(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.
@Petros
Omissions and/or pleading the fifth amendment are also possible options when filing one’s final US tax returns. But I wonder if pleading the fifth puts up any kind of red flag to the IRS?
@PatCanadian, the IRS obviously doesn’t like the Fifth Amendment or any of the amendments. And it probably infuriates them when it is invoked properly on a tax return. But it is not frivolous and it is one’s right according to case law, if one provides sufficient information to assess taxes.
Bubblebustin asked, “Is it unethical to comply with unethical laws?”
If compliance is the most expedient thing to do and compliance hurts no one, it is morally neutral.
It becomes less clear when compliance begins to destroy people: oneself (suicide is considered a self-crime by many), one’s family (one has a duty to protect family), one’s community (decay of the local tax base). But if one believes that there is no choice but to comply, complying may be lesser evil. In any case, there is more fault in those who enforce the laws than those who feel compelled to follow them.
@heidi, @Ann#!: I am an American citizen. I value being an American citizen and have always been very careful not to jeopardize that citizenship. (I am a citizen of several countries.) I, too, am married to a non-American, living outside the U.S.A. I recognize, and have always recognized, the difficulties of tax compliance and tax avoidance (not tax evasion!). Being a multinational with U.S. Citizenship while living abroad is not always easy. Sometimes difficult financial choices have to be made. But all that said, I am glad to be an American citizen and will do nothing that jeopardizes that.
@Petros, @iota, @…etc: I have not told anyone what to do. I have simply disagreed with Petros’ advice that committing fraud is justified to prevent your country from breaking laws is not a legally valid argument, is not prima facia good advice, and is unethical on its face. I have not said that one should do what is ethical, in fact, I’ve gone out of my way to state that ethical behavior is not always the right behaviour.
As for being a supporter, I have been very supportive of this website, often referring both expats and homelanders here for their education. The reception I have received for my comments today certainly guarantees that this shall be my last post here. Who knows, I may be so put off by Petros’ ad hominem and emotional attacks that I may never return. There are plenty of websites out there, and plenty of sources of information. Why would I return?
I have a family member who was asked about her citizenship in the early years of WWII. As a consequence of telling the truth, she spent the next three years in prison camp under starvation conditions.
If my bank asks me about my place of birth, I have no qualms about lying– “I am BC Doc and I was born in Montreal.” FATCA in Canada is unjust and highly discriminatory. I consider it my duty to self and family (as their provider) to not comply. I look forward to the ADCS lawsuit succeeding so that I will never be asked such highly invasive questions in the future.
@Jay You call my comments “emotional attacks” and “ad hominem”. Yet do you not see that calling my comments, “emotional” you have at the same time committed ad hominem and paternalism?
Actually, I have offered point after point as to why CBT is a violation of human rights and you still haven’t provided a single actual rebuttal.
I have said that your position seems indistinguishable from compliance condors, along the lines of: While I do not personally ike CBT, it is the law and you have to do it. Thus, I have no reason to think that you are not a compliance condor, because I do not know who you are because we have never been introduced.
If you would like to make some rebuttals of my positions, I would gladly refute them. As it is, your only argument seems to be that it is ethical to obey positive law because it is the law. But perhaps you missed Petros Principle 7, An unjust law is no law.
People really need to watch this video to see why I would suggest that someone like Jay may not be what he seems.
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2015/10/23/astroturfing-is-real-sharyl-attkisson/
The US government, via the Vice Consul of the Toronto consulate had absolutely no problem lying to me in the early 90s, telling me I was NOT a US citizen. Because that convenient for them during their “anchor babies” fear.
The US gov’t is nothing BUT lies. The only thing they are better at than lying is avoiding punishment for their lies and misdeeds.
If someone had a gun to my kid’s head, and told me to tell them the sky was green or they would shoot my kid, would I? Hmm…what would be convenient? Does that person have the right to kill my child? Should I feel some moral obligation to say the sky is blue?
@Jay – you value your American citizenship, and have accepted the obligations along with the privileges. You’ve signed up for the deal in full knowledge of what it entails. Fair enough.
I (along with many others) found that taxation had been imposed on me by the U.S. overnight without my knowledge or consent. A bank clerk told me about it – the U.S. didn’t bother mentioning it, just switched me into the category of “delinquent taxpayer” without so much as a by-your-leave and without offering of value in return. ( It’s crackers, to be honest.)
Different situations, Jay. Different strokes for different folks. Pointless trying to apply the same yardstick.
The problem with deliberate lying is that the liar dives into a cesspool of perpetual uncertainty. The liar forecloses on closure. There can never be an end.
An undying worm will eat away at the liar. Meanwhile, bureaucracy becomes forever entitled to declare void any statute of limitations, since fraud can be detected. SOL flips over to that other meaning …
Back when $450 might have been saved through relinquishment instead of renunciation, it was a marvel to watch fantasizers concoct intentions, even when counterfactuals like an old US passport loomed in the past. Woo hoo! I can put US$450 into my pocket? I’ll just remember an intention I never really had. Liars.
I have no problems with breaking bad law. But breakers need to be clear of mind about being ready to see cops on the doorstep, even though those same breakers may not have draped a red flag across the front door.
Assurance in choosing violation must extend to placing zero expectations on a comprador Canada that someday may well invite an FBI agent to inspect the bottom of your birdcage.
@USX, there is never certainty. Petros Principle 2: Fear makes the IRS more dangerous than it really is. We should not act in one way today because we think that the Canadian government is going allow the FBI to arrest people for lining their bird cages in Canada with letters from the IRS. We must do the least bad thing according to the circumstances as they exist in our present, not too optimistic as though Donald Trump is the saviour, not to pessimisitic and think that the IRS will send armed people to my door in Canada. If that day ever arrived, there is not a Canadian, whether of US origin or no, who would be safe.
