(10) Lying to prevent a crime is a virtue.
Commentary: USA citizenship-based taxation is a crime when applied to people living outside the USA jurisdiction. It is theft at multiple levels: (1) It is territorial theft of another country’s tax base. (2) It is theft to tax a person without representation. (3) It is theft to tax a person for the benefit of others. Furthermore, many of the reporting requirements of FATCA and FBAR cause crimes to be committed. The government of Canada, e.g., has committed a crime by sending the bank account information of Canadian residents and ciitzens to the IRS–it is national origin discrimination which is forbidden in the charter of rights, and it is a violation of their right to privacy.
It may be necessary to lie to prevent the IRS and one’s own local government from committing crimes. One may have to lie to a bank about where one was born. One may have to omit details when filling out forms.
While lying to prevent a crime is a virtue, lying to cover up a crime is politics as usual.
Previous Discussion:
Rahab’s renunciation of citizenship–Was she a harlot, liar, traitor and tax cheat or a heroine of faith?
California genocide and the Indian Tax Revolt of 1851
Fair tax, unfair tax: or When is it paying my fair share?
Is it taxation without representation if you can vote? Damn right!
Previous Petros Principles:
(1) What the IRS can’t know unless you tell them can’t hurt you.
(2) Fear makes the IRS more dangerous than it really is.
(3) Haste is the devil.
(4) Those most hurt by the IRS’s persecution of expats have engaged the services of cross-border compliance condors.
(5) Those least hurt have done nothing.
(6) Home is where you live.
(7) An unjust law is no law.
(8) Don’t feed the beast.
(9) Do the minimum in trying to achieve the least bad outcome.
(10) Lying to prevent a crime is a virtue.
(11) Cynical derision of Homelanders is healthy.
About: Petros is the alias of the founding administrator of the Isaac Brock Society. Petros Principles are guidelines that have helped him and others deal with the United States’ world-wide tax invasion.
My question is would there be any repercussions under Canadian (or wherever you live) law if you lied about being a U.S. person to a bank, etc.? Obviously you put yourself in a dicey situation with regards to the U.S. government (like you would by not filing taxes as they require you to), but would you be punished by the government where you live for not truthfully answering a question whose only relevance is to please a foreign government?
@Kelly, I have not heard that there is a penalty structure for lying on Canadian bank forms about USA indicia. Perhaps others know.
According to the IGA, the bank is allowed to rely on the customer’s self-certification unless they have reason to believe it’s not true.
@Kelly, there is a penalty for lying on any form to the USA government. The forms call it “perjury” (a crime well known to the Clintons). There is also 5th Amendment privilege–so the USA government says that if you do not tell us the truth and incriminate yourself on this stinkin’ form, we can and will charge you with perjury. But in this post, I am saying that lying on a USA form is not perjury in the case of USA citizens abroad. It is simply a matter of survival–i.e., to prevent the USA government from committing a human rights violation against your person.
The difficulty might be that place of birth, for instance, often gets asked for other purposes, such as id and anti-money-laundering. Which would probably be risky under local laws.
CBA doesn’t say that one needs to provide place of birth to open an account in Canada.
It does say that the bank may refuse to open the account if you provide fraudulent information, but I wonder how they could find out that your birth place is Chicago, if you write Winnipeg.
http://www.cba.ca/en/research-and-advocacy/50-backgrounders-on-banking-issues/83-opening-a-bank-account
“It may be necessary to lie to prevent the IRS and one’s own local government from committing crimes.”
FATCA is criminal. Lying to protect oneself from the Beast is self preservation.
Please see the following about some FATCA pushback from Hong Kong:
http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/08/hong-kong-revolt/
UK banks always ask, nowadays, for new accounts. Maybe it’s only because of FATCA, or it may be a EU requirement.
More about the Hong Kong issues at http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/1997408/new-guidelines-will-smooth-path-firms-and-foreign-investors
The ugly truth is that the USA is simply flexing it’s muscles & taking what it wants. That’s it- pure & simple. All of the bluster & arguments against FATCA keep going on about taxes & rights– when the reality is that the USA is only interested in one thing: power over all others.
With that firmly in place, the rest is a cakewalk. The USA has now demanded all other countries acquiesce under threat, as the old-school mob used. They demand that their laws rule- in foreign countries!
After that, they will not only siphon monies from those countries via US-tainted citizens (trojan horses), they will also demand further proof of compliance of the banks.
Do you think for one moment that if a bank says to the USA, “we have deleted all US bank accounts”, that this will suffice? Really? I think the USA will end up demanding EVERY, SINGLE, HUMAN BEING’S details from said bank. I don’t think it’s far fetched- at all.
