42 thoughts on “International Conference on *Taxpayer Rights* – Washington, D.C., November 18 – 19, 2015”

1. Will there be any videos released afterwards?

2. >Need TPBR #11 Right to Reasonable Compliance Costs with TPA focus on vast inequity in this regard
   >for US persons overseas.

   Mmmm. Kind of have to keep saying that immigrants face all the same compliance costs.

3. Thanks for posting this important event. Go here and click on each participant’s bio for a link to their abstracts. Prof Christians’ is very good.

   http://www.taxpayerrightsconference.com/agenda/

4. Don – re possible videos and any other questions about the conference,

   http://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/news/register-today-for-the-international-conference-on-taxpayer-rights, has an email link for Questions (below):

   Presentations by government officials, scholars, and practitioners will include:

   • The theory, principles, and sources of authority underlying taxpayer rights;
   • The role of transparency in promoting voluntary compliance;
   • The rights to confidentiality and privacy in an age of transparency;
   • The role of tax tribunals in protecting taxpayer rights;
   • Taxpayer protections and due process in tax assessment and collection;
   • The impact of taxpayer service on compliance;
   • The role of taxpayer advocates, defenders, and ombuds in protecting taxpayer rights and promoting voluntary compliance;
   • The challenges in “operationalizing” taxpayer rights in both mature and developing tax administrations.

   The conference will also include remarks from IRS commissioner John Koskinen, and a keynote presentation by Erich Kirchler, Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at the University of Vienna, on the impact of power and trust on taxpayer compliance behavior.

   Registration is now open! Visit taxpayerrightsconference.com.

   See the full agenda.

   Questions? Email us. 

   ******************
   The National Taxpayer Advocate of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is convening the Inaugural International Conference on Taxpayer Rights at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

   This ground breaking conference will bring together government officials, scholars, and practitioners from many countries to explore how taxpayer rights globally serve as the foundation for effective tax administration.

   Registration closes November 16 close of business. Onsite registration will not be available.

   More information about the conference: http://www.taxpayerrightsconference.com/

   View the National Archives Special Events Map

   Registration Fees
   Conference, if registered on or before October 31, 2015 – $225
   Conference, if registered after October 31, 2015 – $300
   

   Registration includes access to all conference sessions November 18-19, continental breakfast each day, coffee breaks, and a reception on November 18.

5. @Calgary411 Thanks.

6. A conference on taxpayers’ rights in the heart of Mordor. It reminds me that Saudi Arabia presides a human rights panel at the United Nations: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anger-after-saudi-arabia-chosen-to-head-key-un-human-rights-panel-10509716.html

7. About the same, Petros.

   Good luck to Allison Christian’s in her work with other presenters there!

8. My words obviously do not apply to Allison. She is our little hobbit walking stealthily into the land of Mordor.

9. @Petros I was going to make the same comment about similarities to Saudi Arabia head of UN Commission on Human Rights. However, this appears to have been instigated by the tax payer advocate and their focus on taxpayer rights. As most of the international participants are from RBT countries they may not view it all through the lense of CBT when they will be asked for views of international benchmarks on tax payer rights.

10. It is not just the tax code that needs fixing. It cannot be fixed, because just as soon as it is the large taxpayers, private and Corp will send a bundle of money thru the K Street lobbyists to start giving them the breaks back that they just lost. It won’t take but one election cycle for the campaign money to help get their breaks back. How else would a group that has an approval rating of 11% get re elected at a % of 95%. The challengers simply cannot compete with the RNC and DNC money, as well as every voting member of the Committee on ways and means, getting a ”contribution” to slip in an earmark to some unrelated bill that has already been debated and slated for a vote early the next day. Why do you think they always vote on bills early in the morning? so nobody will ever be able to expose them before the vote.
    Everyone says how honest Paul Ryan is. Don’t believe it. He would have been sent the same place every prior chairman has gone or will go soon. He was saved from himself by becoming Speaker. Others will do the dirty stuff and he will benefit. If he were honest he would have already scheduled a vote on HR25, The FairTax Bill and he didn’t. Prima Facia proof that he is in the tank with the rest of them for the Marxist Income Tax. Between 20 and 100 million people get a living out of the Marxist income tax. Tax lawyers, tax preparers, Tax accountants, Congressmen and women, all their families as well as 2 million U. S. Government workers and all their families and friends. The best estimate is that every year a half a trillion dollars changes hands based on having the Marxist Income Tax, stay the law.
    I person I know who works for the IRS says he couldn’t fill out a form correctly if someone had a gun to his head.

