FATCA Discussion Thread (Ask your questions) Part Two
Please ask your questions here about FATCA.
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NB: This discussion is a continuation of an older discussion that became too large for our software to handle well. See FATCA Discussion Thread (Ask your questions) for earlier discussion.
Thanks Duke, Edelweiss and WhiteKat.
Info noted.
I was at a lunch of the retirees association of my former employer and started talking with some ladies of Haitian origin about IRS and FATCA. They were telling me about the three country family relationships and citizenship complications Québec Haitians often have, what with so many having connections in New York, or having lived there or their children being born there before they settled in Québec. FATCA, FBAR and other US inventions are going to be complicated for them and other immigrants like them.
@Badger
I suggest in the future to request sit down meetings with NDP and Liberal MPs. Up to this point they are simply blowing off emails and letters. You have to really put them on the spot.
Tim
Oh my, has anybody taken this post by Lisa Smith to task yet?
http://www.iexpats.com/fatca-which-countries-are-in-or-out/
@WhatAmI
I have given up on Lisa Smith. She doesn’t respond to anything, so I no longer bother with comments as they never come out of moderation. She is factually wrong a lot.
The best response, was the interview with James Jatras by George Prior that she just published and was posted here on IBS.
http://www.iexpats.com/rolled-back-deadline-of-fatca-gives-critics-hope/
2 good articles on FATCA:
one related to the risk of the data falling in wrong hands, issue that has already been discussed here.
And another one: “The Dollar Racket”
http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/26/how-the-irs-can-share-your-bank-info-wit
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dollar-racket/5343989
@Chris…
You missed this one… 🙂
Taking your money and your life
FATCA, like the NSA surveillance programs, is justified by a notion that all personal information is potentially valuable to the federal government – whether it is to fight tax evasion in the first case, or to combat terrorism in the second (even if the information collected by the NSA often seems to go well beyond fighting terrorism). This line of reasoning has led to a view that the privacy of Americans is not sacred if undermines what is perceived as the greater good – though who defines that good is a matter of debate.
and this one…
Latest Delay Exposes FATCA’s Fatal Flaws
http://freedomandprosperity.org/2013/blog/latest-delay-exposes-fatcas-fatal-flaws/
A note from Blaze…
Check out The Hill’s Congress blog on Sunday, July 29 for an article on FATCA written by Lynne Swanson and Victoria Ferague. (http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog)
I was advised by The Hill this will appear at 9:00 a.m.(EDT) Sunday “which means it will top the Congress blog all day and remain high until Monday morning.”
It will continue to be available at The Hill’s website after that date.
Here is a dreamy eyed Idealist, that see beauty in the FATCA Power play….
I guess if you worship at the altar of hubris, then I understand the mindset…
http://www.worldfinance.com/wealth-management/tax/fatca-a-great-example-of-us-power-play
I could not log in for some reason to prick his balloon.
@Tim, re; http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/fatca/comment-page-35/#comment-449539 July 24, 2013 at 11:23 pm
Re your suggestion, I actually did meet with a local MP in person and left additional background information to backup my statements. I managed to get to speak by phone with another MP directly – who had specific prior knowledge about FATCA and FBARs, etc. plus spoke with a few aides – who asked me to send more information – which I did. I did a round of calling to the Shadow Cabinet MPs most likely to have responsibility for FATCA, privacy, finance and US relations and a few others after sending them e-mails.
In suspense to read the Hill article. Thanks for the heads up Just Me.
http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2013/7/rubio-calls-for-meaningful-tax-reform
“Tax reform should serve as an opportunity to vastly simplify the tax code, rid our code of unfair biases and special interest carve-outs, close the gap between statutory and effective tax rates, lower marginal tax rates, transition to a territorial tax system, eliminate the double taxation of income, and emphasize principles of economic freedom and opportunity
Hope that Shadow Raider gets in to his office soon.
Just today I was introduced to a concept I had not thought of before, after reading a Toronto Star article by Heather Mallick http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/07 /27/royal_baby_prince_george_is_britains_source_of_soft_power.html where she cites Joseph Nye’s concept of ‘soft power’ http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=34734 . For those who are interested in how a US deficit in ‘soft power’ influence might help to undermine CBT and FATCA, see more about Joseph Nye’s concept of ‘soft power’ http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59888/joseph-s-nye-jr/the-decline-of-americas-soft-power http://www.amazon.com/Soft-Power-Means-Success-Politics/dp/1586483064
I think that using this concept is another way of codifying some of the persuasive arguments against the extraterritorial predations of the US IRS and Treasury; the idea that we were or could have been ‘goodwill ambassadors’ in the countries where we live, but awareness of US CBT and extraterritoral demands like FATCA, and FBAR and US double taxation has squandered what reserves of ‘soft power’ the US exerted via US citizens living abroad.
