In my post, Our Sociopathic Society III: A cure or a coping mechanism?, I argued as follows:
Thus, complaining to a sociopath, throwing oneself at their mercy hoping for compassion, rationality or justice is a very bad idea. You cannot reform a sociopath with wise and reasonable arguments.
I then linked to a Sopranos video in which Pauli and Christopher murder a waiter who appealed to their sense of justice, comparing that to the amnesty program of the IRS, OVDP. I concluded that the best way to deal with a sociopath is to steer clear. This is particularly true if these same sociopaths control the law enforcement and justice departments of your country.
But in steering clear of the sociopaths, there are multiple strategies. What works for me may not work for someone else. I grant that. So I am going to list below, with some comments, strategies which may help and which I personally endorse:
- Do nothing. The most successful strategy that I’ve seen thus far is from my friends who weighed all their options and decided not to do anything about the IRS’s importunate demands. People who decided to do nothing in 2011 have stayed safely out of the cross-hairs of IRS–at least some in Canada have been able to lay low with no consequences. The same is not true of people in countries where their US status causes the bank to eliminate their accounts. I would point out that I was tax compliant but not FBAR compliant. So far nothing bad has happened to me.
- Renounce/Relinquish United States Citizenship or Personhood: This strategy is becoming rarer. The sociopathic fee of $2350 precludes some people from exercising their universal human right to change their nationality and the tax filing requirements to get the IRS off your back can be daunting and expensive. Furthermore, some people just can’t do it because it would frankly bankrupt them–they may have had PFICs in their retirement portfolios or took advantage of various Canadian or other foreign corporations for the purpose of tax deferment. If so, actually “coming clean”, as the sociopaths like to call IRS compliance, is just simply not a workable option.
- Strategic Lying or Omission of Truth: I have argued that it is not wrong to lie in order to prevent a crime from being committed. If a bank asks if you are a US person, why not just simply lie? The consequences of telling the truth will be that a human-rights crime will take place, as your bank will submit your account information to the CRA who will then commit extraordinary rendition in giving your private information to the IRS. There are other ways to use omission of the truth: If you are doing a US tax return, does the IRS really need to know about that spousal RRSP or TFSA or that PFIC or that personal corporation? In many cases, what the IRS doesn’t know may not hurt you unless you inform them.
- Die happy: The story of Mark Pinetree broke my heart. He really became anxious when he learnt of the requirements of the IRS and I think it shortened his life and made his final years miserable. However, my US-based lawyer sister said to me one bit of information that has always helped me in coping with the IRS sociopaths: everything in the DC system is slow–the government cogs turn very slowly. Chances are that you will die and your estate will pass to your heirs long before the understaffed IRS ever gets around to looking at your bank information, if indeed the CRA (et al.) ever does submit it to DC. I would wager that the sociopaths in the IRS will not want to work that hard–that means they will destroy the volunteers first (e.g., OVDP), and after that the wealthy whales, and only when they wrung these people dry, will they even consider going after the small fry. So die happy and do not allow the sociopaths to fill your life with fear.
- Keep yourself and your money out of the United States: The IRS has very limited powers of extradition and even less ability to collect taxes in foreign countries, and in keeping with the view that they will go after the easy money first, it is extremely unlikely that they will go after, e.g., a grandmother’s savings account in Canada. If you are worried that the US authorities are going to nab you at the border, you can avoid going there. But many of us (not me until 2018) continue to travel regularly to the USA for various reasons. Even I myself traveled to the USA to take part in the search of my father in the Alaska wilderness in summer of 2013. I was not arrested. But if you want to be sure never to fall into the hands of the IRS, then staying outside the US is a good strategy. My reason for not returning to the US is due to my fairly prominent civil disobedience.
- Civil Disobedience: I decided after Minister Flaherty’s announcement not to collect FBAR fines that I was going to stop hiding behind an alias and that I would fight the USA as Peter W. Dunn. I also declared that I would never file an FBAR. This places me into civil disobedience–I refuse to do what that the government of the USA requires and that the Trudeau government assumes I must do. I have done this openly to encourage to defy the US government; I would like to think also that my public stance also encouraged some others in Canada to take a public stance. Later of course, others have come out, such as Ginny Hillis and Gwen Deegan, with their public defiance of the IRS and the Canadian government.
