73 thoughts on “Comment on “Think You Can Leave U.S. – Think Again””

1. I agree with everything written except that there would be no one who would oppose the simplified message. Many I have tried to convince of this believe that cause of all the US’s financial woes are we who live abroad and do jot pay our fair share. Further, they believe that all their financial problems will go away once we are all caught and made to pay.

   Now that the US economy is picking back up, maybe we can hope for these misconceptions to change. I hope so.

2. From the perspective of an American citizen living in Australia since the late 1970’s I would like to point out the obvious that FATCA is adversely affecting US business interests in a globalised world. Lets take Australia for example. China is a rising economic and military power in the Asian region with cashed up Chinese investors buying up Australian properties and bankrolling major infrastructure projects. They even took up a 90 year lease on the port of Darwin in Australia! It is a fact of economic life here that Chinese investment is more than welcome. As for American investments, however, its another story entirely. Australian banks first want to know if you are a “US citizen for tax purposes”. If you say yes they will show you the exit door as it involves too much paperwork, and costs, in order to conform to FATCA filing requirements. It simply is not worth their while. Being classified as a US citizen is increasingly akin to having economic HIV – keep well away lest the disease affects you also! Not a good look for America…

   From talks with Chinese investors here, the word is that the China Development Bank views FATCA very favorably as it acts as a huge disincentive for foreign financial institutions to deal with U.S. financial entities because they might be caught in the FATCA reporting web if US money is involved. Too bad that U.S. politicians seem totally ignorant in this regard.

   As the joke goes: Two multi-billionaire investers walk in to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia wanting to open an account. One is American, the other is “name a nationality”. Who would the bank prefer?

3. The article mentions Accidental Americans who “never applied for a password”.

   I’m an accidental American, left US as an infant. I have no financial ties to the USA. Applied for a passport about 10 years ago, to visit my American relatives. As a formal citizen, I couldn’t enter with a Visa.

   Visited once. With FATCA, I don’t intend to step ever foot again there.

   It’s important to keep in mind that a mere visit isn’t an indication for “citizenship interest”, and is no different than any other tourist visit.

4. @Abey
   You got a US passport. Thats enough for them. I m afraid you are in “wishful thinking” territory.

5. Although I agree that a unified front would be better, it is like trying to negotiate with a personality disorder. They wont listen and they dont care even with the best arguments placed in their laps. I think the EU should step up as well as Australia and Canada. Its like the whole world is beholden to America while America steals from there treasuries.

6. @Abey
   I am afraid you are in a catch 22 situation. They wouldn’t let you have n ESTA or tourist visa even if you wanted one as you were born in the US so they force a US passport on you and then say…too bad, you applied for a US passport which proves you are a US person. You can’t reason with them.
   You may have been able to prove a relinquishing act if you had taken up another citizenship with the ‘intent’ of giving up your US one, but obtaining a US passport since then would have negated that.
   The choice is to renounce or stay out of their way.

7. “Applied for a passport about 10 years ago, to visit my American relatives. As a formal citizen, I couldn’t enter with a Visa.”

   There are many in the same boat, no choice but to get a passport to visit family and yet possession of the passport is more than enough for the CBT advocates to insist that you pay your fair share for the benefits you so clearly “enjoy”.

   After all, persecution, discrimination, reduced life opportunities and the ever present threat of financial ruin for failing to file a form you never heard of means you can get in a shorter line at immigration.

   Be grateful. 🙂

8. I agree with John Richardson’s diagnosis that it is CBT that needs to end, however, it is no mystery as to why the various expat organisations disagree on message.

   America’s CBT policy has been in effect basically since the Civil War. It’s just that there was never a way for the government to enforce it until FATCA gave it teeth. The groups that fight for repeal of or changes to FATCA see it as the instigator of all the problems now associated with US personhood abroad. True as that may be (having myself resided in a foreign country subject to American CBT with no negative consequences until FATCA arrived), getting rid of FATCA would not change anything anymore. If FATCA was repealed, we’d be staring down the barrel of a GATCA or, at the very least, CRS.

   I, personally, don’t believe FATCA will ever go away. The US relishes the fact it was negotiated completely on its own terms and can fail to reciprocate indefinitely. How weak would they appear in the eyes of the world if they admitted what an abject failure it was? Anyone who believes they can convince the US government to dump FATCA is deluding themselves.

   So, yes, I agree whole-heartedly that it is CBT that needs to go, independent of FATCA because that (or a variant of it) is here to stay. Abolishing CBT and moving to RBT, as practiced by the rest of the civilised world, is the only way to provide relief.

