cross posted from ADCSovereignty page
UPDATE September 28, 2015
CANADA
from Tricia Moon:
As we wait (and wait and wait) I thought I would tell you of a small thing that happened to me that might make a few people feel better…
I opened a (new) bank account last Friday with a different branch of BNS than the one where I still have quite a few accts. After about 3 mins, poof! Not asked “Are you or have you ever been an American citizen/U.S. “Person?” Not asked to fill out a W8 or W9.
I asked the gentleman why and he said as an existing customer, they already have done the KYC/AML procedures etc.I mentioned that I renounced, had a CLN etc and we had a very nice discussion.
However, it was interesting that he didn’t pick up that the bank could have been in error by not asking considering I very much was US for the majority of my time as their customer. Meaning lots of others who haven’t renounced/have no CLN may well not have to worry…
Many duals will obviously be able to evade detection -even with new accounts- if their banks have similar policies. He also told me that it is illegal for a bank to photocopy any identification documents. And never to let anyone take ID to do that.
So perhaps, way back when, even if one DID use a a non-US passport with a US birthplace, I can’t really imagine the birthplace being written down-just the passport number (of course, for years prior to FATCA).
September 27, 2015
from Dr. Stephen Kish:
Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Republican Overseas (RO), who are mounting their own lawsuit against FATCA and the IGAs. I met, for the first time in person, Dani Küttel, who has been posting on this site and who is one of the plaintiffs. The U.S. Government lawyers, as expected, are attempting to contest “standing” of all of the plaintiffs arguing that our wounds are self-inflicted. The decision on the RO injunction (September 28-29) will be made at about the same time as that for our request for a stay (September 28?) and their attorney will advise me as soon as the Federal Court has ruled in their case.
September 26, 2015
from Dr. Stephen Kish:
“LITIGATION UPDATE: We instructed the Arvay-Gruber team to take legal steps to prevent the handover and obtain a stay related to the summary trial appeal. It is likely now (but situation still fluid) that the Court will hear our motion for a stay. There will be no oral arguments and the court will consider our arguments based on the written submission only. The Government of Canada will also file written materials. I will release the motion when I am able to do so.
The “live feed” below will pick up every tweet that uses the hashtag#StopFatca. Please help get this message out-join our Tweet brigade (another version of Brock SWAT) now at 56! Canadians have 1 day to continue pressuring the government prior to transmission on Sept 29. Other Model 1 IGA countries have 2 days prior to transmission on Sept 30. Please advise of any countries who have received an extension from the September 30, 2015 deadline. Also please advise if you know of any governments who have notified the IRS that they want the extension.
Every US Person abroad needs to put the same pressure on their own governments TO STOP THE EXCHANGES FROM TAKING PLACE as all Model 1 IGA’s require turnover of information by September 30. Each government has TO ACTUALLY REQUEST THIS EXTENSION FROM THE IRS, so members need to take responsibility for making sure their respective tax authority/government does so.
WORLD
The Treasury Department is up to something. new CAAs signed
The titles of both agreements include the words “to improve International Tax Compliance and to Implement FATCA. I am afraid to imagine what that actually means.
A competent authority arrangement is a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and its treaty partners to clarify or interpret provisions of an existing tax treaty, such as the ones used to justify the intergovernmental agreements, or IGAs, under FATCA
“The signing of these Competent Authority Arrangements marks another significant milestone in the international effort to gain proper reporting of offshore accounts and income,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in a statement. “Together in partnership with other tax authorities, we are demonstrating how far we have come in the fight against offshore tax evasion.”
ATO hands over bank details to US Internal Revenue Service
THE AUSTRALIAN SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 12:00AM
The Australian Taxation Office has handed the US Internal Revenue Service details of more than 30,000 bank accounts containing more than $5 billion in the first transfer of information under America’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.The ATO said that in return for supplying the FATCA data, the IRS will give it information about Australians with US accounts that will be used to root out undeclared offshore income.Its figures imply the accounts, revealed to the IRS in the first tranche of data, have an average balance of more than $160,000.
Note: Link not guaranteed due to paywall
Jamaica reportedly will not take advantage of the delay in transmitting information to the IRS. (Waiting for source)
A Liechtenstein court that ordered a temporary injunction was to give a decision on September 18 (last Friday). We are looking for information on the decision. (hattip to Mary Margreiter)
CANADA
Making this a political issue in Canada & linking to October 19, 2015 election
Important Swing Ridings – Strategic Voting Necessary to Prevent CPC being elected
Riding: DELTA
The Honorable Kerry-Lynne Findlay
Minister of National Revenue (CRA) & defendant in Summary Trial
If you are voting strategically & your riding is Delta, pls vote Liberal
All Candidates Meeting
Wednesday, September 30, 7-9 pm North Delta Secondary School
11447 82nd Avenue Delta, BC V4C 5J6 MAP
This page has contact numbers, links to riding boundaries, other candidates running etc.