My question has always been: how the heck do you justify extending/enforcing a law which had it’s basis in civil war USA?
http://mytaxpeople.com/civil-war-u-s-taxation-worldwide-income-fatca/
Then, how is it legal to enforce it “retroactively”?
http://mnetax.com/us-threatens-stop-treating-fatca-igas-effect-2017-16372
US is threatening to consider a country as not IGA compliant if they don’t speed up the process of making FATCA part of their national law.
It’ll be interesting if all the dominos fall for the US.
I do not agree with CBT, FATCA nor FBAR. That being said, it is not wise for American citizens to lie about material facts on financial forms or fail to file good faith tax returns to the IRS. We may not like our home governments submitting our personal information to the U.S. Government, but “to lie to prevent the IRS and one’s own local government from committing crimes” is a bogus legal argument. It’s bad advice. And, in case anyone cares, it’s unethical.
This post reminds me of a heated debate that some Brockers got into a couple years ago over this very topic. For some lying is always ‘bad’ no matter what the reason for it.
Everyone has to figure out for themselves what they can, should, or want to do about FATCA.
@Jay, Where did you study ethics?
@Jay – I don’t agree that it’s unwise to “fail to file good faith tax returns to the IRS.” I would say that’s the wisest course of action, provided you’re confident you can protect yourself. As has been said, the less they know the better. Knowledge is power. Don’t give it tobthem.
I was just going to post that debate. About two years ago I put up a post on Brock describing what one very strong-minded Canadian would do if IRS “came calling”. This person said in part:
“…I will refuse to fill out any “foreign” tax information forms, I will refuse to give my financial institutions any information on place of birth, and, if necessary, I will lie with an absolutely clear conscience…”
There were 196 comments (with various opinions) with most dealing with the practical-ethical question whether it is appropriate and reasonable to lie to your bank on a FATCA form:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/10/16/what-will-and-what-should-canadians-do-when-the-irs-comes-calling/comment-page-1/#comments
Actually Peter I think you brought the topic up last time too. Such a poop disturber. Oh well lots of time has past. Perhaps those vehemently against lying no matter what the reason have changed sides.
@Jay, perhaps you could brush up a little on our particular conundrum. While you say lying on a form is unethical, I wonder what is the basis for that particular statement. Certainly not on the Judeo-Christian ethic. That is why I wanted to hear where you studied ethics.
These two posts might bring you a little more up to date:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/10/17/rahabs-renunciation-of-citizenship-was-she-a-harlot-liar-traitor-and-tax-cheat-or-a-heroine-of-faith/
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2015/03/31/burning-barns-down-is-not-wrong-because-it-is-illegal-it-is-illegal-because-it-is-wrong/
@Stephen Kish:
From the post you cite: ”
Voila–Petros Principles on display.
@Petros, studying ethics, and developing a well defined moral centre, have been life long pursuits for me. And for the record, I do not believe that lying is, in and of itself, unethical — context matters. But I think I stand on safe moral grounds to state that the rationalization, “to lie to prevent the IRS and one’s own local government from committing crimes”, in this particular context, lacks moral resonance.
It’s a category error, surely, not an ethical issue.
The IRS and the IGA signatories aren’t committing legal crimes, so they don’t need saving.
In the eyes of many, they’re committing moral crimes, but you can’t save them from that.
@Jay, Moral resonance? How well do you know the stories of the victims of this crime of the United States called extraterritorial taxation or Citizenship based taxation? It is also known as taxation based citizenship, a form of tax slavery that even moving to another country does not free oneself from. So perhaps, if indeed you have made a life long pursuit of developing a well-defined moral centre, you could better justify your claims and stop just making baseless claims without even a hint of an argument.
@Jay, Remember the original post? I made several arguments why the USA tax invasion of the world is a crime. You have made none to justify what is happening. You just said lying is unethical, so I am indeed waiting to see if you provide something approaching an argument against the points I have made.
@Petros, for the record, I have been a lurker on this site for some years now. Further, I am well aware of CBT, FATCA and FBAR and their implications, having myself been an expatriate on multiple occasions going back to the 1980s. I have always known about CBT. I have made it a point to understand how the tax codes I live under impact me and ordered my financial doings accordingly.
@iota, each individual must decide for themselves what actions lie in their best interest, neither I nor you can decide that for them. There is wisdom in not providing governments with personal data, willy nilly, without regard to the possible consequences of providing said data. On the other hand, intentionally lying on forms can also come with consequences, some of them, perhaps, quite serious. There is unwisdom in lying about material facts on financial forms, unwisdom which may, or may not, be outweighed by other factors. That is a difficult decision that each individual must wrestle with.