Badger
Submitted on 2016/03/17 at 1:07 pm
IRS commissioner Koskinen: Congress approval needed for CRS
By: Helen Burggraf | 16 Mar 2016

http://www.internationalinvestment.net/regions/irs-commissioner-koskinen-congress-approval-needed-for-crs/

..”.Koskinen was quoted by various tax industry journals as saying that the reason the US hasn’t signed up to the CRS was because “we [the IRS] don’t have the legal authority to provide – on a reciprocal basis – the range of information the other countries are prepared to share with each other and with us..”…..
…
“…….According to LexisNexis.com, one of the publications to cover Koskinen’s remarks, there are “questions…about how much data the IRS can share about individual taxpayers under the existing statutory framework”.

But Koskinen insisted that the IRS was engaging in the OECD’s efforts to establish the reporting system, in spite of the fact that for now, it is not a signatory, nor likely to be for the foreseeable future…..”…….

..”.Some observers have suggested that the US, by remaining outside the CRS, would become a de facto tax haven, by virtue of the fact that its bilateral FATCA agreements don’t cover as many areas of information as the CRS will…”…..

…..”…the legislation that eventually became FATCA failed several times to make it through Congress, and, some critics say, might not have in 2010, had it not been buried inside a domestic jobs bill, the HIRE Act, and thus received little attention.”

AND, following this advice to post…

Deckard1138
Submitted on 2016/03/17 at 1:48 pm

This is a stunning admission by IRS commissioner Koskinen which has huge legal and diplomatic implications:

“…Koskinen was quoted by various tax industry journals as saying that the reason the US hasn’t signed up to the CRS was because “we [the IRS] don’t have the legal authority to provide – on a reciprocal basis – the range of information the other countries are prepared to share with each other and with us”…

I can’t wait to see the reaction from various IGA signatories, especially countries like India, which bet the farm – and their government’s entire reputations – on false FATCA reciprocity with the intent to recover “black money”. As we knew all along, they’ve been duped – and the IRS emperor has no clothes.

March 4, 2016, Troy Lewis – “AICPA Pushes to Ease Tax Burden on U.S.-Canada Accounts”

The American Institute of CPAs is asking the Treasury Department to provide tax relief to the cross-border savings accounts of U.S. and Canadian citizens.

In a letter that the AICPA sent Friday to the U.S. Treasury Department, the Institute asked the Treasury to adopt three specific recommendations that would provide tax relief to citizens of the United States and Canada who have various cross-border deferred and tax-exempt savings accounts which are often subjected to double taxation and unexpected current inclusion in income.

In addition, the AICPA urged the Treasury Department to work with the Canadian Department of Finance to provide similar relief as appropriate.  Requests comparable to the AICPA’s are being submitted by the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada) to the Canadian Department of Finance and by The American Chamber of Commerce in Canada (AmCham Canada) to both the U.S. Treasury and Canadian Department of Finance.

In the March 4, letter, AICPA Tax Executive Committee chair Troy K. Lewis explained that both the U.S. and Canada have tax provisions that allow individuals to establish tax-deferred and/or tax-exempt savings accounts. Article XVIII of the United States-Canada Income Tax Convention and associated protocols provides bilateral deferral of tax or inclusion in income for various qualified or registered pension or retirement plans, he wrote, but does not provide any relief from double taxation or current inclusion in income for other plans and accounts such as education plans, disability savings plans and, under certain circumstances, Roth IRAs.

…

Lewis identified individuals who are impacted as Americans living in Canada, Canadians living in the U.S., Americans living in the U.S. who contributed to Canadian plans while living in Canada and Canadians living in Canada who contributed to a U.S. plan while living in the U.S.

“Frequently, a cross-border move will result in adverse tax consequences such as unanticipated inclusion in income of amounts saved in a tax-deferred or tax-exempt account which may require the cross border individual to liquidate the accounts to avoid the adverse tax consequences,” said Lewis. “Often, the forced liquidation itself can result in unanticipated taxable income.  Furthermore, the U.S. imposes complex reporting requirements, such as those regarding foreign trusts and Passive Foreign Investment Companies (PFIC), for individuals participating in Canadian plans. These tax implications can adversely impact the individuals and their families, the social objectives of the countries and cross-border mobility.”

In the letter, Lewis wrote that the AICPA recommends that Treasury implement the following measures in order to reduce the tax and reporting burdens associated with various cross-border deferred and tax-exempt savings accounts:

1. Provide U.S. citizens and residents tax-deferred or tax-exempt treatment, comparable to that offered by Canada to its citizens and residents, for their contributions, income and withdrawals from properly established Canadian Registered Education Savings Plans (RESP), Canadian Registered Disability Savings Plans (RDSP) and Canadian Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA).