Riding: EGLINTON LAWRENCE
The Honorable Joe Oliver
Minister of Finance
If you are voting strategically & your riding is Eglinton Lawrence, pls vote Liberal
Get your T-Shirt HERE.
RESOURCES TO USE/SHARE
STRATEGIC VOTING:
Strategic Voting.com
AND Vote Together
FOR EMAIL:
ADCS PR pdf file: ADCS PR 19SEP15 pdf
ADCS PR png file: ADCS PR 19SEP15 png
ADCS letter to Minister Findlay: adcs_reqminfind_b_sep_21_2015-1
Elizabeth May GPC letter to PMSH pdf:fatca-lettertoprimeminister_0
Nathan Cullen NDP letter to Ministers Findlay & Oliver: 2015-09-21 Letter – Cullen to CRA-Fin re FATCA-1
John Weston CPC to Minister Findlay:Weston to MNR
For TWITTER:
Please use this hashtag: #StopFatca.
Please use RT on every Tweet
NB: If you RT someone, please put #StopFatca in the reply space above the tweet you’re retweeting. Otherwise, your RTs won’t show up in the feed and we want to see every single Tweet!
You can use this shortened link in order to get more info, hastags, etc into the tweet: http://bit.ly/1WaBY1i
Since it is a Twitter assault, may I suggest that you manageflitter.com use to identify your followers with the highest influence, and contact them to RT. Let the assault begin!
CRA
@KerryLynneFindl Minister of National Revenue
@AndrewTreusch Commissioner of Revenue
@JohnOssowski Deputy Commissioner of the CRA
@OTO_Canada Office of the Taxpayers Ombudsman
Ministry of Finance & Standing Committee
@MinJoeOliver Minister joe.oliver@parl.gc.ca 613-369-3710 TO office:Tel 416-781-5583 Fax: 416-781-5586
@AndrewSaxton1 Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance andrew.saxtion@parl.gc.ca
@KevinASorenson K.Sorenson@fin.gc.ca Minister of State (Finance)
@TimSargent Associate Deputy Minister
Members of Standing Committee for Finance are HERE .
If you already have followers who are not expats but may be sympathetic, share other political issues, please send them the tweet directly with the RT; don’t assume they will see it in their feed just because they follow you. Creating a network with other users is important in order to utilyze social media to the max.
Tweet to individuals
If you don’t want to write your own, you can copy/paste these (already tweeted so 140 characters or less)
CDN govt 2 turn over 1million+ of ur fellow CDNs 2 IRS
Let them know u won’t tolerate this #StopFatca RT
#StopFatca Stop PMSH from allowing IRS 2 manage
CDN banks! Protect CDNs’ privacy! Tell CDN govt NO!Pls RT
Financial info of 1million fellow CDNs 2 b given 2 IRS
bc PMSH wants 2! Violates sovereignty & privacy RT #StopFatca
Tweet to Govt/Mp’s etc:
No need 4 CDN govt 2 transfer CDNs’info due 2 IRS delay
Protect CDN sovereignty & privacy rights #StopFatca RT
Govt of CAD:IRS delays transfer of financial info-don’t betray 1million+ CDNS
Will remember on 10/19 #StopFatca RT
Govt of CAD:IRS delays transfer of financial info-don’t betray 1million+ CDNS
Will remember on 10/19 #StopFatca RT
Experienced users who can add a 2nd hashtag as well as using #StopFatca and RT
please also use the following #s as they will link to the network of other CDNs involved in the anti-harper govt re-election
#elxn42 #elxn2015 #ABC2015 #cdnpoli #GoHarperGo #harperman #StopHarper #Heavesteve2015
For FACEBOOK:
You can share from any of these groups:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/citizenshiptaxation/
https://www.facebook.com/ADCSovereignty/
https://www.facebook.com/ADSCanadienne/
https://www.facebook.com/The-Isaac-Brock-Society-341446319218930/timeline/
https://www.facebook.com/USExpatsCanada/
Or from these pages:
“https://www.facebook.com/CitizenshipTaxation/
https://www.facebook.com/AccidentalAmericans/
Other pages that also have this post/information:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmericanExpatriates/permalink/516231728542904/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AARO.Open.Forum/permalink/10150558700159950/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/accidental.americans/permalink/121884294833336/
The word is getting out, and dots connected:
http://www.canadiansecuritieslaw.com/2015/09/articles/international-developments/collection-and-automatic-disclosure-of-information-from-canadian-financial-institutions-is-legally-authorized-and-not-inconsistent-with-canada-us-tax-treaty/
How many of these Australian accounts are for people living in USA?
Does Australian require birth country for bank account?
