Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

A debate/discussion on Citizenship And Worldwide Taxation: Is It Morally Justified Or Unjustified? between John Richardson and Edward Zelinsky will take place Friday May 17, 2019,  14:00 EDT (18:00 UTC), hosted by TaxConnections, live on YouTube.   It will run for an hour-and-a-half.  

CBT is morally unjustified:  John Richardson (Lawyer, Citizenship Solutions, Toronto, Canada)

CBT is morally justified: Edward Zelinsky (Law Professor, Cardozo School of Law, New York, USA)

Click here for full information, to see the questions which have been submitted, to pre-register, and/or to submit questions   (P.S.: Note at the bottom of this page videos of people who we know.)

The United States Imposes A Separate And Much More Punitive Tax On U.S. Citizens Who Are Residents Of Other Countries, John Richardson, TaxConnections.

 TaxConnections and CitizenshipSolutions Posts by John Richardson, Laura Snyder and Edward Zelinski written after this event was announced: Continue reading →

The US Government Accountability Office has released an 83 page Report to Congressional Committees, “Foreign Asset Reporting: Actions Needed to Enhance Compliance Efforts, Eliminate Overlapping Requirements, and Mitigate Burdens on U.S. Persons Abroad”.  Thanks to JC for posting this link on the Media page.

Related Brock post:  April 2019 Report From GAO is evidence of how #FATCA and Foreign Asset Reporting is viewed in the Homeland by USCitizenAbroad.

https://youtu.be/3YMTAZBe6cA

Jordan Peterson accuses the government of preying on the weak, those who can easily become addicted to gambling and thus provide revenue for government coffers. In the meantime, gambling exacts an untold price upon the health of society. The government in Canada thus plays the role of organized crime in administering a vice that makes victims of the weak. We see from this that we should not look upon the government as a benevolent entity, but as a threat to our well-being.

Similarly, the IRS and compliance condors prey on the weak.  On Dec 15, 2012, at the FATCA Forum organized by John Richardson, I argued that the Canadian government’s stance, that it would not collect FBAR fines, meant that those of us affected by the threat of the IRS draconian FBAR fines would have to stand up for ourselves–we had to be Clint Eastwoods–and that left the IRS to prey upon the weak and vulnerable residents of Canada who feared what the IRS could do to them if they failed to enter the OVDP/OVDI, i.e., the last, best chance for people to get right with God. When innocent benign actors (the non-Clint Eastwoods) entered the ODVP, the IRS exacted many LCU (“life credit units”) and made their lives hell.

Remember to gamble responsibly. That’s the government’s message. And when it comes to the IRS, you are on your own.

Brock Pub is where you can ask your questions or make somewhat off-topic comments.

US Supreme Court Rules Unanimously Against Excessive Fines

The excessive fines clause doesn’t prevent the federal government from actually threatening to fine you in multiples of your actual financial worth (in the case of FBAR, over 383% of your financial accounts). I’ve not seen FBAR fines applied at the rate of 300% but that doesn’t stop the IRS from threatening it. I called it a bluff. They would scare the crap out of you so that you would enter a voluntary disclosure program where you voluntarily handed over 25+% of your wealth.

A Wisconsin cruise ship passenger faces years in Cayman Islands prison after a gun was found in her luggage

A lot of Americans are apparently unaware that you shouldn’t put guns or ammo in your luggage if you are travelling to other countries.

California gas station clerk fired after ranting against woman speaking Spanish

An American gas station attendant loses her job after being rude to a bilingual woman speaking Spanish and asks her to prove that she was born in the USA. Apparently she is unaware that California used to be part of Mexico. I.e., Spanish speakers were there slightly before Trump supporters.

And a Canadian bonus:
Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott kicked out of Liberal Party caucus

King Justin has kicked out JWR from caucas, hoping that Canadians actually believe it is less unethical to lie than it is to expose lies with an undisclosed voice recording.

Republicans Overseas is hosting an event, with House bill co-sponsor Congressman George Holding, Solomon Yue and John Richardson on the Taxation Fairness for Americans Abroad Act bill, London, England, 24 April 2019.

“There is a bill to fix citizenship-based taxation for Americans! Come learn all about it from its sponsor, Representative George Holding!

Representative George Holding (R-NC) will be walking us through his bi-partisan bill that introduces residence-based taxation for all American expatriates, titled Tax Fairness for Americans Abroad Act. This could mean the end of filing income taxes for non-US residents. He will discuss the ins and outs of his legislation, and how together we can get it across the finishline!

Solomon Yue, Global CEO of Republicans Overseas, will be here again to discuss the global grassroots efforts and necessary action items for the expatriate community.

John Richardson, Canadian tax lawyer of Citizenship Solutions, will be joining us again to explain why he endorses this legislative solution from a professional perspective.

. . . . “

Full details and registration at the EventBrite site.

There has been a lot of dissatisfaction expressed in recent months, on the site and in e-mails to the moderators, regarding irrelevant/off-topic comments. It’s also important that Brock provides a place for people to express their thoughts.  To strike a balance, we have installed a “move comment” function, with which we can move a comment to a different thread.

This should help keep things more focused while, at the same time, the person’s comment still appears on the site and discussion can ensue without overwhelming the original, unrelated, thread.

