WITNESS SEARCH UPDATE FOR CANADIAN FATCA IGA LAWSUIT:
WE STILL SEEK MORE CANADIAN WITNESSES:
Have you experienced marital stress or breakup, or medical or psychiatric illness because Canada turned you and your family over to a foreign country — or because you were afraid and entered into IRS compliance and suffered harm, or because you are in “hiding” and can’t afford to be IRS compliant or to renounce? Be a witness.
No single witness will be “perfect” from a litigation point of view. We will be seeking more witnesses (almost) right up to the time of submission of court documents. Your specific situation, that we cannot predict, might have unique characteristics that would be helpful in the lawsuit.
If you cannot be a witness, please tell a friend who you think might be interested.
— If you are interested in becoming a witness You will describe your harm in a written affidavit which will be made public and you can contact me at stephen.kish.chair@adcs-adsc.ca See our website at www.adcs-adsc-ca
FOR THOSE CANADIANS WHO ALREADY VOLUNTEERED: Unless you have already been informed by me or by our legal team that you will not be a witness, there is still the possibility — or (for some) likelihood — that you will be asked to be a witness. I’m sorry but I cannot estimate the time it will take for our legal team to get back to you with their decision. This is because they need to “mesh” the characteristics of all of the necessary witnesses and testimonies with the actual detailed submission that contains the entirety of their evidence, which are all still evolving. Please be patient in our getting back to you with a decision. Thank you for your help.
PS
Morneau is interviewed early in the show.
Below is part of article in April 6 2016 Stanstead Journal in which the Journal kindly agreed to help me find innocent “border babies” for our lawsuit. There has been a response to the article. The Journal will also place a small ad asking for witnesses next week for the next three weeks.
[Is there a single US-tainted IRS non-compliant Canadian with a reportable bank account > $50k U.S. reading this comment? Please consider volunteering as a witness:]
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35992167
David Cameron comes clean he owned shares in his father’s Panama trusz.
@Isabelle Brock, Stephen
“Even if we wanted to come out of anonymity, we don’t have any reportable accounts”
Neither do I, and I imagine most people who are caught up in this insanity (who are aware) also don’t have any reportable accounts for obvious reasons, so this may be why there’s been fewer witnesses in the $50K+ reporting category than hoped for.
They also cleverly “negotiated” out reporting on RRSPs even though they are still taxable by the IRS, so that helped avoid a fire storm of pissed off people stepping forward.
Stanstead;
July/August 2010 issue
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/ja10/stanstead-border-town.asp
Though a 2010 article, looks like there is still open opportunity to comment – and raise the FATCA/US Extraterritorial CBT problem.
And alert readers to the ADCS lawsuit.
I’m sure the main reason that it’s difficult to get witnesses is fear. People with ties to the U.S., especially family living there, are afraid that if they “out” themselves by being witnesses, they will no longer be allowed to visit the U.S., or that if they do so, the U.S. will somehow be able to hold them until they pay large sums of money as ransom.
Can that be made part of the argument in the lawsuit — that people are afraid to be witnesses, and reasonably so? Could the identities of witnesses be revealed to Canadian judges but kept off the public record? It seems a lot like the problem that potential witnesses against organized crime face, and U.S. extra-territorial taxation and its enforcement through FATCA and the IGA are a very well-organized international crime.
“Morneau went on to say that he’s never held an offshore account (and alludes that there’s something inherently dispicable about that)”
Morneau thinks there’s something despicable about my account in the US because the US is a tax haven, and there’s something despicable about my account in Canada because Canada is a tax haven, right?
If a non-compliant person has a $50,000 account, which is around US$38,000, and they make public their name and status, they’ll be facing US$114,000 in penalties, right? Regardless of who wins the court case, right?
@Norman Diamond Except that if they stay in Canada they don’t have to worry and if they are reported anyway through C-31, then signing an affidavit only provides the enemy with duplicate information.
From my post today:
“The Canadian FATCA compliance law aims to turn over to the U.S. IRS Canadian citizens deemed by the U.S. to be U.S. persons — Canadians who have FATCA reportable accounts. Therefore, our litigators ask for witnesses who actually have FATCA reportable accounts.”
The account of a “United States Person” at Scotiabank will be reported, regardless of the balance, so they told me. Therefore, the balance of the account hardly matters, and a supporter could in theory open an account at Scotiabank and then sign an affidavit, kinda like boarding a bus when they’re not even going that way, just to refuse to sit in the back of the bus.
@ Tom Alciere
Wonder if that would be helpful to the Arvay team if you get that in writing.
Marie, I have asked Tom to send me, if possible, the details. I suspect that what the bank told Tom is not Scotiabank policy but could be wrong. Scotiabank would then differ from my bank (CIBC) which (their FATCA police) told me that I was not FATCA reported because I don’t have a FATCA reportable account >US$50,000.
In the meantime, could some US persons having an account at Scotiabank follow this up? Consider going to the bank this afternoon and tell them that you want to know if your <50k account was turned over to CRA/IRS. Give them a copy of the CRA statement proving that the bank is required to give you this information — and insist that you get an answer by the end of Monday.