- Sue the Bastards: Sociopaths sometimes find that society constrains their criminal behaviour. The ADCS lawsuit is an excellent strategy and our best hope of righting this injustice. I am however a little concerned that we are now up against a Liberal government. While it was the Tories in power, I figured the lawsuit would be an easy victory in the Canadian Supreme Court. However, now that the court has a nicer government, more aligned with the justices’ own political views, I fear that there will no longer be hostility between the government and the court. On the other hand, there is a slight chance that the Trudeau government will recognize that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian–even if some Canadians happen to be tainted with US personhood.
In recent comment streams, some have called my posts paranoid rants, while others have expressed appreciation. I hope the above strategies show that I am not a paranoid ranter at all, just very realistic. If you want paranoid, go to one of our friendly compliance sociopaths that work in cross-border tax accounting or law firms, and they will urgently press you to come into compliance lest something really bad will happen to you. So far, in following this issue since 2010, I have observed that the really bad stuff happens only to those who have heeded the warnings of the sociopaths.
My fervent wish is that not one more person would allow the IRS and Treasury department to intimidate them into the arms of the condors. Especially accidental and nominal Americans.
Yours and mine too Gwen. I am disheartened every time I hear about someone with tenuous US ties (like the young man Char met recently) who thinks they have no choice but to comply with US tax and reporting laws.
Regardless whether or not the new Liberal government takes our side on FATCA, and regardless whether or not we win the Canadian lawsuit, I think we should also put pressure on our government (haven’t done this yet myself) to help Canadians who are American in name only, easily rid themselves of US citizenship.
And I am not just talking about being recognized in Canada only as a Canadian, but I am talking about initiating and pursuing negotiations with the USA to let Canadians with tenuous US ties, officially get rid of unwanted US citizenship without all the associated, compliance hoops. So far, all our letter campaigns have been focusing on FATCA, but since USA is unlikely to give up CBT anytime soon, the least our new government can do, is help its citizens to purify themselves of unwanted US taint.
One of the most important lessons of my life came from OVDP. If you discover you have some problem with the IRS never go into their program to ‘get right’. They put me and my wife through hell. The hell went on for 2 years. Every few days a new thing to find out and document, a new tax law to try and understand, a new cost for tax prep and a new wrinkle to make my position worse. Then even when you get out they slap you by changing the rules so others get a better deal. They stole my wife’s retirement savings essentially. Luckily I have done well.
The only plus is I came out of this much much stronger with my eyes opened. It’s not over though, My form 211 against a US bank is still active inside the IRS so I may still pull some iron out of the fire.
It is my wish that our government here in Canada would wake-up and show the compliance condors the door. They do not belong in this country.
It is my wish that the Canadian government would REMOVE PLACE OF BIRTH FROM ALL CANADIAN PASSPORTS so that it will become possible for JT’s statement, “A Canadian is A Canadian is A Canadian’ to be true.
As it is now, FATCA or not, CBT or not, a Canadian with a US birthplace is not free to travel throughout the world like other Canadians. A US birthplace has become a dangerous attribute to possess and this will only get worse – getting rid of FATCA and CBT won’t be enough to remedy the curse of the American birthplace.
Wouldn’t my suggestion above be pretty much universally supported by all Brockers with US birthplace?
I can’t imagine why ANYONE (whether non-meaningful US person, proud dual citizens, ex-American, etc) would want their US birthplace revealed on their passports.
Place of birth should be where one became a naturalized citizen of Canada, or home town of a parent of someone born abroad. I think the US is the main country that does not allow a person entry if there is no place of birth on Passport,
Petros: these are words of extreme wisdom, a MUST-READ for all US persons abroad. So true, on every point! Brilliant in fact. They confirm what I have come to conclude myself, as confirmation of family wisdom that one should never volunteer too much information and always try to introduce a grain of sand into big-data gathering. If fact, if there were to be a point 8, I’d argue for feeding misleading data into the system — always fun. For instance inverting numbers on a bank account number or address, or phone.
I for one have decided, following account closure by Deutsche Bank because of my US birthplace, to start feeding the US government some data on an annual basis (a.k.a. IRS and FBAR forms). Naturally the data has been simplified for their computers. And I just started filing, no explanation, no entering any programs, etc. But not doing anything is probably the best thing, and in the end maybe I should have done nothing at all and just waited for my other banks to find me — but that’s what frightened me; I didn’t want to deal with that.
