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. It’s not about taxing expatriates, it’s about the way the money is taken from the victims.

   It’s not like CBT. CBT isn’t a diaspora tax, it’s US RBT imposed not very effectively on people who don’t live in the US.

2. Solomon Yue hints at major “beach landings” (previously compared in scale to the Normandy Beach landings in WW II) in April against #FATCA & #TTFI

   Thanks @GroverNorquist 4 preparing #FATCA & #TTFI beach landings in April on behalf of 9M overseas Americans. Both must be included in next tax cut bill 2 create export jobs Opinion | Grover Norquist: American expats left high and dry by Trump’s tax reform

   Pls RT/Like

   https://twitter.com/SolomonYue/status/954086772861894656

3. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/taxes/us-citizens-living-in-canada-beware-these-five-tax-traps/article37658751/

   Just another condor getting free space in the Globe and Mail. Shameless, all of them.

4. “They are out there. They walk among us. They even look and sound like us. They are in our workplaces and communities, and they may even be in our families. They are U.S. citizens, living in Canada.”

   They ARE us you dolt!

   For a moment there I was reliving Gerald Keddy’s comments about Americans “abiding in Canada”.

   Infuriating.

5. It’s just a lame jokey reference to the aliens-among-us trope. He’s almost certainly dual himself.

6. “

   Treaty overrides in the tax act:

   “US plays Lone Ranger on international tax to its detriment”
   http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/369719-us-plays-lone-ranger-on-international-tax-to-its-detriment

   …the new law may well violate U.S. obligations under both tax and trade agreements. For example, it appears to backtrack on the repeated U.S. assurance that it will not adopt discriminatory rules.

   In early December, finance ministers of five European countries (Germany, France, Britain, Spain, and Italy) wrote Treasury Secretary Mnuchin to highlight provisions of the legislation that impose a tax on payments from U.S. companies to related foreign affiliates. Those provisions appear to violate nondiscrimination requirements of tax and trade agreements.

   Other rules in the legislation limit the ability of U.S. companies to use credits for foreign taxes to satisfy their obligations to the U.S. government. Tax treaties explicitly guarantee that the credits will be allowed and a similar, but much less significant, rule in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, relating to the alternative minimum tax, was generally acknowledged as a violation of tax treaty obligations.

   It is true that the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to enact laws overriding treaty obligations, but actually enacting such laws sparks adverse reactions abroad. And Congress said nothing at all about a treaty override in the new law.
   …
   By taking an obvious “America First” view and a casual attitude toward treaty commitments, the U.S. risks undermining both its moral authority in shaping tax policy and its effectiveness in dealing with other countries. That is bound to be costly not only in policy impact but in hard dollar terms.

7. Might be a good venue for pointing out that while Canada is apparently committed to protecting softwood lumber’s treatment under NAFTA http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/government-triggers-nafta-chapter-19-over-punitive-u-s-import-duties#comments-area it threw Canadians with legal local bank accounts under the US bus when the Canadian financial sector lobbied them to sign up to surrender us to FATCA.

   The Charter, constitutional, legal rights and wellbeing of all Canadian accountholders and taxpayers weren’t and aren’t deemed as important by this and the previous Canadian government as the wellbeing of the private sector and bits of wood.

   For support, cite;
   http://www.occ.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/OCC-NAFTA-Letter-with-CCC-July-2017.pdf
   Recent lobbying letter from Ontario Chamber of Commerce to Freeland re NAFTA negotiations, and FATCA in Canada
   and,
   https://openparliament.ca/committees/finance/41-2/34/prof-arthur-cockfield-1/
   https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2407264
   https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2433198

8. Shameless condor advert masquerading in the Globe as ‘news’ or a legit article is the kind of bs fear mongering that drove Canadian and other minnows into the OVDI fish processing factory in previous years. Especially the link to the IRS FBAR and FATCA page without any context or caveat.

   And deliberately writing as if many of those they include weren’t first and foremost Canadians born in Canada, or those who naturalized and have been here for many decades. Tapping into and fostering anti-USP sentiment.