11. > The Right to Be Informed

    Hasn’t happened. The IRS’s real reason for framing me for fraud and frivolousness is that IRS employees embezzled my withholding, but they haven’t admitted it yet.

    > The Right to Quality Service

    Hasn’t happened yet.

    > The Right to Pay No More than the Correct Amount of Tax

    Explicitly overruled by actions of the IRS and courts.

    > The Right to Challenge the IRS’s Position and Be Heard

    Explicitly overruled by the IRS’s Settlement Officers and at least halfway overruled by courts.

    > The Right to Appeal an IRS Decision in an Independent Forum

    Yeah, three criminals are independent of each other.

    > The Right to Finality

    Sure right, if I roll over and play dead, they don’t have to go to court either.

    > The Right to Privacy
    > The Right to Confidentiality

    Such as not publicly disclosing social security numbers? The US Department of Justice denies that … well wait, the DOJ’s published publication agrees that the DOJ can’t publicly disclose SSNs, but the DOJ told a court differently, and courts are contradicting each other too but still not upholding the law.

    > The Right to Retain Representation

    Sure, if I spend about 10 years’ salary for legal fees (about 2 years’ salary per disputed tax year), I guess they won’t stop me. Sorry I can’t afford to find out if they’re telling the truth this time.

    > The Right to a Fair and Just Tax System

    Explicitly overruled by actions of the IRS and courts.

12. Let’s hope Allison Christians’ voice is heard loud and clear while she is there. This is the perfect opportunity for our issues to be given the spotlight they so rightly deserve.

13. Let’s hope the IRS will be heard. (National Taxpayer Advocate).

    Let’s hope some members of Congress will be heard. (Those who enacted statutes related to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, not those who enacted FATCA.)

14. What is the end game here? Information from the conference will be included in the TPA report to Congress (every January?). The TPA has been vocal in calling out the injustices.

    I may hope that the conference increase the stature of Allison Christians. I also may hope that the conference heightens the awareness by other globally situated tax experts of the injustices that the US practices against US persons overseas, and the injustices by governments of the world for their tax treaties they have signed for not protecting their own residents and citizens who are US persons.

    I have already e-mailed 1 of the four Australians who will attend (this person has a Phd in Law from Columbia). Allison will be one of two Canadians. A Lucie Lamarre is the other.

    There have been a few other threads on the Tax Payer Bill of Rights in the past:

    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2015/01/14/us-taxpayer-advocate-service-national-taxpayer-advocate-2014-annual-report-to-congress/

    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/10/11/similar-to-the-u-s-constitutions-bill-of-rights-the-u-s-taxpayer-bill-of-rights-contains-10-provisions/

    Here is another Right that should be added: Right to Simple and Easily Understood tax system.

    How to input to the TPA:

    Taxpayer Advocacy Panel wants your suggestions for improving the IRS. Call them at 888-912-1227 or submit online: http://ow.ly/TBjFC

15. Hi Friends,

    I got a letter from one of my bank asking for FATCA declaration. I have been filing both taxes and FBAR for past 7 years (i.e. in 2011 I filed for 3 years and continue to file taxes every year). I visited the USA once in past 12 years.

    If I file my FATCA declaration, I am afraid the bank might close my account. I started a small startup company and I can’t run the startup without bank accounts. Any suggestions?

    Regards,
    Gopal

16. JC, thank you for the pointers. I hesitate to awaken an old thread when this thread is similar.

    “9. The Right to Retain Representation
    Taxpayers have the right to retain an authorized representative of their choice to represent them in their dealings with the IRS. Taxpayers have the right to seek assistance from a Low Income Taxpayer Clinic if they cannot afford representation.”

    I’ve seen the list of Low Income Taxpayer Clinics. If I were living in any US state I would qualify. The list doesn’t include Tokyo though. Nor does it include Ontario.

    The US Department of Justice complained to a court that my briefs are disjointed. Well no shit, considering that courts refuse to appoint lawyers in civil cases.

17. Gopal Allu, chances are that your bank will close your account if you don’t file your FATCA declaration.

    You should join one of the other threads discussing how various US persons have solved (or not solved) your problem, and give a hint about your place of residence and your other citizenship(s), to ask for help. Luckily you won’t suffer expenses in becoming compliant like some others have had to do. But you still have to decide whether you still want to be, or can endure being, a US person.

18. @JC, make no mistake but that the Tax Payer Advocate is an orc of Mordor disguised as an elf.

