Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

Posted on by Posted in Issues regarding US persons abroad 11 Comments

Updated April 11, 2020 to include the information in the following tweet:

Back to the original post of April 10, 2020

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This is the third post in which I have discussed the plight of Accidental Americans in Europe. In my first post I discussed the message from the Homeland, delivered by Chip Harter to the European Union. The message was that Accidentals should Either file U.S. taxes or renounce U.S. citizenship. In my second post I discussed the message from the Home country, by Mr. Gentiloni – the European Parliament’s message to Accidentals. This message was: Nationality ties come with obligations including paying taxes to America. These messages came only days apart. To say that European Accidentals are having a bad month would be an understatement.

The war on Accidental Americans escalates

Absent a significant reversal of fortunes, history will record that 2020 was a bad year Accidentals.

It’s clear that European Accidental Americans are under attack from both sides. Specifically they are being attacked from the American side of the Atlantic by the Homeland. They are being attacked from the European side by the Home country. Note that secondary support is provided to America (the Homeland) by the US tax compliance industry. Secondary support is provided to Europe (the Home Country) by European banks.

The Gentiloni Doctrine: The assumptions of the war have fundamentally changed

The Gentiloni letter is a formal surrender to America. Mr. Gentiloni has agreed that Accidental Americans are Americans and not Europeans. He has abandoned (in a way that is reminiscent of the Vichy regime) the defence of European citizens. He has agreed that Accidental Americans are the property of the United States. He agrees that US property (Accidental Americans) have been living on European soil.

Should European countries pay compensation to America?

This raises the additional question of whether European countries should pay compensation to America for allowing US property to live on European soil. By allowing Accidentals to live in Europe, European countries have deprived the United States of the fruits of their labour. These people could have been living in American and paying taxes to America! Should the compensation paid by Europe to America, be the taxes that would have been owed to America (without considering foreign tax credits and/or the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion)?

Perhaps FATCA compliance should be viewed as reasonable compensation payable to America? Perhaps the scope of FATCA reporting could be increase?

The great question of the American age may be:

What should be the principles that determine the compensation countries should pay America for allowing US citizens to live on their soil (evading American taxes by using tax credits and FEIE)?

So, what’s a poor Accidental to do?

They have four choices:

1. Ignore the whole thing

2. Renounce US citizenship

3. Hide

4. File US tax and information returns

A possible fifth option from Belgrade …

Conclusion and bottom line …

FATCA and citizenship-based taxation are part of a broader war that the United States is carrying on against the world. The beauty of this war is that, the United States has figured out how to get the rest of the world to pay for the US war against the world! It’s truly the American way!

11 thoughts on “European Accidental Americans under attack from both the Homeland and from their Home Country”

  2. Sophie In’t Veld targets in her letter the extraordinary statement from the EU Commissioner:

    “Nationality ties, even when acquired by ‘accident’, come together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties, including paying taxes in the United States for [‘]US citizens[‘].”

  3. Fatca enforcers are on a fool’s errand if they believe they will find magical tax revenues, amounting to untold billions, hidden in foreign banks by guileful expats.
    Most expats I’ve met even before FATCA were “thousandaires”, and finding out that making it abroad was even tougher than it was in the US.
    At one time Switzerland -and in particular Geneva -had a huge colony of US expats. Many were diplomats and family, but the majority worked for big international corporations like IBM, Dupont, Coca-Cola, Union Carbide and Caterpillar…etc. All this back in the sixties, seventies and early eighties. Geneva actually boasted the American Women’s Club with well over a thousand members, and had it’s a monthly newsletter. All of that is gone, dead, done and dusted. I suppose I could get official numbers from the Geneva Controle des Habitants, if I could bother, but I doubt that there’s one thousand US expats in the entire country today and most of them are hiding under their beds.

    Big companies and big money began leaving Switzerland forty years ago. I seriously doubt there’s any US expat millionaires permanently residing here. They’d be crazy if they did.

    What’s left from those heady days of expat affluence, expat parties and women’s social clubs in Switzerland? In a word, f#kall. I doubt there’s enough expat money, all scraped together by the IRS, to pay for the booze of a congressional cocktail party.

  4. ” Fatca enforcers are on a fool’s errand if they believe they will find magical tax revenues, amounting to untold billions, hidden in foreign banks by guileful expats.”

