Author Archives: WhiteKat

I am posting this thread on behalf of Charl who is wondering if anyone would be interested in protesting at the US consulates. Her mission is to educate the public, and get much needed media attention.

Charl says:

Most Canadians fortunate enough not to have a US branding, if  they’ve even heard of FATCA amd FBAR, likely think it does not apply to them.  They don’t readily see that legislation to implement a FATCA IGA will allow the US government to rob Canada of a significant portion of its assets, and that the Canadian government is actually paying to allow the US to steal from the tax base of Canada.

We need to expose the real numbers of dollars that the US is attempting to extract from Canadians. For example, there are estimated to be over one million Canadians with ‘clinging US nationality’ (WhiteKat loves this term, but forgets who came up with it).  Even if only half of these unfortunate Canadians are exposed, and each has an average of 3 accounts never previously revealed to the USA on FBARs, the penalties owed would be at minimum $90 billion dollars (3 accounts * $10K per account * 6 years * 500,000 Canadians). In addition to this siphoning off of wholly Canadian earned, already taxed in Canada savings,  Canadian tax payers will be on the hook for the welfare support that will be required by financially devastated Canadians, deemed ‘US persons’ and thus US taxpayers by the USA.  In addition, the Canadian banks are spending billions to become FATCA compliant; guess who will be paying  the banks’ FATCA compliance costs?

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If  you have not already done so, please take some time to email or write the Canadian Finance Department  with your comments regarding the signed Information Exchange Agreement between Canada and the United States. (Due date now past: thanks to all who participated).

http://www.fin.gc.ca/treaties-conventions/notices/fatca-eng.asp

In a new article at CNBC, Mark Mazur, assistant secretary for US tax policy writes:

Governments across the globe are recognizing the growing support for tax fairness, and with the United States at the lead, the world community is making important progress to expose these hidden financial accounts and stop offshore tax evasion.

Over the past few years, FATCA has become the global standard for fighting international tax evasion. The U.S. has partnered with like-minded governments to find efficient ways to implement the statutory reporting requirements. Progress has been substantial: The U.S. has signed intergovernmental agreements with 22 countries, and many more have either reached agreements in substance that are awaiting signature, or are well along in the process.

Read full article here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101452453

Derek Burney and Fen Hampson at IPolitics write:

Two recent developments threaten to undermine Canada’s hard-earned credibility as a prudent financial center.

The first is our apparent readiness to go along with the with ex-post facto fad of new banking regulations without due consideration being given to why such reforms are actually needed

As former Bank of Canada Governor, David Dodge, recently observed in a meeting with the Calgary School of Public Policy (Feb. 11 Financial Post), many of these changes will impose costly new rules on the Canadian banking sector for a problem that was not of our own making and are directed primarily at punishing miscreants in Europe and the US rather than providing greater stability to global financing.

Canadians will ultimately bear the brunt of these reforms in higher banking fees and charges.  The prevailing conventional wisdom is that the financial crisis of 2007–09 stemmed from the absence of a sensible regulatory framework and specifically from the failures of banks, notably those in the U.S. and Europe, to follow prudent banking practices. Any remedy should therefore ensure that the cost of future failures falls on those institutions that neglected fundamental principles of prudence. It should certainly not penalize further taxpayers who were obliged to support expensive bailouts. In any event, ‘one-size-fits-all’ prescriptions are not the best antidote to such problems.

The second deeply troubling development is the “U.S. Tax Compliance Act (FACTA)”. As of July 1, Canadian banks will be obliged to scrutinize all accounts exceeding $50,000 to determine if they are “U.S. reportable”.

This new requirement is a blatant example of extra-territorial application of US law by the IRS, an agency of the U.S. government that is hardly a beacon of ethical propriety these days. The sheer power of the United States may be sufficient to oblige compliance – ‘going along in order to get along’ – but one is left to wonder why our government should reward the U.S. government on the backs of Canadians. Isn’t it enough that we pay billions to build a bridge, including the land on which U.S. Customs facilities will be built, connecting Windsor to Detroit or that we also contemplate the purchase of hugely expensive, U.S. fighter jets without any practical, bilateral dividend in return. Perhaps we should propose a similar form of scrutiny on U.S. financial institutions. Sauce for the goose no less.

Read the full article here.

My letter to CARP: (please feel free to edit as you like and send to whoever you like)

Some politicians have used the very myopic argument that USA has the right to determine its own taxation rules.  Of course it does, so does Canada, but does USA have the right to impose US taxation rules on Canadian citizens living in Canada who have never earned a dime of US source income?   Even if you think so, and I can’t imagine why anyone would, does USA have the right through its taxation laws to prevent some Canadians from effectively planning and saving for their retirement?