“An undying worm will eat away at the liar.”
Undying worms… the devil running for president…looks like the Age of Enlightenment is well and truly over. The Witchfinder General will no doubt put in an appearance before long.
well if they drag me off me to jail in the US or fine me gazillions for having left USA with my Canadian parents when I was still in diapers then you will be reading about me in the news. Oops I meant my friend not me cause I never lie.
….maybe just the occasional white lie
@Jay
I too was a fully cognisant and fully FATCA compliant naturalised US citizen who had decided to retire back home to Europe after a stressful medical career in the US. My bank closed my account within a month of arriving and I could not find another one who would touch me despite being ‘compliant’ and owning an apartment for 20 yrs with utility bills to pay. I wish I had lied, I have an EU passport and birthplace, but I had opened my accounts with that toxic blue book.! It was no brainer to renounce, I certainly did not want to be forced back to live as a prisoner in the US.
But I really speak for others who had no idea of the citizenships or the demands the US had forced on them. They perhaps were born abroad to US parents and lived all their lives abroad and not claimed US citizenship or they were accidentals, born in the US , but never lived or worked there. They have never considered themselves as Americans, are you really telling them that ethically they should admit to something that they are not?!
You cannot impose your values on others.
@iota
Lol, how about the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse all speaking the fatca devil’s alphabet.
@heidi – 🙂
The Astro-turfing video is very interesting (and very short -like 10′). I am NOT putting this here as any comment about Jay or anyone else in particular. Since I have never really “clued-in” to what astro-turfing is, I AM putting this out there in case other Brockers are like me, are largely unaware of this. Because we are a trusting community, we may have unwittingly been victims of this. Often.
Hallmarks of Astro-turfing
1) Inflammatory words are used to discredit the subject/subjects.
crank quacks nutty lies paranoid psudeo conspiracy
2) the concept of “debunking a myth” is put forward but the concept is not a myth at all.
3) It is not an issue that is attacked but the person, persons or organization around it that are attacked
4) skepticism is created for those exposing the wrongdoing rather than the wrongdoing itself; i.e., those who are questioning authority are being attacked rather than the authority who should be attacked.
What Ms. Atkinson describes at the beginning is a process that all of us would use to try and adequately educate ourselves/research using any number of internet sources. What she demonstrates, is shocking. I believe we are seeing this all the time on Brock, we just don’t know it (yet).
Please DO watch this video (TED talk). And even the second one where Ms.Atkinson is addressing a hearing. It definitely speaks to the fact that the government(s) more and more, are trying to gain control over everything. Think NSA, TPP etc.Sorry, not just governments, but corporations etc. Anybody but us little guys.
@iota is right on.
The book “Witchfinders” by Malcom Gaskill concludes that oracles like Matthew Hopkins (seventeenth-century England’s Witchfinder General) gain prominence to the degree that the places they inhabit start “feeling anxious and vulnerable in an indifferent world….”
Where are people feeling most anxious and vulnerable, and that the world is indifferent?
@Shovel
a bank the US border ?
Well, I’ve watched the video, and I don’t see anything in it that’s news. Media manipulation has been around for a long time, though no doubt it appears in new forms from time to time. In TED talks about media manipulation, for instance, where “drowning out a link between vaccines and autism” is slipped in as an example of “astroturfing” – as though “a link between vaccines and autism” is True, and evil forces are trying to conceal it. No evidence offered, no studies cited
Peer-reviewed studies aren’t perfect, but they’re as good as we’ve got.
@heidi said, “You cannot impose your values on others.”
I have not done this. In none of my statements have I told people what to do. I have merely pointed out that Petros’ advice to lie on bank forms to prevent a government from breaking the law is not sound legal advice, is bad advice, and is unethical. I did not say that lying on bank forms is, by itself, bad advice, but I do think trying to use the justification that you are preventing a government from breaking the law as your excuse, is self delusional.
@iota: I have said nothing to diminish the suffering and stress Americans abroad have endured because of CBT, FATCA and FBAR. Nor have I said that Americans abroad should provide the U.S. Government or their local financial institutions with information about their possible U.S. citizenship (nor have I said that Americans should withhold that information). I have, however, noted that both providing information, true, false, or otherwise; and withholding information come with potential consequences that should be weighed carefully.
@Patricia Moon: none of these astro-turfing definitions apply to my comments on this thread.
@Petros: While I don’t agree that CBT rises to the level of a human rights abuse; I am opposed to CBT, FATCA and FBAR. I have made no arguments against your position that CBT is unfair, should be internationally unlawful, and is unjustifiable. You keep trying to get me to argue with you on topics where we are already in essential agreement.
You cast suspicion upon my statements that I have been reading this site for some years and that I have been a supporter of this site. You have called me a condor and as much as called me a liar when I stated that I am a businessman. You have invested much emotion in trying to get me to argue with your comments, even when I have not disagreed with them or made any comment on them. YOU are the one who has made ad hominem attacks against me. It is not ad hominem for me to state that you have done so.
I continue to watch this thread develop with much fascination.
The pro-vaccine movement is supported by big business. The contrary is not true. So don’t expect astroturfers from the anti-vaccine side.
@Jay I do not see how anything I say against your dogmatic positions can be ad hominem, when you are not a real person.
Petros– I appreciate your writing these principles and please keep them coming. While this website has focused largely on the legal and human tragedy aspects of the crime of CBT, your philosophy helps put in perspective. It is like reading Epictetus when you’re depressed and I for one greatly appreciate it.