UPDATE SEPTEMBER 19, 2015: SEE ALSO DISCLAIMER AND LITIGATION UPDATES.
[This post, which began in May and having over 1000 revisions and 2000 comments, is being retired from service and updates. It lived through the success of reaching a total of $500,000 in donations from our kind, dear supporters who had little money to give, the hope and disappointment with the summary trial decision, and the certainty that we are now finally moving on to the Charter trial.]
CANADIAN CHARTER TRIAL UPDATE:
— We have instructed the Arvay team to prepare for the “Constitutional-Charter” trial. This means that our focus now, as it was in the beginning of our lawsuit, is on the Charter trial.
Unless there is a new expense in the future that we have not anticipated, the monies from your donations will be sufficient to take us through the “constitutional-charter” trial in Federal Court. However, to pay other legal bills we will need additional donations from our supporters, and a request for donations will appear on another post soon.
OUR LITIGATION HISTORY:
One year ago, on August 11, 2014, 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.
Because of a Government delay we initiated a “summary trial”, using a portion of the arguments, which offered the possibility of preventing private banking information from being turned over to the IRS before September 30, 2015. See Alliance’s Claims, our Alliance blog, and AUGUST 4-5 SUMMARY TRIAL FILINGS in LITIGATION UPDATES.
All this courtroom drama and all we get is one piece of coverage? Anyway thank you, Neal Hall at Metro News but I wish some other reporters somewhere else would make mention too. Somedays you just feel like Rodney Dangerfield (“I don’t get no respect!”).
EmBee et al
The difficulty was, we did not know until we arrived on Tuesday morning, whether we were looking at an adjournment or if not, exactly what. Press Release sent Tuesday night. 🙁
@ Tricia Moon
Yes that adjournment ploy worked for the defendants in that respect. (sigh)
@EmBee @TriciaMoon
Yes although the press interest still seems, sadly, not to be all that high because even so they still had a full day after the press release was made before the trial ended. And the press definitely didn’t act on that release at least not in significant numbers.
Wondering something here…
If I remember correctly, Justice Martineau rejected the government’s effort to strike portions of Prof Christians testimony saying they didn’t have enough time to properly respond. The judge did however say that he was reserving the right to strike it himself at a later time if he so chooses. I assume that should the judge end up striking that testimony, any arguments based on that testimony during the trial would be struck too. For that reason, I would think that the judge reserving the right to strike that particular testimony sort of renders it useless, no?
@all
the press will probably not really come alive so to speak, until the horror stories begin.
example much press in late summer 2011 due to OVDI 2011 to end plus the reports out about the horrific treatment and penalties from OVDP
@Bubblebustin
I have these two things in my notes:
1) “so liberal as not to be restricted at all’
2)”must be as liberal as the Tax Treaty affords..to protection of… Canadians entitled to”
TY, Trish. Awesome meeting you!
EmBee: That was a good question about the audio quality of the audio transcript. Frankly, it was very difficult to hear some of what was said in the courtroom particularly on the second day. Neither the judge or the lawyers worried much about speaking into the microphones although from time to time Justice Martineau did lean into the mic and we could hear him much better. That being said, it may be that the microphones are set up specifically for the recording and not so much as a public address system for the spectators.
Not being able to hear well actually served to keep us on the edge of our seats just out of sheer concentration. I was still totally jet-lagged from my vacation and I never even came close to dozing off. It was very exciting to realize that our case was finally being heard …. and listened to! …. by someone who is in a position to do something for us.
My guess is that the microphones have a narrow field as to not pick up the conversations between the lawyers seated near them. Perhaps a recording might be better. And you can always turn the volume up at home.
Same to ya Bubbles!
After the first break on Wednesday I did go up and ask the lady who was the court reporter(?)
if she could turn it up and she offered to mention to the judge to speak more into the mic.
