As a child I heard my dad use this expression , “Everyone and his brother”–to say that a large amount of people will be at a certain store at a certain hour, so we were going to go at a different time.
I had to relinquish my US citizenship in 2011. I have told my sisters. One of my sisters is politically active. Neither give a rat’s tush about what has happened to me. Both are democrats. My brother doesn’t give a damn about politics and doesn’t vote. He gives less than a rodent’s hiney about my problems since he not infrequently has his own concerns with the IRS, as do all Homelanders.
Can we be surprised that the Senate Finance committee downplayed the 347 submissions regarding FATCA, most of which came from “US citizens” abroad? If we cannot get our brothers and our sisters to write to their representatives, Congress will dismiss our pleas out of hand. But how do we mobilize the members of our own family. My own experience, and what I’ve heard from others, is that our families care a little about our situation than Barack Obama cares for his own brother living in Kenyan poverty. So how do we mobilize people who think we are crazy or have their own problems and no time to put into lobbying their government on our behalf. I believe it can’t be done–but perhaps others have more empathetic brothers and sisters. I certainly don’t have siblings who empathize with my situation; apparently, neither does George Obama.
Barack Obama’s ‘half-brother discovered in Kenya, living on a dollar a month’
@Polly
Facts and figures have not the power to help Americans realize the damage caused by the government. They will realize the damage but will be led to believe that we are to blame for the damage and few will bother to verify the governments claims.
Just re-savoured the wise words of USCitizenAbroad on this thread. http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2015/07/23/everyone-and-his-brother-if-we-cant-mobilize-our-own-siblings-how-can-we-expect-the-congress-to-care/comment-page-4/#comment-6323438
I won’t quote it because it needs to be taken in entirety.
I need to save it somewhere to read and re-read whenever bogged down in the complexities of this situation.
@Badger
And UScitizenabroad said in 9.) that they don`t care. And they don`t. They would possibly only begin to care if they saw that this was a self-harming law: bad for business and revenue negative in the sense that it was chasing business away. How can one actually PROVE this? With numbers and graphs that are correct and irrefutable? Would one perhaps need some scholars and Ivey League schools to do studies which could prove this? Because certainly nobody is taking the expats seriously. They probably figure that we just don`t want to pay any taxes. That alone must make all of our arguments appear lame and self-serving.
But yeah – I think we have exhausted all the rhetoric. Maybe the law suits can get the point across.
Maybe an entirely different set of circumstances, but the Philippine government recognizes that dual citizenship and the change to residency based taxation go hand in hand, and see the overall value in ‘tapping’ into its non-residents without taxing them. From the Philippines embassy in Canada:
DUAL CITIZENSHIP: What are the benefits? Do we have to pay taxes to the Philippine Government?
Why is the Government giving the vote of Overseas Filipinos so much importance?
Three reasons leap out:
Firstly, Overseas Filipinos constitute an educated voting bloc. Filipinos have to possess a minimum of skill, literacy and education in order to obtain jobs abroad. Moreover, in countries like Canada, not only do Filipinos satisfy the said minimum, an overwhelming majority exceed the standard by a wide margin, being highly educated and highly skilled, with technical, college, university, and post-graduate degrees. Such a bloc ensures votes that are studied, choices that are made after careful scrutiny of who the candidates are, what they stand for, and what they can do for the country and the Filipino people.
Secondly, Overseas Filipinos are relatively financially well-off. Jobs overseas mean good salaries, and in developed countries such as Canada, even a minimum legal wage converts to a substantial amount back home. This translates to financial independence, which in turn guarantees a vote that is free of financial considerations. Allegations of vote buying have become endemic to the electoral system, but the financial independence of Filipinos overseas virtually eliminates them as targets for vote buying. Indeed, it would be very unusual, even improbable, for an income-earning Overseas Filipino to trade his vote for money.
Thirdly, Overseas Filipinos have a strong influence on how decisions are made back home. There are now an estimated 10 million Filipinos overseas. H.E. the Philippine Ambassador to Canada, Jose S. Brillantes, who was recently elected Vice Chairman of the UN Commission on the Protection of Migrant Workers and their Families, estimates that Overseas Filipinos remit approximately US$12 billion to the Philippines annually through official channels (i.e. banks and legit remittance companies). Include unofficial channels (i.e. padala system and questionable remittance businesses), the Ambassador says, and the estimate almost doubles to US$20 billion, or a whopping 1 trillion pesos, which is roughly the annual budget of the entire Government of the Philippines.
Remittances answer for expenditures such as tuition fees and other educational costs, health and hospital bills, marketing and groceries, home improvements and amortizations, clothing needs, as well as luxuries such as cars and surplus purchasing power. As provider of these funds, Overseas Filipinos strongly influence decision-making back home, and the active participation of Overseas Filipinos in the political process would definitely be reflected on the decisions made by the recipients of their bounty. In other words, if they make known and actively campaign for their political choices to the recipients of their endowments, their beneficiaries are likely to follow suit, or at the very least, listen to them and consider their choices.
The vote of Overseas Filipinos thus has enormous potential, especially when the multiplier effect on the votes of their beneficiaries in the Philippines is factored into the equation.”
http://www.philippineembassy.ca/dual-citizenship-what-are-the-benefits-do-we-have-to-pay-taxes-to-the-philippine-government/
@Polly, the FATCAfanatics and CBTcolluders promote false numbers as their modus operandi – they will demand real numbers from their opponents, but they continue to refuse to provide any robust basis for their own assertions. No numbers will ever satisfy the FATCAfanatics because their position is an ideological/political one, and they will never let even the best and most reliable facts stand in their way. Even the GAO reported that no IRS cost analysis has been done for FATCA http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/590142.pdf
Foreign Account Reporting Requirements: IRS Needs to Further Develop Risk, Compliance, and Cost Plans GAO-12-484: Published: Apr 16, 2012. Publicly Released: May 16, 2012 ).
@Mark Twain made it clear that we are not merely ‘collateral damage’ ( http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/10/27/the-real-intent-of-fatca-you-are-not-collateral-damage-you-are-the-target/ ) so no numbers will help us. The US wants whatever it can get from the rest of the globe, at the expense of the rest of the globe. Our home governments signed the IGAs because of US extortion and Financial institution’s conniving behind the scenes to allow them to continue with business as usual relationship with the US financial system. Now governments like that of Canada will go to the wall to rationalize the traitorous deal they made under the US gun because they won’t/can’t admit the truth – that they decided that a portion of their own citizens and residents were expendable for sacrifice to the US Treasury gods, along with the substantial domestic taxpayer revenue thrown away to implement the IGAs as well as the compliance costs the banks will pass along to ALL of us as accountholders.
That is why only legal action will help us.
@Badger
“That is why only legal action will help us”
That seems to be the essence of this whole thread then. There are no words, there are no emotions, there are no arguments, and there are no numbers. There is only legal action.
Not much left but to count down the final days before August 4th and 5th. I take my inspiration from Donald Sutherland’s character Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes: