Fabien Leharge spoke very well on France’s TV5 about the injustices of the implementation of the American FATCA law in France, and how it discriminates in particular against French citizens who happen to have been born in the USA but who didn’t stay their long enough really to consider themselves Americans. But now their own country of France is treating them as foreigners.
Featured in this segment is the story of Diego Cesari who was about to buy a house in France. But because of his USA birthplace, no bank in France would lend him the money until he could prove that he had made it right with the IRS. A few months after his birth in California, his family left the USA definitively. His memory of the USA is based on a few photos and a birth certificate. Near the end of the interview he says, “I have no ties with USA. I mean listen to my accent–I would say that I have really assimilated a good French rather than an ‘American’.”
This is embarrassing for both the governments of France and the United States. When will these human rights abuses end?
“There is a recent Japanese law (2011?) that requires residents to report overseas assets over a certain value (¥500,000?)”
50 million yen. It’s really hard to find the form for it too. In 2016 I happened to see an article in English about it, saying that there are two forms that look alike but have subtle differences. It seems I use the wrong form, but I couldn’t find the right one. The National Taxation Agency didn’t complain though.
I also reported one year when my overseas assets were below 50 million yen, because I’d reported in previous years and was afraid they might be suspicious if I stopped reporting. They didn’t complain about the unnecessary report.
I don’t know what mechanisms they used in the past. I’m not sure if ordinary kaishain (company employees) were caught or if it was only executives.
Lacking definative proof, we can only record what we observe and report it to start building the body of evidence.
It seems, heavy on “seems”, that there has been a change from catching only the whales to now smaller fish too. If the reporting of interest earned abroad is a new requirement, As I understand it to be, then an ordinary kaishain getting “caught” may indeed indicate a sharing of information from the US to Japan.
I include this for further thought
“Judge Rules in Favor Of IRS and Treasury Department on FATCA Reporting
SATURDAY, MARCH 01, 2014 – MANUEL E. PRAVIA, CPA
A federal judge has ruled that U.S. banks must report the interest earned by nonresident alien (NRA) depositors to the IRS so that the information is available to exchange under inter-governmental agreements between the U.S. Treasury Department and its counterpart agencies.
These agreements were part of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), passed in March of 2010. FATCA was enacted as an attempt to crack-down on income tax evasion by non- resident aliens, and the federal court ruling may have cleared away some of the opposition to its implementation. ”
“The court states, “…reciprocity is the key to success. If the United States does not gather and report tax information for foreign accountholders, then other countries have little incentive to provide us with similar information.” “
In the 1930’s or 1940’s, the US implemented an agreemeent to provide Canada with information that the US government collected on interest payments to bank accounts of residents of Canada.