And now I shall donate, motivated again by your point number 7.
Cheers
Petros re: “Place of birth should be where one became a naturalized citizen of Canada, or home town of a parent of someone born abroad. I think the US is the main country that does not allow a person entry if there is no place of birth on Passport”
Then f-them, NO CANADIANS will visit the US ever, and all Canadians will be treated the same. We shouldn’t have to lie about place of birth. It is not the USA’s right to know period.
It is discriminatory to show place of birth on a Canadian passport imo.
ooops…in case it wasn’t clear, and not wanting to start a war, my “F-them” was directed towards the US government, not towards fellow Canadians or the Canadian government.
Petros, another strategy for your list, STOP GIVING IN TO THE DEMANDS OF THE SOCIOPATH. You can never truly be free from the sociopath if you are in a perpetual state of trying to appease their wrath, jumping through hoops to escape their latest abuse.
Tell USA, “no to FATCA, no we aren’t going to tell you where are Canadians are born (i.e no birthplace shown on Canadian passports), no we are not going to allow your compliance condors in our country, no you cannot inflict CBT on Canadians, etc, etc, etc”.
A Canadian can dream eh?
I guess I must be in pretty good shape, then, because I have employed and continue to employ all seven of Petros strategies. (Plus WhjiteKat’s #8 for my own self-respect.)
@Petros, you could modify the Renounce/Relinquish.
If you can not afford to buy the CLN, then relinquish anyway and self document. A CLN is not required to lose ones citizenship.
You can do this with any government employment. Even if you are already employed, keep applying for a new job with the government, work for a week by taking vacation days at your other job then quit.
A cat has reason to believe there is a mouse with a pocketful of cheese somewhere inside a big maze. The cat wants to torment that mouse and take his hard-earned cheese but that will take a lot of searching and going down a lot of dead ends. Then it will take some effort to grab the mouse and shake the cheeze out of his little pockets. So the cat stands at the entrance to the maze and meows out orders to the mouse. The cat says, “I know you’re in there somewhere so come out here and give me all your cheese, right now.” The mouse stays put and eats his cheese bite by bite so that even when the cat stops bellowing, enters the maze and eventually finds him, there will be little, if any, cheese left to confiscate. Could this be another strategy?
Maz57, I too have used and continue to use all of the above strategies. They have worked for me for a couple of years now. Part of what I do is to mentally visit the places that are the most scary, such as never visiting the States again, and then “live” with that reality for a while, get used to it, make some accommodations (I told my brother and sister that they might have to come visit me for a change plus I bought a beautiful antique map of my home state, a map that I can “visit” whenever I want to) and then move on to another scary place, such as having my bank accounts closed. Cash in the basement is a definite possibility! What’s the worst they can do to me? Inevitably, I end these mental visitations with “Fuck ’em!” I refuse to let them run my life. AND, I contribute to our Charter challenge, because none of us should have to visit this web site. It’s wrong.
@WhiteKat, “It is discriminatory to show place of birth on a Canadian passport imo.”
Thats another thing to lobby your MP in whatever nation is your home.
In Switzerland they do not list country of birth.
You should have a right to list place of naturalisation or parents domicile.
@Petros, thank you for this post and the list of strategies. Wish that I had had it and forewarning in hand back in 2011, but even so, you and all the others here at IBS and Maple Sandbox http://maplesandbox.ca/ as well as USCitizenAbroad https://renounceuscitizenship.wordpress.com/blog/ will always have my heartfelt gratitude for providing so much invaluable support and information during my years long ordeal.
Though I thank Providence every day that I am free of the impossible to bear burden of UStaxableandpenalizablepersonhood/indenturedservitude as currently increasingly inseparable from US citizenship, and have my CLN to prove it, I am still overwhelmingly sorry that out of fear and anxiety, I came forward and attempted to comply with US demands in the manner they deliberately and disingenuously promoted as the only option.
Did the US benefit? Did they gain even a single cent of tax money from me? Nope. The only ones who benefited were the members of the USTaxLawIndustrialComplex exported to Canada and elsewhere – who gloried in the sudden massive windfall created by the US Treasury Extortion machine and its extraterritorial CBT and FBAR apparatus – and who happily and greedily generated stack of useless and incomprehensible and expensive paper – (and despite their boasts to the contrary, full of significant errors despite their groundless (in my experience) claims about how well their ‘team’ of experts solves US tax problems) – to prove what we already knew; I am not and never was a terrorfundingmoneylaunderingUStaxevadingdruglordcriminalmastermind, my Canadian accts and assets were and are entirely local, legal and already fully tax compliant where I actually work, earn, and live – in my home of Canada – for >5 decades, and I didn’t owe the US a single cent.