No witness volunteers in the last two days.
“16. Does my Canadian financial institution have to notify me if information on my accounts is reported to the CRA?
Canadian financial institutions must be open about their policies and procedures for complying with the agreement and must be prepared to make this information available to anyone who asks about them. Although financial institutions do not have to automatically notify their account holders about reporting to the CRA under the agreement, they must, upon request, allow account holders to have access to the personal information that has been reported.”
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/nhncdrprtng/fq-eng.html
Stephen, I reported my dealings with Scotia over this previously here. Scotia has NEVER been interested in my birthplace, nor recording or copying my CLN. This, after asking about it during several transactions, going back several years, both pre- and post-renunciation. This is also sitting in office, not at the counter. Loans officer, investment officer, and branch manager. 2012-present
I forgot to add iTrade, as well.
CRA may tell you that RRSPs are not reportable. But THEY ARE Frozen.
@FuriousAC
source?
@Stephen Kish
the first to be hunted down are Canadians who have “FATCA reportable” accounts
Do you have evidence to support the above statement as a fact?
What I mean by this is that–although in theory only accounts above $50,000 US will be hunted down at first–do you have any evidence that–of the 155,000 US persons whose account data was turned over–all of them do/did in fact have balances over $50,000 US?
I’ve often suspected that the banks–and in turn the CRA–will “play it safe” and just turn over all account data regardless of account value. So as I said earlier–I believe even the homeless guy/gal with $10 in the bank is at risk–and also makes for an especially sympathetic witness.
So is there any real evidence of this $50,000 threshold actually being applied?
There are basically only three reasons why a Canadian bank account datum would NOT be turned over to the CRA and then the IRS:
(1) in one of the categories of accounts that are not reportable (RRSP, etc)
(2) balance under $50,000 US
(3) account presents no US indicia
Is there any evidence of banks NOT turning over the data based on criterion (2) alone?
We need to nail down much more precisely exactly what accounts were turned over back in Sept 2015 and for what reasons. It all seems very nebulous still to me. I hope that–even if they can’t talk about it publicly yet–that Arvay and team are on top of finding this out in the discovery process right now.
Furious AC. Re Frozen RRSPS, I don’t believe that’s correct.
“There are basically only three reasons why a Canadian bank account datum would NOT be turned over to the CRA and then the IRS:
(1) in one of the categories of accounts that are not reportable (RRSP, etc)
(2) balance under $50,000 US
(3) account presents no US indicia
Is there any evidence of banks NOT turning over the data based on criterion (2) alone?”
Unfortunately probably yes. I have a chequing account at TD Canada Trust that was originally opened at TD where I think my ID would have been my Canadian passport, which shows US indicia (birthplace). The balance has always been under US$50,000 (and under C$50,000). When TD Canada Trust finally answered my question and said that they had not turned over the data, I had not yet submitted TD’s version of W-8 and copy of CLN.
Now I wish I had not submitted TD’s version of W-8 and CLN, so I could have another chance to be a test case. Too late, too bad.
PS: Another reason TD should be aware of US indicia is that in 2002 I told TD Waterhouse (in Canada) that I was a US citizen, after which they deducted both Canadian 10% withholding and US 30% withholding from Canadian sourced interest income in my securities account. That account is long gone but TD knew US indicia.
@Dash I have submitted an Access to Information request to CRA asking for that and much more information about the data turned over.
http://maplesandbox.ca/2016/dear-cra-please-provide/
I have no idea how much I will receive or how long it will take. The The ATI Act requires a response in 30 days or they must advise f they require an extension.
It took months for my requests to Finance to be filled. When I did get a partial response, it was very heavily redacted.
Elizabeth Thompson, a journalist with iPolitics, tweeted recently that another government department told her it would be over 700 days for an ATI request she made to be filled.
So who knows how long it will take for CRA to respond or what will be in their response.
@NormanDiamond
How did you get your 10% and 30% back from TD?
“How did you get your 10% and 30% back from TD?”
No, none of it comes back from TD.
The 10% Canadian withholding was correct because Canadian sourced interest was Canadian sourced and I live in Japan. This never comes back because it was correct.
TD refused to say how 30% US withholding could be correct from Canadian sourced interest, which led to TD closing the account. Later the IRS said it’s because TD has an affiliate in the US. I declared the 30% US withholding on my US return for 2002, so it SHOULD have come back from the IRS after about 18 months, but it didn’t.
The IRS actually refunded it after about 42 months, but later they revealed that they had no intention of refunding it, so the actualy refund must have been a mistake. After about 6 more years, TIGTA reported that IRS employees participate in identity theft, and Monica Hernandez stole withholding that was reported on Form 1099, so now I know why the IRS had no intention of refunding my US withholding.
US withholding stolen in later years hasn’t come back yet. Some lawsuits are still active. But if laws were obeyed, the money would have come back from the IRS.