I personally think that the folks who try to run and hide are going to get it. The works — fines, possible criminal prosecution and possible deportation from the host country. And it’s so easy to find us. Victoria
A lawyer who presented to a group on the topic of U.S. taxation of Canadian residents recently offered up the colorful phrase full ostrich to describe noncompliant persons whose strategy remains that of keeping on keeping on.
Author Archives: usxcanada
Playing With Numbers
These numbers are sourced at Quick Facts at USxCanada InfoShop. If you have a favorite number, toss in some more speculation!
Extraterritorial U.S. citizens number up into the millions. Say 6 to 7 million. Maybe more, and likely not less.
On the compliance side, Taxpayer Advocate Service says all FBAR filing added up to 218,840 for 2008.
For 1990 a total of 180,087 IRS Form 2555 were filed from outside the United States.
Official Interpretations of U.S. Expatriation
Cross posted from Perspectives at USxCanada InfoShop.
The following comment comes from a Canadian-qualified lawyer who is currently engaged in relinquishment of US citizenship through an Asian consulate:
Weasel Words
With regard to the double standards and weasel words all too characteristic of United States “authorities” —
[and a deep bow to the Mentality of Mordor thread, where comments are about to surge past the 100 level!]
The Case of Karl Jaspers
The following extracts from the introduction to On Max Weber by Karl Jaspers may resonate somewhat with our current situation. Jaspers (1883-1969) was a German existentialist and major philosopher of the twentienth century, says the book jacket.
U.S. Passport as Enforcement Tool
Credit here goes to an unnamed (by request) source who set me on the trail of this topic. A full version of the following report, with documentation, can be viewed at USxCanada InfoShop. [To avoid hassles of reformatting this complex item for a different WordPress theme.]
As the United States attempts to enforce tax and reporting compliance on millions of its extraterritorial citizens, a great majority of them presently noncompliant, what tools can it exercise?
Extreme Measures
The IRS is going to extreme measures to make headlines …
U.S. tax attorney Chris Rusch arrested in Panama City
If you pursue the link below to read the rest of this gripping story, also consider (1) Where the story is coming from, and (2) The veiled pitch for business.
If only journalists in Canada and elsewhere would dramatize the persecution of ordinary extraterritorials with such fervor.
How Many U.S. Citizens in Canada?
Cross posted from USxCanada InfoShop
Newspaper stories tend to say something like “up to a million.” Or half a million to a million. Nobody really knows.
There seem to be only two publicly available and relatively recent sources that offer anything more than pure guesstimate — one from the United States, one from Canada, tables appended. Both offer numbers that are half a dozen to a dozen years old.
Ratio for FBAR Noncompliance
“Five to six million Americans living abroad, along with 39 million immigrants in the U.S., should theoretically be filing an FBAR. Yet in 2009, only 534,043 were filed, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.”
This nugget extracted from:
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/06/the-1-percent-exodus/
Among extraterritorials and immigrants to the United States …
100 to 1? 50 to 1? Who knows?
In cosmology, scale shifts to order of magnitude. Here on a chunk of planet Earth, navigation falls back on magnitude of disorder.
Ex
X marks the spot. The spot where the ex has to take a stand. Perhaps even the spot where the ex eventually gets buried.
The Isaac Brock narratives turn on many different themes. How the ex came to be — and how the ex came to be even more subjected than the peculiar majority that remains encircled by the geographic borders that define such a singular nation as the United States.
The foremost word in this tangle is expatriation. The IRS offers Guidance for Expatriates Under Section 877A and Expatriation Tax. That is the you-can’t-go-home-again (if home it ever was) expatriation of an irrevocably redefined status.
