The World Today hour 4, starts at 3:10.
McComb’s March 5 interview with Petros is available here.
Author Archives: Petros
Get your assets out of the United States before it is too late
I’ve been saying for about three years now that US citizens abroad and all foreign investors should liquidate their US assets and expatriate them. It now looks like it is too late for a few of Putin’s best friends:
Obama Issues Executive Order Freezing Assets Of Seven Putin Aides
I’m not sure about the legality of seizing private property without due process of law (cf. Fifth Amendment). But rule of law has never been Barack Obama’s strong point.
Shadow Raider explains the difference between US “nationality” and US “citizenship”
Shadow Raider made the following comment:
Due to the extreme difficulty in having a decent discussion about CBT with Congress, I decided to start a plan B. I’m not abandoning the RBT proposal, but I see that it’s going to take a long time, so I came up with an alternative that may work in the meantime. I’ll explain it below.
In US law, nationality and citizenship are not exactly the same thing. Citizenship is actually a subset of nationality, so all US citizens are also US nationals, but it is possible to be a US national without citizenship. Such status was historically created for people in US territories, and today it only applies to American Samoa.
Christians & Cockfield: Submission to Finance Dept on FATCA in Canada
Cross posted with permission from Tax, Society & Culture
I have just posted on SSRN a submission to the Canadian Finance Department co-authored by myself and Professor Arthur Cockfield of Queen’s University. Here is the abstract [the full submission can be downloaded here]:
The United States enacted a tax reform in 2010 known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which will impose an extensive third-party monitoring and disclosure regime on financial institutions around the world in an effort to “smoke out” American tax cheats and expose their undeclared foreign assets to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The flow of information from Canadian financial institutions directly to the IRS that is required by FATCA would violate a number of laws in Canada. Accordingly, the United States has requested changes to these laws. The Canadian government now seeks to accommodate these requests in the form of an “intergovernmental agreement” (IGA) with the United States, which will be enacted into law as the Canada–United States Enhanced Tax Information Exchange Agreement Implementation Act (the Implementation Act) pursuant to a proposal released for comment by the Department of Finance. The Department of Finance invited public comments on these documents. We examined the proposed Implementation Act and the IGA and we find that they raise a number of serious issues ranging from likely constitutional violations to violations of international law. We submit these comments in the hope that they will help lawmakers and the public understand that FATCA, while intended to catch tax evaders, is poised instead to impose serious and unjustified harms on people who live around the world as non-resident U.S. citizens and green card holders, as well as their family members and business associates.
I know that some of my good friends and colleagues view FATCA as a net positive step toward a much-needed global automatic information sharing regime, and some have not understood my reasons for caution. I hope that this submission will help explain some of these reasons.
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Canada will have to apologize to Eritrea
My submission to Department of Finance (IGA-AIG@fin.gc.ca), by Peter W. Dunn, PhD
Introduction:
In 2013, the Government of Canada deported head of Eritrean Consulate, Semere Ghebremariam O. Micael, for using the consulate as a base for the collection of a 2% Diaspora tax. CBC’s Meagan Fitzpatrick reported the following (May 29, 2013):
Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to Baird, further explained the decision to expel Micael when he spoke to reporters Wednesday morning.
“We have been very much concerned with the actions of the Eritrean consul general here in Canada. We had asked him at the early stages not to do this, it is contrary to our laws, but our information is that they continued doing it,” said Obhrai. “And so we finally had to take action. We cannot allow our territory to be used for fundraising for other countries.”
Thus, the Canadian government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper took necessary actions to protect Canadians of Eritrean national origin from the tax collecting efforts of Eritrea. With the proposed legislation, however, the government refuses to protect Canadians of United States origin, and therefore, will be in violation of article 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Not only so, but the proposed legislation would violate several rights of Canadians.
Brock Advertisement in Riding of Kerry Lynn Findlay: Minister of National Revenue
The following advertisement spontaneously appeared in the Delta Optimist. This paper appears weekly in the riding of Kerry Lynn Findlay, Minister of National Revenue (Kerry-Lynne.Findlay@parl.gc.ca). We accept free advertising like this from any concerned citizen who wants to try to make an impact. Thanks to the person who did this and sent me the graphics.
UPDATE: Listen Live: Jon McComb CKNW interview at 7:15 pm Eastern Time / 4:15 pm Pacific Time
UPDATE: Sorry folks, the interview wasn’t yesterday, but will air today (March 5) at 4:15 pm Pacific; 7:15 Eastern.
Thanks to the persistence of one read at Isaac Brock, I spoke with Jon McComb of Vancouver’s CKNW, and the interview will play on the live stream at 20:35 Eastern / 17:35 Pacific Time. Subject: FATCA and its impact on so-called US persons in Canada.
Afterwards, the show is available here: http://www.cknw.com/the-world-today/
Solving the problems of U.S. citizenship – Information sessions!
ADMISSION FEE $20 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED (to cover costs)
- Toronto, ON U.S. Citizenship & Young Adults: Navigating The Special Rules Imposed On U.S.Citizens Abroad Sat, June 7, 10 am to 12 noon, Univ of Toronto, St. Michael’s College, Carr Hall, 100 St. Joseph St, MAP NB: $20 individual or $40 for a family of up to four people
Vancouver notes (Feb 22) Updated on March 28 here
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“A man ought not be a slave”: On the natural right to expatriate
Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR), FATCA, Citizenship based taxation, the exit tax, $450 renunciation fee, the requirement to certify five years tax compliance, long lines at US Consulates to renounce, the threat of permanent exile and ten years further taxation after expatriation (Ex-Patriot Act; Reed Amendment), these are obstacles that hinder many so-called Americans from asserting their mobility rights and their fundamental right to change nationalities. Relinquishing US citizenship should be as natural as taking a breath, and so these obstacles fly in face of the freedoms for which early Americans were willing to fight and die:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
These days the Obama vanguard will mercilessly mock you if you mention a Creator, natural law and how the IRS violates constitutional rights like the Fifth Amendment. But when the young country called the USA was still trying to assert its independence from Britain and the Crown, Americans had another view of the right to expatriate. They called it a natural right. Today, referring to natural law may flag you as a tax protestor. For early Americans, hindering expatriation was to make a man a slave. In this light, Badger found this in an article by Nancy L. Green:
Justice James Iredell left one of the more memorable expressions of the principle of expatriation, still quoted today: “That a man ought not to be a slave; that he should not be confined against his will to a particular spot because he happened to draw his first breath upon it; that he should not be compelled to continue in a society to which he is accidentally attached, when he can better his situation elsewhere, much less when he must starve in one country, and may live comfortably in another, are positions which I hold as strongly as any man, and they are such as most nations in the world appear clearly to recognize.” [Source: “Talbot v. Jansen, 3 U.S. 3 Dall. 133 (1795) at 162].
From: Nancy L. Green, ‘Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept’ The American Historical Review 114 (2) (2009) 307-328.”
Je ne parler pas american
Who can forget this classic scene in the film Canadian Bacon?
Finance Minister Flaherty has given explicit permission to the IRS to collect taxes from Canadian citizens living in Canada. While this strips them of their protection as Canadian citizens, it nevertheless presents a new challenge to the IRS. Should we presume that the IRS can operate in Canada while ignoring all the laws of Canada? Or shouldn’t they have to obey, just like all other government agencies, the laws of our land. One rule that I’d like to see them obey is our official languages law.