This is what FATCA in combination with USA’s unique to the world citizenship-based taxation laws will do to Canadians and their families where one family member is deemed to have ‘US person‘ status. 

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Many of us who have been part of the community here at Isaac Brock Society,  have been writing our various MPs, the Finance Minister, and other politicians on a regular basis for months now to complain about FATCA.  The Conservative government  ignored our pleas and signed a deal with the devil, selling the soul of Canadian sovereignty along with the rights of a sub-class of Canadians, in return for the removal of  extortionate threats directed at Canadian banks.

Until very recently, few Canadians with ‘US person’ status, living in Canada, had even heard of FATCA, never mind USA’s unique to the world citizenship-based taxation laws.  Those numbers are starting to increase rather dramatically as is evident by the many new visitors to this website.  If all our new ANTI-FATCA friends would also take some time to educate their MPs about FATCA, and ask them to do something to stop it,  they might  start to think twice about ramming FATCA down the throats of 1 million plus voters.

Disconcertingly, it has been apparent from some of the  recent comments we’ve heard from certain MPs regarding the signed IGA, that many are unaware of the grievous harm that FATCA in combination with citizenship-based taxation will do to Canadians with ‘US person’ status.  Since it appears that the Conservative party’s intent is to push FATCA through parliament as stealthily as possible, it is imperative that our MPs actually understand what they are voting for, or hopefully AGAINST!

If you haven’t already, and even if you have, please email or write your MP, and  help him/her to understand the ugly truth about FATCA and citizenship-based taxation.

It has been a traumatic last couple days for ‘Brockers’ as well as recently stunned ‘US persons’ who have just had their ‘OMG moment’.  This is just the tip of the iceburg.  We sit at a precipice looking down, and looking back. Many have not yet arrived at the point some of us are at.  The current Canadian government helped create the precipice. They had a choice; they made the wrong one.  We warned them; they didn’t listen.

My twenty-one year old daughter instantly grasps the concept of why you do not sacrifice a minority of people for a majority  when you have a CHOICE to do otherwise.  She used the example of a bus (yes a bus) traveling down the road towards a group of five people.  She asked me, “if you had the power to grab the bus and throw it in another direction directly in the path of one person, would you do it?”    We both agreed that the answer in this case is ‘Yes’, and yet this is the supposed argument our government is using to justify its agreement with the USA to implement FATCA.    My twenty-one year old daughter and I intuitively get that the two situations are not the same.  Apparently our Conservative government does not.

One of the cool things about Brock for me, has been the opportunity to correspond with, and meet in person, many intelligent, kind, moral people, and if it wasn’t for FATCA, I would never have had the opportunity to make my life a lot richer despite the pain of being persecuted for being born in the wrong country.

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Northernstar emailed Justin Trudeau in July 2013 regarding her concerns about FATCA. Today she received the following email in response:

Dear XXXXXXX,

Thank you for taking the time to write to me with your concerns regarding the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

Despite its good intentions, the unfortunate consequence of FATCA is that Americans who hold dual citizenship still fall under its authority, and it requires access to their financial information through their banks. As a result of FATCA, there has been a surge in US citizenship renunciations over the past few years, and this trend continues to grow.

I share your concerns about personal privacy, an issue that is increasingly important to all Canadians. The Conservative government’s efforts to protect the personal privacy of Canadians have been inadequate. The implications of having Canadian banks report directly to a foreign government agency are troublesome. The Liberal Party of Canada will continue to press the government on this issue, and demand a closer examination of FATCA’s effects.

Thank you once again for writing to me and taking the time to share your concerns with me. It is through such exchanges of ideas and opinions that I can best represent not only my constituents, but all Canadians.

Sincerely,

Justin P. J. Trudeau

Member of Parliament for Papineau

Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

Offline, a friend of Isaac Brock Society says:

It is one thing for the USA to say to individuals across the planet: if you have status under our law you must follow all of our laws no matter where you are. It is another thing entirely for Canada as a nation to voluntarily, with no compensation except the conditional promise of removal of a threat of economic sanctions, assist the United States in globally rounding people up to force them to comply with its patently untenable and unjustifiable position. Such assistance fundamentally conflicts with a universally recognized (and far more just) jurisdictional claim based on actual residence, which Canada practices along with the rest of the world.

Patrick Cain has a new article out today at Global news: http://globalnews.ca/news/1110254/are-hints-of-delay-key-to-interpreting-ottawas-silence-on-fatca/

Victoria Ferauge is quoted in this  Global News article out today, helping to dispel the myth of the wealthy US expatriate.