2. Exempt properly established Canadian RESP, RDSP and TFSA from classification as grantor trusts.  Additionally, exempt U.S. citizens and residents from various onerous statutory filing requirements for foreign trusts and PFICs which can currently exist for these plans.

3. Work with their Canadian counterparts at Finance Canada to provide similar relief from taxation and burdensome reporting requirements for Canadian citizens and residents who hold and contribute to properly established 529 Plans, qualified ABLE (Achieving a Better Life Experience) accounts and Roth IRAs in the United States.

Forty minutes of more FATCA education for every *Government Abroad* (outside the USA)…

And, our Canadian government representatives – whichever stripe (past Conservatives or present Liberals), you haven’t been listening or comprehending.  You have been and remain to be negligent on behalf of *US Person* Canadians as well as all Canadians.

Jim Jatras reminds us — and many here at Brock have certainly provided information from the December 15, 2012 video below to our Canadian government representatives,

Frankly, this would have been a helluva lot easier a few years ago (there’s not much I said in this new video I didn’t say in 2012…

…but the chickens keep roosting with no push-back.

Getting Charter rights right.

John Richardson says at http://www.citizenshipsolutions.ca/2014/06/17/john-richardson-interviews-andrew-grossman-march-1614-montreal/

“On March 16, 2014, as part of my “Solving The Problems of U.S. Citizenship” seminars,  I participated, along with Professor Allison Christians and lawyer Andrew Grossman in a “FATCA – U.S. citizenship” seminar at McGill law school. A summary of Professor Christians’s FATCA presentation is here.

After the FATCA information session, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Grossman. The interview focused on many aspects of U.S. citizenship. Some topics discussed ranged from the very academic to the very practical.

The interview underscores the fact that the law of U.S. citizenship is very complicated. Those who were NOT born in the United States, should not presume that they are U.S. citizens. Further inquiry to determine whether you are  a U.S. citizen is advisable.

Every person who is concerned by the “whether and what of U.S. citizenship” (or is consideringrelinquishing U.S. citizenship) will find some aspect of this interview to be of interest.

Thanks to Mr. Grossman for allowing me to interview him.”

Thanks, Lynne Swanson.  Cross-posting from MapleSandbox.ca:

Error For those considering their US vote, @NoGo suggests this tweet on candidates as a post for Brock…

https://twitter.com/bracing/status/693567510856220672

Dear @BernieSanders Please–inform yourself of #FATCA‘s harmful effects on ALL US expats. It’s major for us.

 
Barbara has spotted it from Huffington Post and John Richardson has already written about it at citizenshipsolutions.ca.
 
The following is a cross-post to Brock from citizenshipsolutions.ca
 

Cruz Bill Eases Revocations of U.S. Citizenship Without Due Process https://t.co/L1tcQUXUsZ via @HuffPostPol

— Citizenship Lawyer (@ExpatriationLaw) January 20, 2016

 
By the time I had received this fascinating “hot off the press” information from a U.S. law firm, I had read the article referenced in the above tweet. The article is written by David Bier who is an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. It has generated interesting discussion at Keith Redmond’s  “American Expatriates Facebook Group“.Yes, it’s true, Canadian born, U.S. presidential candidate Ted Cruz, has introduced a bill threatening people with the loss of U.S. citizenship (notwithstanding that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that U.S. citizenship belongs to the citizen and NOT to the government). It is clear that Senator Cruz, hearkening back to the days of the Viet Nam era and before, is of the view that U.S. citizens remain citizens only as long as Congress allows them to. The purpose of the revocation of citizenship is to provide a mechanism to keep them out of the United States. This is is a form of “border control” – a “Cruz concern” as evidenced by the following @SenTedCruz tweet:
 

Border security is national security. We must take basic steps to protect American citizens https://t.co/vvZx2y4vg7 https://t.co/3qhMSIfAHN

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 20, 2016

 
The article in the Huffington Post is remarkably well researched and provides a reasonable overview of the issue.
 
See for example:
Continue reading →

JC has spotted this.  Allison Christians welcomes comments on her work in progress.

Bubblebustin says:

Allison supports incremental changes, as she’s convinced that the US is incapable of going right to RBT. I believe that if US legislators are capable of seeing how it should make it easy for people like Tina to exit the system, it will realize that there’s something really wrong in preferring taxpayers over citizens.

DRAFT Abstract: Uncle Sam Wants … Who? A Global Perspective on Citizenship Taxation Allison Christians McGill University – Faculty of Law January 18, 2016

Monday, January 18, 2016