Moving a comment from one thread to another keeps both threads more useful to persons seeking help or information or simply having a coherent discussion on a topic.

We do not intend to eliminate thread drift from the site, just to keep certain threads focused, such as a post that deals with a project or a post focused on a specific type of information but someone posts a comment way off-topic; say, consulate problems on the FATCA thread.

Many topics overlap a lot, so don’t expect perfection — and every one of us undoubtedly has a different sense of just where “on-topic” ends and “off-topic” begins (can’t please everyone all of the time), so you may still see some comments you feel are out of place but to a lesser degree.

Thread drift is inevitable on a site that values sharing of ideas and opinions.  It can be pesky and annoying, but sometimes it’s a good thing which expands discussion; and exchanging thoughts is important part of the Brock community.  We don’t want to quench that!  But this should keep parts of the site on target.

Swedish media, in a 5 day prime-time series, and the Swedish population explodes when finding out that their Swedish company operating in Europe did not respond to U.S. local law enforcement inquiries. Article from:

- https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/american-financial-authority-investigates-swedbank-in-money-laundering-case

- https://www.svt.se/special/swedbank/english/investigators/

“The New York State Department of Financial Services has initiated an investigation into Swedbank, according to a document presented to Swedish Television, SVT. The suspicions relate to misleading information in connection with the DFS demanding an answer from Swedbank about the notorious law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The New York authorities delivered the “request” to the New York local branch, and asked for a global answer.

The Swedish public is aghast that the Swedish bank operating in Europe would not have provided full criminal evidence to the U.S. legal agency.

The whole affair is related to the now-closed Mueller investigation, previously-prosecuted Manafort FBAR conviction, and the long-ago Soros/US-Aid funded Panama Papers affair.

It seems that the bank was “caught” handling Manafort-related bank transfers…….this despite the fact that Manafort was not convicted of money laundering–He got caught with FBAR violations, bank fraud, and tax cheating.

It also alleges that payments were sent by Swedbank to companies (including Manafort’s in the Caribbean.  Never mind that many Swedish companies’ parent and daughter companies and ships are also registered there, and that global transactions go back and forth all the time. In these stories, the bank transfers are summarized as “money laundering” although there is no crime to launder.

So, when a U.S. legal agency “requests” information about any European transactions of anybody including any American, the Swedish media, authorities, bank officers, and public will all spank themselves if they don’t hand it over.

So much for those European constitutions and all that innocent-til-proven guilty stuff they’ve got written in there. Sweden had once held a spark of FATCA resistance, reversed itself, til it finally celebrated its FATCA surrender. Crying is now long over.

As a result of it all, Swedbank stock tanked (did Soros short Swedbank stocks too?) and depositors are jittery.

The Obama administration & the DopeState had orchestrated a gigantic expat-bashing propaganda campaign to smear expat US citizens, leading up-to the intro of FATCA and continuing through its rollout.

ICIJ, the Soros/USAid “Offshore” propaganda outlet, is itself a spiderweb of offshore shell corporations and shady offshore financing.

The oldstock Brockers remember the large doses of offshore propaganda brought in by the DopeState partnership of government figures, media outlets, and the Financial Industrial Complex….when expats were daily barraged by FATCAT articles about Offshore Offshore Offshore. (rather than today’s Russia Russia Russia propaganda campaign).

Many remember the related hit articles on the revelations of Swiss bank accounts of rich Americans such as Tina Turner (resident and eventual citizen of Switzerland) due to Panama papers and ICIJ(International Consortium of Investigative Journalists).

Well, it turns out that the hypocrites of ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) was funded by a spiderweb of Offshore-Shell –Company DopeState actors (including USAid in critical years, but its current donors are listed below). The article below highlights it.

from the article:

“it’s curious that ICIJ’s Pulitzer-winning series featured Putin so many times given that Putin didn’t even have an offshore account with Mossack Fonseca. It’s also curious that so few Americans were exposed by ICIJ.

It’s even more curious that ICIJ didn’t report much on Browder, the former American turned Irish citizen, apparently for tax purposes, who has used plenty of offshore accounts to lighten his fiscal load. Browder — who was recently exposed in this story by 100Reporters — was for Putin, when he was raking in vast profits from his Moscow-based Hermitage Capital Management holding company, before he was against him, when he was accused by Putin of tax fraud. (Putin is a tyrant but he is, incidentally, right to be suspicious of journalists and NGOs, which he rightly views as agents of regime change.)

Browder is just one of many ICIJ donors to utilize offshore vehicles. In fact, according to 100Reporters, (Browder’s) Hermitage Capital Management “was built on corporate registrations authored by the Mossack Fonseca law firm.” “

…. Oh yeah, did I mention that Browder is suspected of (USAid) funding the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a partner of ICIJ? And that the much-praised OCCRP has written extensively about Browder, in the most fawning terms imaginable, without disclosing that suspected funding? “

The Oldstock Brockers had also harbored hopes that Glenn Greenwald might have fought for the rights of expats, but the article shows that his DopeState connections well show that he is an establishment lackey

Read about it in this article

https://washingtonbabylon.com/14472-2/

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