   So where does all the partisanship come from and why do all attempts at change fail? Firstly, we need to address the fact that US persons abroad form a majority block of non-voters and therefore cannot exert any political power. Accidentals don’t (or can’t vote); minors can’t vote; and LTRs (esp. with dual citizenship) don’t participate in US elections either because American politics are foreign to them OR they simply don’t wish to attract attention, choosing instead to remain invisible to the US government. Additionally, you’ve got US citizens doing short-term stints in another country and military personnel, both of whom belong to the group dubbed as “homelanders abroad” and who generally aren’t confronted with CBT/FATCA issues. The only people left with any clout are a miniscule block of eligible voters who are familiar with the two-party system, but – for lack of a better alternative – go with the flow and throw their weight behind a partisan organisation.

   As I see it, there aren’t enough US persons around the world with voting influence that could unite and exert enough pressure on the US government from within. The only way to facilitate change is to get countries to take a stand against US policy based on violations of its treaties and human rights, or by illustrating a discrepancy in the treatment of those countries’ own citizens, be they accidentals or duals, who suffer from unfair application of foreign (to them) US tax policy and banking discrimination.

   Polly says, “Its like the whole world is beholden to America…” Yes, that is the biggest stumbling block in getting all of our respective countries of residence/citizenship to stand up for us. It’s the continued use of the petro-dollar as THE reserve currency. It’s NATO members being pressured by the US to spend 2% GDP on military – purchasing weapons from America . It’s allowing the US to have nearly a thousand military bases around the world. It’s trade agreements that mainly benefit US corporations. It’s idly observing the American invasion and occupation of countries rich with oil and other minerals. It’s letting the US back out of climate accords. It’s abiding a president who provokes volatile world leaders via Twitter. Basically, the world has stood by, watching the US turn on its own founding principles and grow into a petulant child that grabs anything it wants because no one ever tells him “NO!”

   My disconsolateness with US policy has intensified greatly in recent months. It seems the more I learn, the more dejected I become about the situation. Like Polly, I also wish the rest of the world wake up to the imperialism, to the subtle encroachment on sovereignity, to the erosion of tax bases, to the restriction of freedom…

   I honestly don’t know what it is going to take.

9. We can all go on talking about this forever. Little will be done from the US side. Let’s face it, a country that isn’t even able to change gun laws, in the face of daily mass shooting massacres, including the mass killing of toddlers and young students, is certainly not able to amend tax laws that damage and ruin the country. People must accept the reality. The U.S. is in a self-destruct mode and getting rid of FATCA, CBT and all of the other injustices are far down on the repair list of that country.
   The only hope for relief from FATCA and CBT will come when other countries put a stop to this insanity, either through their own legislation making taxation of money earned in and property linked to their country illegal and extortion of their citizens, who sadly had the misfortune of being connected to the U.S. at some point illegal as well. Such legislation will certainly come, as many governments are now aware of the racket that the U.S. created and how, under the guise of fighting tax evasion, have managed to extort funds from and enter into the tax base of other countries’ economies. They also managed to get other countries to pay for their tax dragnet extortion racket and get them to renounce being any sort of tax haven, only to fill the void that they left and now the U.S. has become one of the most important tax havens in the world.. The U.S. did not respect reciprocity in the FATCA agreements that were signed under threat and now few major powers will let that situation continue for much longer. Nice try U.S. The world sees through this charade and I do think that there will soon be relief, but not from the U.S. side. It will be imposed from international bodies, i.e. the E.U. and others.

10. Although I voted Obama and Clinton, I did so quite aware of how terribly, horrifyingly effective and efficient the US was and would have been in various international settings, from the Transpacific to the Transatlantic treaties, under their management. I personally viewed the latter, the Transatlantic treaty, as quite toxic for Europe, and was very happy when the thing stalled. It might have been rekindled under a Clinton administration. The Obama administration was well-liked abroad and was able to get FATCA and IGAs passed because of soft power and global goodwill.

    Trump, and Republicans, actually work to make America weaker, less influential, and therefore less of a legal and economic empire. Therefore I had (have) some hope that the new administration, and GOP control of Congress, would change things for us. We shall see. But the “deep state” and inertia, not to mention some Republicans, will keep things functioning for a while, until Trump is replaced.

    Hopefully, though, the Trump experience, the lack of reciprocity, and the noise we are collectively making, will, as David says, prompt various countries and groups of countries to be both less afraid and more proactive when facing the US in this matter. If by some miracle, for instance, the IGAs could be invalidated by the US, future administrations would have a much tougher time, I hope, reinstating similar agreements.

11. In a certain sense, as I have written elsewhere, the worse it gets — the more ludicrous and violative of basic logic, humanity and human rights (recognised or not in law) — the better it is for the “campaign”. American concepts of law are ill understood in the civil-law system, and the financial world, the FFIs, have been cowed by threats of exclusion from the US capital market. At some point, foreign States will resist, but that point is not yet and might not even be in my lifetime. But there are obscure points of European and international law that have yet to be raised.

