Democrat Candidates have little to offer #Americansabroad there will still be #FATCA #FBAR #CBT taxes – Let Us Go! https://t.co/voSFLVhznq
— Patricia Moon (@nobledreamer16) February 4, 2016
Over the past few years the sheet distributed by the Obama 2008 team has been discussed here with regard to Supporting Americans Abroad (or rather, how it did not support them). Yesterday, Democrats Abroad released a set of questions and answers put to their Presidential Candidates. I thought it might be interesting to review what Mr. Obama said/did while contemplating whether there would be any improvement in the situation for expats based upon the statements of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders.
Mr. Obama
What He Said: Strengthen Economic Security for Americans Abroad
…he will work with Americans abroad to identify and understand problems they may face as a result of U.S. government policies.
What He Delivered: Closure of Bank Accounts; Inability to obtain/renew mortgages
What He Said: Census of Americans Abroad
What He Delivered: Nada
What He Said: Concerns of Americans Living Abroad
As president, Obama will work to establish a direct dialogue with Americans abroad.
What He Delivered: we are “Tax Cheats” “Traitors” “Don’t Pay Our Fair Share” oh, and not to forget, we must report our everyday bank accounts to FINCEN and endure considerable terror tactics used to try and get us to enter “amnesty” programs designed for criminals
What He Said: Other Governmental Services and Benefits
…..ensure that U.S. State Department staff members have proper training to assist Americans abroad in determining their various rights and responsibilities as American citizens
What He Delivered: OVDP/OVDI FATCA Form 8938 Renunciation Fee Raised 422%
So with those thoughts in mind, here are the questions that Democrats Abroad prepared and presented to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Sanders and a Mr.Rocky De La Fuente.
FATCA: Would you support the FATCA “Same Country Safe Harbor” for Americans abroad, the regulatory reform that Democrats Abroad recommends for fixing FATCA’s problems but retaining its strength?
RBT: Would you support the replacement of the current system of taxing overseas Americans, known as citizenship-based taxation, with a system of residence-based taxation?
FBAR: Would you support reforms to FBAR regulations to address these concerns and inequities?
Medicare portability: Would you support an amendment to the Medicare law permitting American citizens to use Medicare benefits to pay for health care in approved medical facilities located outside the USA?
HR-3078: Would you support the establishment of a Commission on Americans Abroad to study and propose remedies to U.S. policies that harm or unfairly burden Americans living outside the U.S. (as provided for in House bill HR-3078)?
Windfall Eliminations Provision “WEP”: Would you support the examination of the WEP and its impact on U.S. citizens abroad to establish a remedy that preserves the social security benefits fairly earned by Americans abroad through their U.S. working life?
FAST Act passport revocation: Would you support, as part of the implementation of the 2015 FAST Act, these requests aimed at preserving the security of Americans abroad and their families?
Interesting @Demsabroad "reach out" shows #Americansabroad should not support Hilary Clinton – See here: https://t.co/1POSb7PscI
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) February 3, 2016
Mrs. Clinton:
On FATCA “Same Country Safe Harbor”
harder to open a bank account, harder to save for retirement, and harder to get a mortgage. I know that the vast majority of Americans living abroad are paying their fair share,
On RBT
I believe that we need a broad discussion about reforming our tax code to cut taxes for hard-working, middle class American families living both here and abroad….making sure that the wealthiest Americans can’t move overseas to avoid paying taxes…. a complicated issue and I will work with Americans living abroad and members of Congress to cut taxes
On reform to FBAR
to examine filing requirements with the aim of avoiding redundancies and minimizing unnecessary paperwork and confusion.
On HR 3078
The government…crafts solutions that are executable at home but nearly impossible to implement overseas other than at an enormous cost to our citizens living abroad
On FAST Act passport revocation
Every American should pay what they owe under our tax laws. …… I will ensure that Americans receive timely and accurate information about their tax responsibilities and are given ample opportunity to remedy or resolve any related issues, within a reasonable timeframe, before a passport is revoked due to a tax delinquency.