19. According to Shelby Lyon, our representation on the IRS’s Taxpayer’s Advocacy Panel, they are making efforts to improve the situation for non-resident taxpayers:

    “We’ve been working on getting new digital channels open to allow people to communicate with the IRS, we have put forward a proposal to work with embassies to inform people of their obligations and to give a high level information sheet on where to get additional resources, we have been working to address an issue for dual nationals without an SSN to see how they can file if they are not able to attain an SSN. Also we are looking at the amount of time it takes for notices to arrive to those abroad and the response times… Which is also tied back into digital communication…”

    …”TAP essentially makes recommendations however this doesn’t mean the IRS will act upon them. However, I can say that the IRS folks listening in seem very interested in the input and have many of the suggestions already in the pipeline… However, I know that it will likely take much longer than we would hope to implement.”

    I personally don’t think Congress will ever allocate the funds it would take to properly administer CBT. They should just ditch it.

20. Yes, Petros, she’s trying to make CBT work. It never will.

21. Not sure where to put this comment. On November 22nd through November 24th, the Canadian Tax Foundation is holding its annual conference in Montreal. Our BEST BUDDY, Mythter Robert Stack has been invited to speak. Maybe some Montreal area Brockers might want to show up with some anti-FATCA signs. https://www.ctf.ca/ctfweb/en/conferences_events/2015/programs/2015_ac/15acprogram.aspx?New_ContentCollectionOrganizerCommon=1

22. Shelby Lyon, Tax Payer Advocate Panel international representative, is on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the ACA. The ACA supports CBT but wants to reform it.

    Shelby Lyon’s biography on the ACA website reads:
    “Shelby Lyon, Chief Technology Officer
    Shelby Lyon
    Shelby is an IT professional with 16 years experience in business analysis, systems development, testing and partnership management. She was born and raised in Fresno, CA. After earning her BA at UC Berkeley, she worked for various technology and financial firms in the San Francisco area. Eleven years later, she relocated overseas to complete an MBA at Oxford University. She then worked in London as an IT Partnership Manager for British Telecom. In 2011 she relocated to Geneva, Switzerland where she began working with ACA. She is married with two young sons.”

    https://americansabroad.org/about/executive-committee/

    The ACA may not be reformable.

23. @ WhiteKat
    Ah yes, Mythter Stack. We won’t forget the “myths” he referred to and summarily dismissed a few years ago, will we. IMHO, this whole taxation business is a gigantic, highly profitable “industrial complex”, feeding on the lives and labour of individuals who are burdened to the breaking point by the complexity it goads the legislators to create. Hence the need for expensive tax conferences to discuss and dissect the complexity.

24. @Petros-

    The TPA while as you say is trying to get CBT to work is also pointing out injustices and lets not forget the taxpayer bill of rights #10 The Right to a Fair and Just Tax System. Before this it was only about ‘the law is the law’. The TPA will highlight inconsistencies and that could be beneficial to the cause. We just need to add a few more Rights such as right of reasonable compliance costs and right of simple easily understood tax system. Both failures for US persons overseas.

    There are a range of people here at IBS including those trying to comply yet not at the point of renunciation. There is always the accidental Americans who highlight most the injustices.

25. “We’ve been working on getting new digital channels open to allow people to communicate with the IRS,”

    Starting by closing, in September 2015, the web page where non-resident US persons could submit questions to which IRS people responded by e-mail. Responses usually didn’t answer questions (like, what is the address of my Local Appeals Office because regulations require me to send a letter to my Local Appeals Office), but responses used to exist. That digital channel is being replaced by a new one at

    null pointer exception
    segmentation fault, core dumped
    If this is the first time you’ve seen this error, it’s because of new hardware that you added even though you didn’t add any. It’s absolutely not due to faulty programming in this digital channel.

    “we have put forward a proposal to work with embassies to inform people of their obligations and to give a high level information sheet on where to get additional resources”

    Starting by closing their offices in the US consulate in Toronto and US embassy in Tokyo, continuing until the last offices were closed in US missions in China, Germany, and France. New operations are proposed at

    null pointer exception
    segmentation fault, core dumped
    If this is the second time you’ve seen this error, it’s still because of new hardware that you added even though you didn’t add any. It’s absolutely not due to faults in our programs.

    “we have been working to address an issue for dual nationals without an SSN to see how they can file if they are not able to attain an SSN”

    No need, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit already took care of that. At a time when the Social Security Administration had neither granted nor rejected an application and the IRS had rejected all ITIN applications up to that point, even though the IRS accepted a refiled return, the court overturned the IRS’s acceptance because failure to fabricate an SSN for my wife was frivolous. Fabricating an SSN used to be illegal, punishable in some numbered circuits, but now in the Federal Circuit it’s mandatory. If you can’t get an SSN from the SSA, fabricate one.

    P.S. The IRS accepted that one too, before they purged my file. We absolutely know what to do now.