    An example: If Treasury gets, as they seem to want, a reciprocal tax debt collection with the UK and the treaty provision excepts, as all others do, citizens of the requested country how will Irish (let alone EU/EEA/Swiss citizens pre-Brexit) be treated when they are not “aliens” in Britain (Ireland Act 1949)? Will foreign countries issue travel documents to American citizens whose US passports have been revoked? They certainly did in the case of post-1979 Iranians, and still do when it suits them.

    But that is now, and there’s a future that will be different. Typically foreign countries do react, with blocking statutes, with the kind of legislative overrides of treaties that the USA has done as a matter of course.

    The IRS is a collection agency. The very poor abroad have little to worry about, at least if they have another passport. The very rich have ways around the system. (One reason I have not taken paying clients for years is that it became clear that multi-millionaires and billionaires abroad scorned the US tax system: the Panama and Paradise Papers and Luxembourg Leaks only touched the surface. I don’t want to become the target, as I would have, of persecution and prosecution on behalf of anybody, least of all those who, themselves, have practical immunity.)

    And as for Meagan Markle: the Royal Family have sovereign immunity. And from my own diplomatic career I am aware that sensitive cases get social treatment.

    I’ve written everything i know, in bibliographic form. It will be published in NYU Law School’s GlobaLex series once edited, in a few weeks or a couple of months. Search engine: ‘globalex fatca’ should find it. But it will need an annual update.

    The article lists every known prosecution and civil litigation on the subject. Notice that nobody has been pursued abroad without somehow volunteered to come within the notice and jurisdiction of the authorities.

    We don’t have reliable statistics on much. But what we do have suggests that: (1) there aren’t 9 million Americans abroad, but there are a lot of them and (2) most of them are still not filing anything with the IRS.

    The big question, as John Richardson knows, is: “Who is an American citizen anyway?” Just because the US Government claims John Doe as an American does not make him such if he has never availed himself of an attribute of US nationality, But what if he has? It is now clear that foreign countries are not obliged to recognise the nationality (or lack thereof, i.e. statelessness) of anybody, at least under domestic law. But to take advantage of that right of States, some State has to care. There has to be hardship, terror, and a violation of the paramount national interests of some country, enough to make them resist. Up until now, it is the USA that has quietly resolved such cases (sovereign immunity, accidental Americans about to be posted as diplomats or consuls or officials of international organisations in the USA, and so on).

    In other words: the USG knows, as I do as a former mid-ranking official, that it is best off avoiding confrontation. In any case, this untenable situation was created by (1) a vindictive Congress, and (2) by a shortsighted Supreme Court that couldn’t imagine U.S. citizenship being anything but a positive, valuable asset for anybody. Still: there are zillions of cases of doubtful US citizenship and as the Supreme Court case Hizam v. Clinton (formerly Kerry) tell us: erroneous attribution of US citizenship (in that case through a tragic consular error) leads to the revocation of that citizenship as a matter of law.

12. From the NTA Purple Book, for what it’s worth:

    https://taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/Media/Default/Documents/2017-ARC/ARC17_PurpleBook_02_ImproveFiling_j.pdf

    Purple seems to be the colour of “Meh!”, for all the response these recommendations ever get.

13. @David. The countries and individual foreign banks in Model 1 countries all had to sign and get a GIN number as FATCA compliant. Banks all over the world had to be compliant in order to exist trading in USD. Threat to the banking system was such that they were all scared into hiring expensive teams for compliances and in the end better option was to get rid of US citizens alltogether saving themselves money. Face it people this is the dark reality, US is never going to give up FATCA or CBT no matter what. It has too many issues to deal with nowadays like gun control, wars on different fronts and there is never going to be a complete successful gun control. Americans have a different mindset than Swiss as discussed earlier and nothing is going to change that. Best option again is to renounce and eliminate all your problems.

14. @Embee I saw the purple book and I like that but FATCA hurts wherever you are. The banks are too spooked these days to open an account for most residents of the world. Maybe in Canada and Australia it can happen but rest of the world would still have problems. The true harm is done by CBT and FATCA not SCE.

15. Why no CBT repeal? There are other factors besides the ones listed above.

    4. No “offsets.” Accounting for CBT repeal would mean, in theory, the disappearance of revenues which would then have to be “offset” by taxes (or something) on something else. But almost any such proposal would attract political opposition greater than what US persons overseas are able to muster.