I am rather certain Mrs. Clinton does not really have a grip on the situation of expats. This is difficult to fathom since the largest number of Americans in history have renounced under her watch at the State Dept. Her comments in response to Safe Harbour show no familiarity with what it is. “Harder” to deal with the effects of FATCA? How about those who simply can’t get accounts difficult or have had them closed? And while a lovely sentiment, where she gets the idea that the vast majority of Americans abroad even know about their tax obligations, never mind are actually paying them, is a mystery to me. “Reforming our tax code to….cut taxes…cut taxes….” does not address RBT. No one needs to have foreign taxes cut if RBT were adopted. The comments about FBAR reform are moot. And she better be careful about that last promise………anyone care to count the number of times she uses the words “cut taxes?”
Mr. Sanders:
On Safe Harbour:
permit the U.S. Treasury to focus on curbing tax avoidance by Americans living inside the United States who move their money to offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes.On RBT:
deserves serious consideration… we can provide tax relief to middle-class families living overseas..On FBAR reform:
shows he is familiar with issues but his comments do not indicate any real relief from FBAR requirements
HR-3078
examine the impact of federal financial reporting requirements, the ability to vote in U.S. elections, and access to federal programs like Social Security and Medicare for Americans living abroad.on FAST Act:
have access to information on tax debts and proper notice before the IRS requests that the State Department revoke or deny the renewal of the passports of U.S. citizens.
Mr. Sanders seems to be somewhat more aware, possibly open to somewhat more relaxed conditions but I see nothing to indicate strong support for anything that would actually change this situation. IOW, neither have any meaningful platform to address our issues. Then again, would these have been your questions of choice? What about simply releasing Accidental Americans from these ridiculous “requirements? What about rectifying the onerous treatment of those minnows who entered the OVDI programs? What about dealing with the lack of reciprocity in the IGA’s? What about not taxing our tax-deferred savings plans in our countries of residence? How about the immorality of imposing FATCA and its costs completely on other countries? How about honoring the relinquishments of those you told were no longer citizens? How about getting your noses out of our “alien” spouses’ financial information? How about letting children born abroad decide for themselves if they want to be Americans? and on and on and on………..
@George III,
It would be best you use the contact form at http://www.adcs-adsc.ca/ContactADCS.html and send regarding your suggestion. It will then go to the more appropriate person to look at what you suggest. (i.e., that person is not me for sure!)
Can you do that? Thanks.
You are a member of the Mafia. Presumably membership is voluntary (since you voluntarily chose which country, oops I mean which family, you would be born into). The Mafia has rules which allow it to kick you out of the Mafia. Should this be interpreted to mean that: the only way that you can leave the Mafia is by using the one of the rules that were specifically designed to “kick you out”?
Note: Being a member of the Mafia brings many economic benefits, even though the Mafia isn’t the world’s most corrupt country, oops I mean family. That’s why you’d be crazy to renounce and they’re just trying to keep you from being crazy.
“Clinton, however, is MUCH worse than the GOP neocons are. She is a neocon who is responsible for a lot of the fall-out and instability in the Middle East and North Africa. She should’ve at least looked after the men who died in Libya; it should not have happened. They should’ve been in a secure location with the Special Ops, but she waived that restriction, and failed to pull them out of the country like other embassies were doing, and then, she wouldn’t even give them the security they needed!”
Well they should just roll over and pay their fair share. Their fair share is double the fair share of anyone else, because they should pay the US besides paying their country of residence, Libya[*]. They should pay their fair share because of the benefits they get, such as the US coming to rescue them when they get in trouble. Same as the US embassy in Paris did for Americans there.
[* That part is rhetorical because diplomats, unlike we the proletariat, don’t actually have to pay their fair share to their country of residence. That’s why host countries don’t supply security for other countries’ embassies, since they don’t pay their fair share[**].]
[** Rhetoric again. Actually it is customary for host countries to supply security for other countries’ embassies even though they don’t pay their fair share.]
Clinton’s statements smell so very strongly of organic biosolids:
“…Americans, regardless of where they live, often benefit from American education, infrastructure, legal protections, and trade policies. …”…
Oh really? My family left the US way before I was even school age.
Many deemed US citizens via parentage never set foot in the US at all. Which as Secretary of State ( 2009 to 2013 ) serving Obama – and presiding over the rise in record numbers of renunciations, and the extortionate rise in State imposed fees, Clinton would know.
And how exactly are those outside the US ‘benefiting’ from American infrastructure, “legal protections, and trade policies”? It is the US that we need and seek legal protections from. And it is US laws like FATCA and FBAR that have caused conflict with the highest level of our own local legal structures such as our Charter of Rights and our Constitution.