Lower value accounts
8.21 Generally, a lower value account is a preexisting individual account with a balance or value that is less than US$1,000,000 on June 30, 2014, and which is not eligible for a threshold exemption. Such an account remains a lower value account until it exceeds US$1,000,000 on December 31, 2015, or on December 31 of any subsequent year.
Electronic record searches and lower value accounts
8.22 A financial institution must review its electronically searchable data for any of the following U.S. indicia:
identification of the account holder as a U.S. resident or a U.S. citizen;
an unambiguous indication of a U.S. place of birth;
a current U.S. mailing or residence address (including a P.O. Box);
a current U.S. telephone number;
standing instructions to transfer funds to an account maintained in the U.S. (regardless of who holds the account);
a current effective power of attorney or signatory authority granted to a person with a U.S. address; and
an “in-care-of” address in the U.S. that is the sole address the financial institution has on file for the account holder.
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/nhncdrprtng/gdnc-eng.html#Toc390079642
Does Australia have this rule?
8.28 In the context of an electronic record search, an “unambiguous indication of a U.S. place of birth” must include identification of the U.S. as the country of birth. Identification of a city and/or a state as the place of birth, without identification of the country of birth as the U.S., is not considered to be unambiguous.
“George says
September 23, 2015 at 5:29 pm
@Calgary…….we need to dissect that Australian turn over and look at it like a junior staff member on capital hill in Washington.
30,000 accounts and $5 billion dollars.
Per wikipedia, we know “At the 2006 Australian Census, 71,718 Australian residents declared that they were American-born. ”
So less than half got ratted out. Uncle Sam will not like that and will demand deeper more intensive scrutiny. ”
You obviously did not consider people with multi accounts and Aussie living in USA with old bank account in Australia.
@all
I WONDER how many of these accounts disclosed by Australia are Australian Corporate, Charity, Trust, Deceased Person’s Estate or Government accounts on which a US Person is one of the signatories (THOUGH NOT OWNER). Or where the account belongs to an Australian born person whose spouse happens to be defined as a US Person ?
@all
I WONDER how many accounts have NOT been disclosed due to small size ? or absence of indicia on the electronic record ?
Trying to interpret the Australian numbers is like trying to solve an equation with too few knowns. Impossible.
An interesting twist is those who file FBARs but whose banks do not know they are US persons. This is my case (except for one bank that found me and closed my account — my very own gotcha moment and the reason I decided to start filing again after 15 years). I imagine they (FinCEN?) will compare FBAR with FATCA data received (then again they are so overwhelmed and incompetent that they may even screw this up), and then wonder why they didn’t get this from the FFI or Foreign Government. I wonder how long this will take to percolate back through the various intermediaries and back to the bank.
@New, you have not figured out my thesis when I did the very quick numbers. This was an exercise as a junior staffer on capital hill do.
The thesis is they have not turned over enough Juden in the Ghetto. Too many Juden hiding in Australia. The numbers do NOT add up to the Schemer staff number who worked for Carl Levin.
There are over 70,000 persons in Australia with a US Place of Birth, that is known!!! PLUS who knows how many Australians who are naturalised USA Citizens or have US Parentage!!
But America only got 30,000 reports????????????????????
What does that mean?
1. Australia has maybe 50,000 USC children running around
2. American Expats are hiding themselves from THE LAW.
3. The FIs are not doing their job and must be punished until they find das geld.
Remember, overseas US tax evasion costs $100 billion a year we know that is “true” because Levin and Schumer say so.
There were only around 10,000 tax returns received from Australia, yet 30,000 accounts showed an average balance of $5 Billion or $166,000 per account.
This batch alone in the eyes of a junior staffer can be mined for a Billion Dollars in offshore tax evasion penalties.
@All
When does the IRS hand information to other countries as per the IGAs?
Do we have a date at this stage?
I’m confused. What is this about Sept. 29? Have we heard for sure that the Canadian government did not report us yesterday? If information is coming through on the tweets that us non-tweeters haven’t seen could you please explain that in the update? Thanks!
Regarding Australia, I am sick to hear this news. We will be informing the UN that their lack of intervention so far has already resulted in the death of financial privacy for at least 30,000 people. I believe that the FATCA law itself equates the word “account” with “person”. I do not believe that it matters whether the “person” holds one account or 20. Someone please correct me if I am wrong on this.
@Fred
“Trying to interpret the Australian numbers is like trying to solve an equation with too few knowns. Impossible.”
Simply not enough information, (all we can conclude is that US persons have accounts in Australia 😉
@George
Some of those accounts belong to US residents.
Muzzled,
We have now received information that the private banking data will not be transmitted by CRA earlier than September 29, 2015.
THIS GIVES US MORE TIME and means that, as John Richardson says, everyone has to keep the pressure on.
PLEASE keep sending letters emails tweets etc.