    5. Anticipated difficulty of tracking who is, or is not, a US resident for this purpose. For the same of comparison, Canada has a bunch of forms you have to fill out, plus a transition period. The USA would have to establish all this from scratch (that is, unless you expect them to just not bother).

    6. The inevitability that the wealthy will use CBT as a means of avoiding / evading taxes. Come to think of it, this might be an argument *for* repeal, political influences being what they are, but as far as the IRS is concerned, it’s a bit like telling your dog it can’t have any of the steak you’re eating.

16. (sake of comparison)

17. @Zla’od. Which planet are you living in? The wealthy always have some ways of evading /reducing taxes paid. Ever look into ex Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. He paid lots less due to his attorneys devising some kind of tax reducing scheme by incorporating an offshore form to hold his interests and him being a local beneficiary to pay lower taxes. The other rich all over the world have structures devised by highly paid tax attorneys in avoidance of taxes. Only the poor like us pay their taxes and put up with compliance nightmares. It is tax attorneys who devise those laws being passed in Congress and only they know the loopholes to get around them. Good luck on repeal of CBT or TTFI even as even TTFI would not help if the CBT is not laid to rest forever and FATCA is shelved completely. But US govt can’t face embarrassment and it needs whatever trinkets it can get. I will be out of this zoo soon.

18. @Harrison

    Us poor folk in Canada aren’t real troubled by this. Ignore the IRS, lie to the bank, done. Pas de problem.

19. Yes- the banks and the almighty dollar along with the US markets. Thats why resistance would only work if there was a united front. America can also not exist without the rest of the world. If one country falls it would be used as the example. But if all countries banded together to say “We will not accept this” then I think America would have its hands tied. I think even the Obama regime was astounded that their plan to implement FATCA worked. All the world would have had to do was give a united “no”. But they fell one by one.

20. “But they fell one by one.”

    Most of the powers that be in these countries still don’t even realise what they have done and what they have allowed the USA to do. How many signing these IGA’s had the slightest idea that they would be allowing the USA to terrorise their own citizens for taxation and penalties?

    I would suggest very few.

    I met someone working with the local council the other day who had some awareness of FATCA through his job, though he wasn’t particularly forthcoming about what that was.

    When I asked him what he thought of the USA terrorising the resident citizens of the UK for penalties and taxation he actually laughed.

    I was quite wrong he said, “it’s a mutual exchange of information to prevent the British hiding money in the USA and Americans hiding money in the UK”.

    Yea, right…..

21. Yeah. The tax treaties and IGAs. I’ve studied the ones in my country. I don’t know what kind of special morons the signees had to be in order to agree to those. Either the level of goodwill was too high, or they were too blue-eyed to realise what they had signed and what ill-effects might ensue. Let’s just say the people involved were less than visionary when it came to extrapolating any kind of consequences. Hardly surprising. The ones in these government positions didn’t get there because of what they know, rather, who they rubbed elbows with. They don’t understand the legal babble any better than most of us do, so the BS slides through unnoticed.

22. @Petlover. No country or banks had a choice as they were threatened by the most powerful country in the world where they hold USD correspondent accounts. They would rather ditch you than get shafted by 30 percent withholding taxes.

    @Nononymous. Well we are not lucky as you all from Canada are. I kick myself everyday for not applying for Canadian residency when I was offered a job along with a Canadian residency. US was simply not worth it.

23. @Harrison
    The tax treaty in my country was signed in 2002, long before FATCA and any threats of withholding. Still, the US was able to include the savings clause without Austria noticing what detrimental effects it was opening itself to in terms of its sovereign taxing rights. In my opinion this happens because so-called diplomats are just ordinary people who have been appointed to their positions as opposed to having truly earned their assignment through diligence. I should actually show a bit more respect for my county’s signees because they managed to except an above-average number of articles from the savings clause. We also used to have quite a good totalisation agreement, but it expired in 2016 and nothing appears to have extended or replaced it. The IGAs are an entirely different issue as far as actual consent amony the consignatory nations goes.

24. Laurainparis: great article! If nothing else, you have made more people aware of our issue with your article and with your contacting Thom Hartmann. Well done!

    Mike: that guy on the “local council” should be spending a day or two in our shoes, shouldn’t he. It’s impossible to fathom how people can write off our concerns so flippantly. Obviously he knew next to nothing about the issue. It’s good that people like you are out there to help set them straight.

25. @Mike

    “it’s a mutual exchange of information to prevent the British hiding money in the USA and Americans hiding money in the UK”.

    I know trying to discuss the facts with guys like that is like talking to a fence post but I’d sure like hear him explain how he figures an American living in the UK who has a UK bank account is hiding anything from anybody. Of course, if he really believes that the US actually reciprocates (i.e. a mutual exchange), he’ll believe anything.