    They may be on a fool’s errand but what is really relevant here is that the US is running this circus and no one has the gonads to stop them.
    One may criticize the bully no end but at a certain point ,you have to wonder if the real culprits to blame aren’t the UE heads of state who hang their own citzens out to dry. The EU is following the old axiom :
    Money(or black mail) talks while sh*t (accidentals) walks. Clear and simple.

  6. Happy to see Ms In’t Veld is taking Commissioner Gentiloni to task and insisting on knowing what he did to come to this conclusion, just like I’d like to know how Mr Harter came to his conclusion that the hardships people are experiencing re FATCA are merely “anecdotal”. This prevailing attitude by these bureaucrats is reminiscent of the US Treasury’s claim that the Regulatory Flexibility Act was adhered to when they created regulations for the Transition Tax. Monte Silver says prove it!

    All other governments consider their citizenships to be second rate to the US’.

  7. @Suzanne

    I commented someplace else ti look at these internal Treasury Department emails below. While they don’t have much to do with FATCA(there are some mentions though) it gives you an idea how these people think internally(At least in the Obama years).

    https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/07072016_oi_tbtj_sr.pdf

    While I am still trying to take in and determine my views of the above email dump which I just came across on Thursday my first impression is the Treasury Department and the people who work there(Again at least under Obama) tend to stick to very repetitive and specific talking points to hide the fact they really don’t understand complex issues. To be fair everyone including myself uses talking points but I suspect if a neutral third party looked at the private discussions I have with people like John Richardson and Karen Alpert they would look far more encompassing. Yes I emphasize things that make “our” case look stronger but I also understand and acknowledge those things that makes our case look weaker.

    At first I thought in those Treasury emails they just seem very broken recordy but they more I have thought about it I get the feeling they simply don’t understand intellectual arguments other than ones they came up with.

  8. My legal team has been liaising with the European institutions (following the courageous petition filed by Jude) to demonstrate the existence of what appears to be a political cover up. With the help of documents unearthed by Sophie, my legal team has demonstrated that the Commission was actively involved in the dialogue with the US and fully supported the IGAs. Although the Commission put data protection on the agenda as early as 2011, negotiations surrounding the development of a government-to-government approach gained pace. By the time the US and five EU Member States signed the Joint Declaration on 7 February 2012 that paved the way to the publication of the first IGA Model on 7 July 2012, the IGA train had already left the station. By the time the European data protection authorities published their damning opinion on 21 June 2012, it was too late. The UK signed the first IGA two months later and the other EU Member States followed suit in short succession. Since then, the Commission has publicly denied any involvement with the IGA or that they raise any data protection issues. This is all rather disgraceful, and as I am sure that you will appreciate, a huge amount of work is necessary to bring the fight to the door of the EU. This legal challenge urgently needs support from EVERYONE who has been affected by FATCA. Please pledge and share: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/fatcahmrcprivacybreach/

  9. @Robert Ross,
    You are 100% correct Robert. The time to resist was ten years ago. Now the EU career diplomats and politicians are nothing more than institutionalized battered wives.

  10. @Stephen Kish

    I am getting a little bit off topic but I do feel this Twitter thread has some relevance and goes back to a conversation you and me had a long time I think in the basement of your house.

    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1248794782316494848

    Like there’s a reason that Europe exports left-wing intellectuals( my addition: such as those who strongly support CBT like Gabriel Zucman) to become professors at our universities rather than the other way around — this is where the money is!

    In Canada, the world’s most perfect society, they have real appliances in their houses but also universal health care.

    Seems pretty rad.”

    As you have claimed to many times the University of Toronto right up to the President feels quite strongly it is the “equal” of any US university however, there does seem to be a long standing practice relevant in the areas of tax law and economics of US college professors intensely disliking Canada and Europe for dramatically underpaying their university faculty. Thus in the eyes of many US college professors like Michael Kirch first why would any US Person ever want to live in Canada or the EU given the way Canada and the EU treats it college faculty members(with low pay and low benefits) and generally hostility towards Canada and the EU(i.e. why should Homeland Americans give a damn about US Persons and Accidental Americans when the societies they live in such as Canada and EU treat the most “important” members of society college professors so poorly).

  11. Protest harder, esp. in front of US Embassies. And of course raise the issue in chats. forums, etc with your local elected rep anywhere. Make sure Gentiloni is mentioned as either an idiot (for not understanding the issues) or a traitor to Europe (for understanding them and still choosing to suck the US cock).

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