@bubblebustin
I believe there were several motions–by both sides–to strike expert testimony from the other side for various reasons. Justice Martineau reserved judgment on all such motions. The trickiest such motion was the one related to the second affidavit from Prof Christians as the gov’t was using that one as a basis for attempting to adjourn the trial–on grounds they didn’t have enough time to respond. I had the impression that at a certain point Justice Martineau lost patience with that argument, seemingly agreeing with our side that the gov’t didn’t make good use of the time they did have, despite nearly unlimited resources.
Although Justice Martineau reserved judgment on all other motions (except the one to adjourn) I believe he expected the sides to argue assuming the challenged expert testimony remained on the record. As the possibility remains that all testimony will remain on the record, neither side should assume that anything will be struck and should have argued on that basis.
@NorthernShrike: You can see my updates about CCLA at Maple Sandbox. The comments section show my continued attempts to bring in CCLA.
… post of my communications with CCLA: http://maplesandbox.ca/2015/update-from-ccla-on-fatca-lawsuit/
Schubert predicted over six months ago that CCLA would not be involved.
http://maplesandbox.ca/2015/why-i-am-not-renewing-my-membership-to-canadian-civil-liberties-association/
I will alert Sunanya Pillay (CCLA’s Executive Director) of the latest developments.
Thanks for your insight Dash1729. This is all new to me. It also didn’t help that I missed the first morning. Its fascinating, but I wouldn’t want to do it (law) for a living.
@The Mom
Excellent link to the case’s recorded entries. I see the judge has received another 181 pages.
I neglected to mention that quite a few of the journalists’ responses were automatic, indicating they were away on vacation.
I don’t know where to place this announcement, so please forgive the multiple posts.
At long last I can share with you the Complete Collection of Senate Finance Committee Submissions, available at this website:
http://fatca.eu.pn
This is a free hosting site, hence it can be slow to load some of the larger documents.
I downloaded and curated the entire set of submissions to both the Individual and International Tax Working Groups, saved only those having to do with CBT/FATCA/FBARs, deleted duplicates, and renamed files appropriately (some people used their names to submit either articles or letters from organizations; those files were renamed to reflect the actual content).
I put this together in a site which enables the viewer to read each and every submission without having to separately download and open each one. This is meant to be more than simply an archive. I’m hoping that others will use this as a resource to help in our fights against US tax tyranny. This is an easy and ergonomic way to encourage others to read through the hundreds of intelligent, heartfelt letters sent to the Senate Finance Committee. Don’t let the effort of all those writers be in vain! Encourage others to read this!
I thought this would take me a full day to do. Instead it consumed me for the past two weeks. I was moved to tears many times upon reading these heartfelt letters more than once, and moved to tears some more by coding issues. I’m no programmer, but the technical issues I encountered were almost as convoluted and enraging as trying to make sense of US tax forms (I said “almost”). There are still some problems. In some browsers, you have to negotiate several scrollbars, like curtain strings, to read down a page. But I can’t do any more to fix it. If you encounter any problems in viewing this site, or find any problems or broken links, please leave a response in this thread.
Hope y’all find this useful. Please pass it along.
@Barbara – Nice one. Even better than the original as alphabetical.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2015/08/07/a-look-at-information-sharing-agreements-between-the-irs-and-states/?ss=taxes
Thank you Tricia … but if one scrolls down at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2015/08/07/a-look-at-information-sharing-agreements-between-the-irs-and-states/?ss=taxes
to the next article captioned “New York Tries To Tax Income From Nonresident Lawyer Based On Bar License” one can see how dangerous these Tax people are.
I am sending in another emergency donation as I seethe legal bill is still not paid.Our family has reached out own verdict on the court proceedings. We feel this was money well spent, every last dime. With the government getting away with murder of the taxpayer by removing the Court Challenges act, we now know what needs to be done in Canada. People need to have their rights and they need to be supported on an equal basis in court. Canada will go to Hell if people lose their rights against a government which is clearly the case in Canada. However, that is a whole other issue. Congratulations to all Canadians and everyone from all other countries in the world who stood shoulder to shoulder with Gwen, Ginny, my wife and all other victims here in Canada. Without everyones help, this would have never happened.
We need to pay this bill and I will be donating here as long as it takes to restore human rights…..
