When both the United States and Canada leave their dual citizens to wallow in uncertainties, those hapless fish/fowl are left to grasp at protruding roots that encircle the morass of quicksand.
Most often, those handholds are not data. If good data could be had, the atrocities of the situation would be too evident.
In absence of data, anecdote becomes all that is left to latch onto. Here are three, newly acquired this week.
On this last Sunday of January 2012, here at Isaac Brock Society, multiple threads seem to have converged on at least faint hopes that the US behemoth might turn to the sanity of residence-based taxation. Or not.
Some appear to hope that such a sea change might still solve problems they currently founder in, while others look toward (or have already realized) the certain freedom of consigning US citizenship to jettison. What is realistic?
Two academic articles offer a long view of where the United States has come from.
Cross posted from USxCanada InfoShop
A search for the data that underlies “estimates” of the numbers of U.S. citizens resident outside the United States does not lead far. A total of 6.35 million, excluding military personnel, is one handy number.
A map [2] provided as part of the information on the web site of American Citizens Abroad (ACA) [1] appears to be as good a piece of information as any that can be obtained. And even that map data is contradictory (see note following citation).
ACA and Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) pass along figures said to be provided by the U.S. State Department. The only level of detail is for seven regions that cover the entire world. These organizations have been hacking away valiantly for years at this data situation. It seems peculiar that a direct State Department source for this same data cannot easily be found.
The statistics for search engine terms that bring internet trawlers onto the Isaac Brock Society web site show that only one search counts for much at all: the three words “isaac brock society.” A known-item search …
I poked into this findability topic after monitoring and testing search functionality over at the InfoShop. At this point Google has crawled around the InfoShop — a phrase search [wrap it in quotation marks] for a pithy bit like “longstanding american exceptionalism” will demonstrate that.
The words that worried expatriate Americans seem likely to stab into their keyboards will not connect them in any easy fashion with either Isaac Brock Society or with the InfoShop. Launch a few verbal forays and see for yourself. Stabbing into the dark.
Cross posted from USxCanada InfoShop
This is a description of a lengthy technical legal article from over two years ago, recently exhumed and annotated by usxcanada. Balanced in an academic sense; the main concern seems to be pursuing the whales; no minnow perspectives here. Regrets that conditions of use do not permit reposting of the full pdf.
Yu Hang Sunny Kwong
Catch me if you can: relinquishing citizenship for taxation purposes after the 2008 Heart Act
Houston Business & Tax Law Journal 9:3 (Fall 2009) 411-444
Cross posted from USxCanada InfoShop
Uncertainty has two poles. One, external conditions may be unclear or unstable. Two, an affected person may be unable or unwilling to take action. Factors from the two poles may interplay. A high level of uncertainty tends to parallel a high level of risk.
Expatriate Americans start from a situation where much is confused. Why can’t life be as it has been, with most Americans de facto enjoying the same status as that of practically all other nonresident citizens throughout the world — taxed only in place of residence?
Questions proliferate. Who is an American? Can problems be solved by ceasing to be American? What is required to become compliant with US tax expectations? Is it possible to become compliant without paying extra taxes and/or exorbitant penalties? Is there any hope for an individual to complete in a correct fashion the complex, unfamiliar, multiple paperwork that needs to stretch back over a series of years? If not, will the individual face paying thousands of dollars to uncertainly qualified “professionals” who can offer no guarantees? Will the IRS launch an ongoing regime of torturous scrutiny?
Cross-posted from USxCanada InfoShop
New Democrats Offer More Support Than Conservatives or Liberals Do?
Why has support for beleaguered American citizens been more apparent among New Democrats than among Conservatives? Should support for and defense of as many as a million Canadians be seen to fracture along party lines?
The 16 Sept 2011 letter that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty sent to several major US newspapers appears to be the only public representation that the Canadian governing party has made toward the United States on behalf of US citizens who are resident in and pay taxes to Canada. Internally, the Department of Finance and Canada Revenue Agency have stated that on the basis of the existing tax treaty, Canada will not enforce FBAR penalties at all, and will not enforce US tax liabilities incurred by persons who are concurrently Canadian citizens. This “relief” derived from interpretation, not action.