And how exactly do we benefit from US “trade policies” when expert opinions have said that FATCA likely doesn’t even accord with the terms of NAFTA? See Arthur Cockfield; “…FATCA and Canadian Laws
The FATCA IGA violates existing Canadian laws, including banking, privacy and human rights laws. In addition, Canadian leading constitutional lawyer and scholar, Peter Hogg wrote to the government in the early stages of negotiations advising that a FATCA IGA like the one that was signed “would not withstand…scrutiny” under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Cockfield “agree(s) with those constitutional law experts who suggest the IGA violates the Charter, more specifically section 15, the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of national origin or citizenship. We’re really creating two different regimes. On the one hand, if you’re an American or a U.S.-Canadian citizen or you happen to be a loved one of one of those U.S. persons, you’re subject to a totally different across border tax information reporting regime than other individuals…
“This is really a gotcha penalty regime the Americans are imposing on these unfortunate roughly one million Canadians. In my opinion it does violate the Charter.”
Cockfield, who has written a book on North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), pointed out problems FATCA creates for Canadian businesses. ‘A U.S. person who substantially owns a Canadian business will now have a foreign government looking at that account information. It could, in my view, harm cross-border competition, frustrate cross-border mobility. I believe it violates the NAFTA agreement.’ …”… http://www.tax-news.com/articles/_FATCA_Sea_Change__571885.html and https://openparliament.ca/committees/finance/41-2/34/prof-arthur-cockfield-1/ http://ccla.org/oldsite/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/FATCA-and-the-Erosion-of-Taxpayer-Privacy-U-of-T-2014.pptx.
And if Clinton supports ‘examing’ the issues those abroad face, why does H.R. 3078: Commission on Americans Living Abroad Act of 2015 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr3078 have so little support from fellow Democrats supporting what was put forward by a Democrat? It has had to be put forward by Representative Maloney more than once, this is only its latest form (previously H.R.597 – Commission on Americans Living Abroad Act113th Congress (2013-2014) and H.R.6263 — 112th Congress (2011-2012)
Commission on Americans Living Abroad Act https://www.congress.gov/search?q={%22source%22%3A%22legislation%22%2C%22search%22%3A%22Commission%20on%20Americans%20Living%20Abroad%20%22} ) – currently with zero prognosis of being passed . And we all know that in 2008, Obama said that he (and the Democrats) “..welcomes a continued dialogue between the White House, the State Department, and citizens
abroad in an Obama administration…”…
and that;
“Obama will work with members of the Americans abroad
community and the U.S. embassies to determine how the U.S. government can be responsive to the concerns of overseas Americans”
http://obama.3cdn.net/610c7f29ee85b124a3_3cm6bxltu.pdf
Instead, we got FATCA son of FBAR, the Mythster Stack, and several IRS Commissioners issuing threats and insults.
oops, typo in email changed my icon.
Most US expats I’ve ever met are involved in services–teaching, design, journalism, etc. Not sure how Clinton would claim they “benefit from US trade policy.”
As for benefitting from US education, one presumes she means, “You got a free education in the US, and now you’re using it outside the USA.” In my recollection, it wasn’t the federal government which paid for my primary and high schools; those were paid by local property taxes. And my university was private, not government-supported. Hubbie went to a state school–got that, Hillary? State. Not federal.
Tell me again what US federal taxes has to do with education or helping American journalists and teachers abroad.
“You got a free education in the US, and now you’re using it outside the USA.”
Just like engineers who got a free education in India and are using it in the US, or doctors and nurses who got a free education in the Philippines and are using it in the US, etc. But not just like them in quantity. The US gets 99% of the benefit and resents the 1% that moves in the other direction.
By the way, what about those of us who got an ethics education in the US, who learned that people should get due process of law before being droned, who learned that countries shouldn’t start wars and shouldn’t invade each other. If anyone knows of a country where this kind of education could be applied, please teach me.
@Barbara
There is some federal money that goes into private universities (federal work study, federal loans), as well as the public school system (I only spent two rather dreadful years in public schools because there was no alternative but “benefitted?” from some rather dreadful but cheap school meals made out of agricultural surplus while I was there).
I think that the big issue is more that this is an exchange. Neill pays taxes that pay for my parent’s medicaid and I pay taxes that fund his parents’ NHS treatments. Overall, the U.S. is a big net beneficiary in this system because it imports highly educated foreign-educated workers. My parents doctors generally don’t come from the U.S.