@Native Canadian, “Our family has reached out own verdict on the court proceedings. We feel this was money well spent, ”
My friend I could not agree more, I will join you in making an added emergency donation.
The first FATCA domino to fall shall be Canada, the rest will follow.
The Government Lawyers had the gaul to ask for compensation………
It is they that should be paying compensation…..
There is a reason for these desperate measures to expand America’s right to tax anyone anywhere with the most tenuous tie or far-fetched nexus.
The US is – by any reasonable measure – at the edge of a financial abyss.
Federal government debt is a jaw-dropping $18+ trillion
Add to that the total debt of individual states, many of whom carry unsustainable pension and entitlement obligations. That’s another $5+ trillion.
But business and personal debt really piles it on …
From a ZeroHedge 2014 article (edited to shorten):
“Americans are nearly 60 TRILLION dollars in debt! When you total up all forms of debt including federal and states government debt, business debt, mortgage debt and consumer debt, we are 59.4 trillion dollars in debt.
“That is an amount of money so large that it is difficult to describe it with words. If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you had spent $80 million dollars every single day since then, you STILL would NOT have spent 59.4 trillion dollars by now. Most of this debt has been accumulated in recent decades. I40 years ago, total debt in America was sitting at about $2.2 trillion dollars. “
@ Native Canadian
The utter disregard the IGA has for the status of First Nations Canadians is another trump card for the ADCS plaintiffs if this reaches the Constitutional case level at Supreme Court of Canada.
The people who drafted the IGA law were too short-sighted to anticipate that, probably because they were too busy marching in lockstep to their American masters instructions in drafting the enabling legislation.
Joe Arvay has a lot of expertise in representing First Nation’s and Aboriginal claims – this should be another argument in his case.
RE: Wondering’s comment: “The US is – by any reasonable measure – at the edge of a financial abyss.”
Here is another development demonstrating the US is continuing to tighten the noose. I posted this yesterday under YOUR EXPERIENCES IN BANKING but post it here as well as things seem to continue to get worse due to extraterritorial US laws.
It gets more complicated every day. See in Bloomberg from Premiere International Tax Library, August 7, 2015:
http://www.bna.com/fatca-versus-igas-n17179934450/
“A FATCA issue that has recently bubbled up relates to the differing approach to FATCA compliance by the U.S. Treasury and the governments of some countries, notably, the United Kingdom and Canada, with respect to the self-certification requirements for new individual account openings under an Intergovernmental Agreement.”
Canadian guidance implementing FATCA states, ” It provides in Section 9.15 that if the self-certification is not provided by the account holder, the account is to be treated as a reportable account. The Canadian Guidance, however, goes further and emphatically states in Section 9.16 that the IGA in no way requires or encourages a Canadian financial institution to refuse to open an account or otherwise deny service.”
“Against that backdrop, the IRS, in its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), recently added Question 10 to the section dealing with General Compliance. The question posed is whether, if a Reporting Model 1 FFI or a Reporting Model 2 FFI, in applying the due diligence procedures in Section III(B) of Annex 1 of the IGA, cannot obtain the self-certification upon the opening of new individual accounts, can the financial institution, nevertheless, open the account and treat it as a U.S. reportable account? The IRS responds “no,” stating that, pursuant to Section III(B) of Annex 1 of the IGA, the financial institution must obtain the self-certification at account opening, failing which the financial institution cannot open the account.”
So now the IRS is dictating who can or cannot open a bank account in a foreign country including Canada.
@Stephen Kish and all…RE: Coastal Community Credit Union
We’ve been having a discussion about credit unions under the post, YOUR EXPERIENCES BANKING. When I contacted CCCU quite some time back they indicated Local Client Based exemption status. However, when I called today the client service rep stated that CCCU is fully FATCA compliant.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about FATCA even among FI staff and managers. I guess all we can do at this point is check this out for ourselves and do what we are comfortable with, if we can find an FI we trust at all. Vancity CU posts it’s LCB FATCA status on line. An organization which does this seems to be the best alternative for now.