Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 5 of 11 (Year 2018)

1,714 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 5 of 11 (Year 2018)”

1. Happy New Year, everyone! 🙂

2. “Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: the expat American’s perspective”
   http://www.internationalinvestment.net/products/tax/donald-trumps-tax-cuts-jobs-act-expat-americans-perspective/

   One of the most potentially hard-hitting changes for expatriates will be the the TCJA’s Territorial Taxation of Corporations provisions. This is a big benefit for huge multinational corporations that have been “tax optimised” to reduce their US tax burden, but it is potentially problematic for those US expats who own small businesses that they incorporate locally – for example, a shop or a law firm operating in the United Kingdom, Italy or Singapore.
   …our London-based shoe-repair shop owner will be out of luck in a big way. And given the way that the law has been written, he will have no time to structure his business in order to avoid the tax, as it will come into force immediately.

   All of this basically means that US expats will not really benefit from Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” tax reform, and some, such as those who own small foreign companies, will face new tax challenges.

   The writer talks about shoe shops but I suspect he may be thinking more of, say, a small expat US tax company.

3. Not for comment, but very interesting, though fulltext not readily available for those without academic database access;

   New article by Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels;
   ‘The disinterested state: negative diasporic policy as an expression of state inclusion and national exclusion’
   http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1409173

   “….Focusing on U.S. citizens abroad, the article argues that there is negative diasporic outreach on the part of the state – ‘disinterested’ from the state’s perspective, but ‘denouncing’ from that of the diaspora. Negative diasporic outreach is exemplified by the 2010 FATCA legislation, which sought to root out tax evaders resident in the U.S., but has, instead, affected millions of American emigrants through increased financial control and the repercussions of those policies, and has resulted in sharply higher citizenship renunciation figures. Impact on an American diaspora was not considered in the law’s proposal, debate and passage into law. Second, the article argues that this negative diasporic outreach, in combination with the continued facilitation of the right to vote, is a reflection of the inclusion of these American emigrants in the American state, but their simultaneous exclusion from the American nation.”

4. Very interesting! There is some commentary on the article in another article in the same issue.
   http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1409160

   The case of the US, examined by Klekowski von Koppenfels, provides an example of an immigration state that has not fully assumed its identity as an emigration state and whose diaspora policies are rejected by its diaspora. The US government vigorously protects and assists citizens residing overseas temporarily but lacks programmes addressing the needs of the long-term emigrant population. In fact, Klekowski von Koppenfels argues that the American political discourse even lacks a narrative that could ‘make sense’ of these overseas Americans and allow them to fully partake as legitimate members of the national community. As such, they are acted upon by the US government but are rarely the object of government action. Instead, they benefit or suffer from being lumped together with some other groups of Americans figuring more prominently in the national imagination and government’s priorities. In 1975, the extension of external voting rights to the long-term American diaspora came about as a byproduct of the extension of the franchise beyond the overseas active-duty military to civilian federal employees. Similarly, post-2010 long-term emigrants of American origin have found themselves greatly inconvenienced by the government’s effort to clamp down on overseas tax evasion by rich citizens – who are often de facto resident in the US.

5. @plaxy, and @all who might be interested in reading the fulltext of the article above, or others (ex. from Tax Notes international, https://www.taxnotes.com/document-list/tax-topics/international-taxation/fatca etc.) , in my experience, database access for fulltext is sometimes available to those who seek to use university libraries in person, as ‘guests’ for the day.

6. Yes – unfortunately (though understandably), often not from home.

7. @Plaxy @Badger Thank you. We need like buttons!
   Happy New Year’s everyone.

8. Love this name for the recently enacted tax bill: “The US Donor Relief Act of 2017” https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-republican-tax-legislation-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2018-01

9. “Swiss court stops handover of bank employee details to US”
   http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/banking-secrecy_swiss-court-stops-handover-of-bank-employee-details-to-us/43796938

   “Relief for some US bankers in Switzerland as court blocks tax case info disclosure”
   http://www.internationalinvestment.net/products/banking-products/relief-us-bankers-switzerland-court-blocks-tax-case-info-disclosure/

10. Plaxy: Good to see a “foreign” court telling the U.S. that, no, it can’t have everything it wants. May this New Year bring us more of same!

    Happy New Year, all!

11. MuzzledNoMore – I agree. And here’s an even more cheery bit of news: a story in the NYT about the acquittal of a Swiss banker who took on the US Courts – and won.

    The crux of the defense was that the responsibility to pay taxes and declare income did not rest with Mr. Buck. It was his clients who had decided not to pay taxes. He was under no obligation to tattle; in fact, he was prohibited from doing so by Swiss bank-secrecy laws.
    …
    “At the center of the crime scene, there is an American with a pen,” [the defence lawyer] intoned. “Stefan Buck [the defendant] has nothing whatsoever, nothing whatsoever, to do with the choice that an American taxpayer makes” to not declare offshore assets.
    …
    Mr. Buck’s acquittal reverberated through the legal community. The Justice Department had now lost the three cases it had tried against foreign bankers who helped Americans avoid taxes.
    …
    Dozens more cases are pending. Those who represent accused Swiss bankers say they expect Mr. Buck’s verdict to embolden defendants and to cause prosecutors to think twice before bringing new charges.