What the US continues to reap is the substantial and increasingly public enmity of myself and others – which fuelled the substantial and growing resistance, anger and hostility expressed and apparent here and elsewhere. In the end, the US only damaged further their so-called ‘voluntary’ tax system, and further burdened their incompetent and abusive machinery.
@WhiteKat and Gwevil, I heartily agree with your comments;
@Gwevil, re; “My fervent wish is that not one more person would allow the IRS and Treasury department to intimidate them into the arms of the condors. Especially accidental and nominal Americans.”
and,
@WhiteKat, re; “….initiating and pursuing negotiations with the USA to let Canadians with tenuous US ties, officially get rid of unwanted US citizenship without all the associated, compliance hoops. So far, all our letter campaigns have been focusing on FATCA, but since USA is unlikely to give up CBT anytime soon, the least our new government can do, is help its citizens to purify themselves of unwanted US taint.”
@Badger, for you and many others we could do little. One night early in 2012 USCitizenAbroad and I worked on our press release and with help od a cadre of Brockers sent out our warning not to enter the 2012 OVDP: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/01/10/press-release-isaac-brock-society/
We were the only clear and sane voice in those days, while the IRS, the compliance industry, and even the Canadian press were acting the part of sociopathic bad shepherds leading Canadian sheep to the amnesty slaughter. People think that I rant and that I am wearing a tinfoil hat, but we watched as the sociopaths fleeced the most innocent people. But after years of being essentially ignored as the banksters had their way with our elected representatives in Ottawa, I finally realized we are not dealing at any level with good people but with sociopaths who do not have the ability empathize with our suffering.
The sociopaths have a way of injecting themselves into positions of power. Think back or if you are young read history. In the past century they got the reins of power in a half dozen countries and the result was disasterous for the rest of their countrymen. There were never more than 10% of the Soviet Union who were communists, nor more than 10% of Germans who were NAZI’s. That didn’t matter they manipulated the country into war and the results were awful. Pol Pot of Cambodia murdered millions of his countrymen and women, before they rose up and stopped him. American Presidents are some times ego manics, such as the current one, and we will see if the damage he has done is reversable or if he can manipulate the next one to continue to damage our society.
The congress of the USA is loaded with ego manics who will do anything to be re elected. Our taxing system has been amended so many times and each amendment is to help someone avoid taxation and as a reward the get massive campaign contributions which they share with those not on the tax writing commities, in exchange for their votes to sustain the amendments they got paid to enact. If we are not able to stop them we will fall as a nation, not from an external enemy but the enemy within, posing as legislators.
@Petros,
You and the other Brockers, Maple Sandbox, and USCitizenAbroad alerted many to the pitfalls, kept many from even entering the minefield, and also helped those already in to find their way carefully through to the other side. If not for that, many many more would have been harmed.
Peter I take it all back. This is an excellent summary. I agree with and have advocated on IBS all of your strategies. Number 1 works best. Number 2 also works. Canadian mutual funds and registered account trustees do not send T3s or T5s to the IRS so their computers have nothing to match. As Dan said about 3 yrs. ago ‘only tell them what they already know
Strategy number 8. If you feel you must renounce and must fill out the exit tax return, do anything necessary, including omissions to avoid being a covered expatriate.
That old comment about the CRA not collecting ought to be questioned. The IRS does not itemize its demands. If there is a collection method available, the request goes through without explanation.
What good is a verbal promise from an administration that no longer exists?
@Mark Twain, The verbal promise of the earlier regime was actually based upon a legal interpretation of the tax treaty between the USA and Canada. Canada will not collect for the IRS on a Canadian citizen. It is in the Act. Furthermore, the Tory legal team decided that there was no basis in Canadian law for collecting FBAR fines.
Thus, Parliament would have to change the law to remove the assurances that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty made not that the government of Canada would not collect taxes for the IRS on Canadian citizens and FBAR fines from anyone.
That said, if the US pressured Canada, perhaps our boxer in chief would lay down and allow them to do it.