As mentioned before, France capitulated.
http://lecercle.lesechos.fr/entrepreneur/fiscalite/221177683/modele-accord-intergouvernemental-francais-enfin-pret-signature
Here is the google translate version:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Flecercle.lesechos.fr%2Fentrepreneur%2Ffiscalite%2F221177683%2Fmodele-accord-intergouvernemental-francais-enfin-pret-signature
Highlights of some BS found in the article:
“It seems that these objectives have been met, because (i) reciprocity should go beyond the simple exchange of data originally planned (ii) the signing of the IGA agreement should lead to the coverage of financial institutions to record with the IRS without waiting for ratification by parliament (iii) the data will pass through the French tax authorities. ”
So France was promised a great deal of reciprocity. Uhm…. Don’t understand how they bought that.
And the last one is the best: the data is secure just because it goes through the French IRS instead of the banks reporting directly.
Not a word about how they’ll deal with account shared by French-American couples, or if they negotiated how the people they will rat out will be treated. I am utterly disgusted. Makes me want to switch nationality.
Also, weird that at the beginning, the article starts with “Out of the five initiators of the intergovernmental approach to FATCA countries, there remains that France and Italy have yet to sign an agreement.”
I thought Germany hadn’t signed yet, on the same grounds of reciprocity.
I haven’t heard that they’d signed an IGA yet either. Still, just googled it and found this:
http://www.tax-news.com/news/Germany_US_Sign_IGA_On_Tax_Evasion____60941.html
So looks like everyone’s signed up, unless Italy are still holding out.
I like the bit about “… will exchange information as a matter of course.” Ha, little do they know.
As for the Germany link…seems it is a tax news link…They make money writing about taxes and companies who do taxes …so…it seems they would be at an advantage to have this happen…They did not bring up that the American Congress are not willing to do reciprocity…This is pretty disturbing.
That’s probably because they think they will. Given that the Germans were baulking on reciprocity I’m sure the IRS has given them assurances that it will all be fine and info will be exchanged as planned. They just forgot to tell them Congress hasn’t agreed to it yet and are unlikely to.
Plus, do you really think a tax news source is going to rock the US’s boat by pointing out the defects of FATCA. Not likely!
As I recall, Germany and the US initialed an IGA which normally would mean that there are conditions precedent that have to be fulfilled. I remember thinking that perhaps Germany had pushed for much stronger wording in relation to reciprocity because the press release at the time indicated that both Germany and the US had to take steps before the IGA could be signed as opposed to just initialed.
I thought I would email Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario to get her thoughts on FATCA and privacy rights regarding it. Her commisions website, http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/Home-Page/
She did an interview on Singularity weblog http://www.singularityweblog.com/ann-cavoukian-privacy-by-design/
I am trying to see this FATCA in another angle.
I will let you know if I get a response.
@Medea Fleecestealer
We probably should have made a separate post on the Germany signing the IGA, as that was a few weeks back. (Just updated Northern Shrike’s old thread here) Now with France saying they are ready, that only leaves Italy outstanding, as one of the original 5 that joined with Treasury in Feb of 2012 saying they would sign up for agreements.
Now the thing to watch is if the reciprocity that they won’t get out of Congress will be accomplished by John Doe requests on their behalf. I am assuming you saw the posting by Janet Novak on Forbes about this being done on behalf of Norway. I noted this development, and my addition to the DATCA timeline. This is a new twist. DATCA Reciprocity by another name, John Doe DATCA is not begetting John Doe’s
DATCA now begetting John Doe
Yes … but I would have thought they’d already been doing this sort of thing before FATCA anyway. I mean the IRS has a lot of agreements where it can request records of individuals it suspects. I guess the only difference is that they just need a suspicion rather than proof to be able to request them now. If that’s the case, then it’s a neat side-step to getting around the US’s reluctance to exchange info via an IGA model.
If the US has been doing John Doe’s since 2000 it tells us where the idea for FATCA came from. Don’t bother to waste time and money by going through the various courts, just make a law instead.
Greenback Explains What US Expats Need to Know About FATCA
Greenback Expat Tax Services explains the impact of The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which requires reporting from individuals and financial institutions to improve foreign asset and offshore account compliance.
@Medea Fleecestealer
What is different about this John Doe, it is the FIRST time they have ever done it on behalf of another country.
@JustMe, yes, but I assume that the US has provided records for other countries when they’ve asked for it, providing they’ve given proof to the US of their suspicions. That seems to be the way it worked for the US before all this FATCA rubbish started and I would assume that if the US hadn’t reciprocated the whole thing would have died a death. But as you say, this is the first time they’ve used a John Doe on behalf of another country purely on suspicion of being a tax evader. I suspect, given the furore over FATCA and Congress’s reluctance to write any reciprocity laws, that it will become the norm for holding up the US’s side of the IGA bargain.