    “It should change their calculus,” said Marc S. Harris, a lawyer at Scheper Kim & Harris, who successfully defended the Israeli banker in 2014.

    See http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/nyt-article-on-stefan-buck-offshore.html?m=1 for a link to the report.

12. I too want to know;

    ‘Show Me the Money! Where are all the FATCA Fat Cats?’
    By Professor William Byrnes, Texas A&M University School of Law (01/01/2018
    http://www.ifcreview.com/restricted.aspx?articleId=12552

    “…Is it plausible that Americans have hidden US$10 trillion dollars in the global financial system? Probably not because it is reasonably estimated that globally every investment fund, every retirement account, and all the bank accounts combined have an asset value of approximately US$75 trillion. Thus, to generate this illusionary US$150 billion in lost tax dollars, US tax evaders would need to own and have hidden more than 10 per cent of global wealth…..”…….

13. As per the above, to take it further;
    Is it plausible that those deemed by the US to be UStaxablepersons living ‘abroad’ can possibly be ‘hiding’ massive amounts of income locally and legally that have not at least been taxed and registered or somehow overseen by their home government?

    The answer is of course no, but that doesn’t stop the FATCAnatics from continuing to pretend. And the FATCAnatics adding increasingly hysterical claims that FATCA and FBAR are needed to prevent crimes that go far beyond taxation, such as claims that without FATCA human trafficking, etc. will run rampant Ex. “.The evidence was overwhelming of human trafficking, of — of — of drugs smuggling, of — of tax cheats. So overwhelming that in a Congress which is not known as passing a lot of bills…….”

    ….”So I have to ask you, when you say you would like repeal, do you really mean you want no law on the books that went after the bad guys so that we could make sure that the good guys weren’t, in fact, caught?……..” D-N.Y. DEL. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON from ‘Transcript of Hearing April 26, 2017 House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform-Meadows’
    http://citizenshiptaxation.ca/9395-2/

    Still NO cost/benefit analysis, and still NO robust basis proffered for claiming that those of us living and working and banking legally outside the US owe the US anything on our ordinary local bank accounts. Stilll NO basis for judging and sentencing all those living ordinary lives outside the US as guilty before the fact.

    Only remedy for continued character assassination by the FATCAnatics like Norton? Forced relinquishing of my US birthright.

14. I’m presenting a paper at a conference in Melbourne at the end of next week. The paper is based on my blog posts on investment constraints, but is much more technical. If you’re interested, the paper is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3097931

15. Very intersting paper, Karen. And I’m not even an investor.

16. That’s a great paper, Karen. I’m glad you’ll be presenting it at a conference, raising awareness with the attendees as well as on the internet. I made a post for it at this link, Investing With One Hand Tied Behind Your Back — An Australian Perspective on United States Tax Rules for Nonresident Citizens.

17. That’s great news Karen, we’ll done and hope it is received well and that it will bring about more awareness of this travesty…
    Maybe you should have called it
    ‘Investing with a big hole in your pocket’? 🙂

18. Very interesting indeed! Look forward to hearing about the conference.

19. Transition tax – IRS Guidance:

    https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-18-07.pdf

20. Finally someone writing about Mfid 2, the withdrawal of U.S. domiciled ETFs and U.S. expats in Europe. What the article doesn’t point out is that this will kill off the ability of a lot of U.S. persons to invest for their retirement.
    https://international-adviser.com/expats-hit-funds-suspended-missing-priips-documents/

21. Commenters don’t realize that the IRS has the last laugh. I wonder how many would support the 14th Amendment if it meant increasing the US tax base into the world? I can’t find a link to the Today Show the article references.

    http://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/01/10/russian-women-are-paying-big-money-to-come-to-the-u-s-for-a-very-controversial-reason/

22. IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson has released latest report to Congress;
    https://taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/reports/2017-annual-report-to-congress/newsroom
    https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/national-taxpayer-advocate-delivers-annual-report-to-congress-discusses-tax-reform-implementation-and-unveils-purple-book IR-2018-3, Jan. 10, 2018

    Haven’t had a chance to even skim it.

23. Thank you for the TAS Report, Badger, and the new article by Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels.

    All we need is for someone to be listening.

    I’m talking to my congressman’s (Posey’s) Legislative Director tomorrow after she gets off the phone with Treasury about the transition tax on foreign corporations like mine. I think she’s been listening.

24. @Badger- I am not seeing the kind of language in the TAS report as in previous ones. It appears supportive of the current system. The passport revocation section did not mention U.S. persons resident overseas. And yes penalties are part of the 50K. There was some comment and recommendation on international information returns yet this seems slight and also not recognising U.S. Persons resident overseas.

    Have I missed something?

25. @badger & JC: FATCA, mailing delays, and passport revocation sections are significantly toned down from previous years, but the section about inconsistent legal authority to waive continuance penalties is new and has some interesting data

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