That’s great news that the CRA aren’t eager beavers like the Australians are.
@Bubbles…”That’s great news that the CRA aren’t eager beavers like the Australians are.”
You mean “eager kangaroos”……..LOL LOL LOL
@Stephen Kish; Thats incredible news, it has made my day and I am on the other side of the pond.
Has the Government been given a template of an excuse?
Basically that they are defendants in a charter/constitutional lawsuit, that in the first summary trial covering non-charter issues that Judge considered this an important issue and rendered no comment on the charter merits, that the Government is working diligently having 100,000 files to go through in order to get a quick trial date and is doing all it can to get to trial so the data can be lawfully handed over on solid ground after the trial.
Why do I ask? I think civil servents may be thinking they may need to have technical IT issue to get an excuse/hall pass.
@Bubbles…”@George Some of those accounts belong to US residents.”
That just makes it all worse for the sheep in OZ.
Why? The one known is that there are 70,000 plus persons in OZ with a US place of birth.
All of them should have been ferreted out.
The banks will be told to dig deeper.
I really don’t understand why the Canadian Government didn’t use the lawsuit to decide, unilaterally, to freeze the IGA (before the US offered a delay). It could have told the US that it would not act because of the legal action. Doing so would have been popular, a smart political decision before an election, and would have dared the US to retaliate. I bet the US does not have the nerves to go beyond bullying. They would not go and widely sanction FFIs with withholding.
@Fred
The banks and potential economic impact on Canada. Except for a very few, the politicians never cared about us; it was only about/for the banks.
@George
Australians should be “hopping” mad!
@Fred, I have quickly come around to your thinking. The 30% penalty under no circumstance would have been used against a major US trading partner. Had it come into the realm of possibility, Goldmann Sachs would have done some analysis and then it would have stopped.
Its one thing for the USA to piss off and sanction Russia because it only hurts the EU, but sanctions against Canada would have been met with counter sanctions.
In regards to the present state of things, Harper and the Cons amazingly have the ability to gain lots of lost ground on this subject. The USA has given them be default an exit allowing Harper and the Cons in the middle of an election to restate EXACTLY what the Judge stated, this is an issue of great importance that must be settled by the Courts in Canada, in the interim we are protecting all Canadians!
@Tricia Moore, having been in political circles in my other life I do not think they were focused on the banks. This was big dog wannabe politics. I am not sure if during the debate they really thought Canadian Citizens like Gwenn and Ginny would be affected as I think US Treasury likely told them they are NOT after people like them!!
What I think this was all about was wanting to get photo opps at the White House and rides on Air Force One. Being around powerful people is very seductive…….
I’m glad to hear nothing was transmitted yesterday. Is there any indication that this is because the Canadian government is working on getting the 2016 extension? Maybe they don’t know who to ask and how. I hope they are not playing a 5 day psyop game with us with the intention of pressing SEND anyway. It won’t make us go away; we’ll just get madder. I can do more e-mails to follow-up on the ones I sent before but the best I got back from that round was office staff saying they had passed my e-mail on to their boss. The rest were meaningless auto replies and no replies at all. Using the info from Brock regarding the Rankin, Cullen and May letters I sent those 3 thank you e-mails. I could use some advise on who to target.
@EmBee
Not only will pushing “send” make us madder, it will make the lawsuit strong I would think. It’s hard for the government to argue they “had no choice”, that is unless for some reason it’s disqualified itself from being able to take advantage of the delay (like the CRA already informing the IRS that Canada’s “good to go” on the data exchange). But then maybe the IRS is so messed up that they’d allow Canada the delay for any reason – basically on a wink and a nod.
Oops, there’s that word “exchange” again. Now talk about a wink and a nod that one is.
The CRA will not transmit data before Sept 29, 2015. That gives us six days to keep the pressure on.
@Bubbles, the “litigation excuse” is an excellent reason and the summary trial was “proof” the Government is taking actions to get the legal issues out of the way so data can be transmitted on solid legal ground.
So they give that reason and what is the USA going to do?
Say yes/OK, then Harper has closed off an election issue sticking up for Canada! Hey, the cons stood up and said they “negotiated” a better deal for Canada on the IGA which is the same deal everybody got.
Say NO, then Harper can press SEND and say he tried which is a win for Harper and the Cons.
Unfortunately politically, Harper if he wants can play all the cards and come out the winner without having to think much.
If he had balls, and the USA said NO, he could literally dare the Americans, wrap himself in the Charter and the maple leaf and win big. The USA is NOT, repeat NOT, going to impose any 30% on Canada. The USA made it through the cold war without triggerring disaster so they are not going to spook Goldman Sachs.
Does anyone know if the banks had to send information on accounts that were closed several years ago. Or did they only send info on current accounts? Basically, if someone close their account in 2014 were their info still sent? How far back did they have to go?
Thanks