells me everything I personally need to know in making my personal decision. I understand why others may make a different decision.

  18. @Shadow Raider. Excellent submission, especially in the technical aspects and how easy it would make it all happen.

    I am thinking that perhaps we need another additional approach more along the lines of thinking about the reasons for them not to repeal FATCA/CBT.

    We have heard this thinking: they are concerned about revenue neutral impacts. We would not want the argument framed along those lines. We would want the argument along the lines that FATCA and CBT must be repealed as their impacts on the 7+ million overseas US persons are contra the principles of the Constitution, the desires of the Founding Fathers, and the notion of ‘Liberty and justice for all.’ That the ‘presumption of innocence’ must apply to all Americans whether they live within the United States or in another country. That it is not American, to double tax, require excessive and obtuse compliance, and require excessive compliance penalties when they as a group receive $0 in US government services such as food stamps, unemployment assistance, roads etc.

    Another argument they throw up is tax cheats, mostly US resident. Once again we may talk about the discrimination against US persons overseas and the un American nature of burdening them all, for no benefit in return as long as they live overseas.

    Shadow Raider, apologies for just this simple comment when you have such a substantial and researched submission. My submission delved more into the unjust aspects of it all: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/fatca-and-australia/comment-page-1/#comment-5583560 . Different people different approaches, all with the same aim.

  19. @Shadow Raider and @JC :

    great submission and great additional thoughts from JC. I believe we need to SEX IT UP. Make it more attractive for the politicians to actually discuss.

    I would bring up the issue of illegal immigrants who often don’t pay any taxes (IRS would have more time to deal with them). I would bring up some numbers showing how much would the tax code get simplified and emphasize that expats will continue pay U.S. taxes from whatever income generated in the U.S.

    Moreover, as JC alluded, we need to make sure that any proposal will only promise to get more tax money collected..

  20. @GCHolder1970 To suggest that any proposal to remove CBT/FATCA will bring in more money is counter intuitive and perhaps a too Herculean task. In the mind of Homelanders there is the $150 billion (unsupported) a year in tax evasion, and in the background the $8.7 billion FATCA is supposed to bring in over 10 years.

    To remove FATCA and CBT should promote Americans to go overseas to promote trade with America. More money and jobs should come from that. Yet we would need some high caliber economics think tank to put out some numbers.

    I think I had some spice in my submission, however, a single page harder hitting, warren Buffet digestible (he always likes single page proposals), is another perhaps better way to go.

  21. Queenston & Blaze –

    Attesting to experiences of harassment and/or paranoia is one thing. Supposing – in absence of any evidence except contradictory evidence – that any US person was ever put in peril by standing on presumptive “US soil” inside a Canadian consulate is a different thing. Emotion loves conflation. Bust the myths, don’t perpetuate them.

  22. Republicans Overseas just posted their submission to the Senate Finance Committee on the RO Facebook page. It is brilliant. I’m quite pleased that they filled the obvious gap in the whole argument, as to why FATCA and CBT actually cost the US Treasury money. Together with statements such as Shadow Raider’s, it’s hard to imagine any defense of FATCA and CBT.

    If only Republican elected officials were as intelligent, eloquent and logical as this:

    https://www.facebook.com/republicansoverseas/posts/371670443016757

  24. Michael DeSombre is the the new Elizabeth Warren. This reads like something she would have written, had she not decided to stab us in the back.

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