   If I was looking for help with complying now (I’m no longer a USP) I would shun those producing such manipulative unethical crap. I came to know better – but unfortunately via firsthand bitter experience ….

9. Tax Court bars IRS from collecting under FBAR
   January 16 2018, 11:59am EST
   Roger Russell

   In its first decision of 2018, the Tax Court considered whether the six-year statute of limitations in Code Section 6501(e)(1)(A)(ii) applied to a taxpayer who failed to file Foreign Bank Account Reporting, or FBAR, forms from 2006 through 2008. The court held that the Internal Revenue Service could not go back beyond the general three-year limitations period.

   https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/tax-court-bars-irs-from-collecting-under-fbar

10. I was late to the party on that Globe & Mail piece. Sadly the Globe’s comments section is out of order. But someone – maybe with IBS letterhead, so to speak – should write a strongly worded letter to the editor pointing out (a) it’s free advertising, (b) it omits a few key facts like, oh, penalties not being collectible, and (c) resistance is growing.

11. How about complaining to Advertising Standards Canada?

    http://www.adstandards.com/en/ConsumerComplaints/howToSubmitAComplaint.aspx

12. Netherlands expels top Eritrean diplomat
    http://www.africanews.com/2018/01/18/netherlands-expels-top-eritrean-diplomat//

    The Dutch government has told the highest representative of Eritrea in the Netherlands to leave the country, minister of Foreign Affairs Halbe Zijlstra said on Wednesday.

    Tekeste Ghebremedhin Zemuy has been declared persona non grata, Zijlstra wrote in a letter to parliament, as the government found mounting evidence of Eritrea continuing to force tax payments from people who fled the country.

13. The diplomat is being expelled because of the illegal force used to extract the money from the victims.

    America doesn’t do that.

    It seems to me that classing American unenforceable CBT with Eritrean illegal extortion risks making America look righteous.

    Which, as we know, they are not.

14. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42781501

    A lesbian couple living in London sues the US government to force them to confer US citizenship on their non-US-born, never-set-foot-in-the-US child of a non-US citizen. These women should have some sense slapped into them. Yes, this case has to do with discrimination against same-sex marriage, but it’s too bad they aren’t doing it in reverse, by using that issue to strip their other child of US plague.

15. No doubt there are those who think those of us who renounce US citizenship should have some sense slapped into us.

    Roll on the day when the US stops trying to thwart the individual’s wishes (“if they want to gain US citizenship we’ll say no, if they want to lose US citizenship we’ll say no”) and draws up civilized rules in line with international norms.

    Oh no, I forgot, that would be against their constitution. 🙁

16. https://hodgen.com/why-expatriates-cannot-own-guns/

    The gun aspect is old ground, but the piece (a) mentions IBS and (b) includes a comment from Hodgen on why he himself will never renounce his US citizenship, with a link to some entertaining philosophising about outgroups.

17. Unofficial translation of the Dutch goverment’s report on the Eritrean diaspora tax problems, and other problems affecting Eritreans living in the Netherlands.

    https://martinplaut.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/the-long-arm-of-the-eritrean-regime-official-dutch-report/

18. @plaxy
    I sometimes find Hodgen a little difficult to follow. Isn’t he just saying that he is quite content living in the US, it is living outside it that he would have a problem with, nothing to do with guns explosives or the cross border transport of them?

19. I misunderstood it, I realise on re-reading.

    I think he’s actually not commenting at all on why he doesn’t want to renounce – I think he’s referring to the fact that he’s critical of the gun law for picking on the outgroup (renunciants), even though he’s not a member of the outgroup and doesn’t want to be. 🙂

20. Hodgen has a good life in the US.
    I think like many of my friends and relatives in the US, they have a somewhat comfortable life, their US passport takes them on trips abroad and that’s all they know and want. Mention the toxicity of the US passport and they prefer not to know…. Until it affects them or a relative.

21. You think? I’ve found Hodgen’s blog extremely helpful.

    I’m sure he does have a comfortable life, and of course he earns that partly from advising expats, but I do think his sympathy for our predicament is genuine.

22. Yes, don’t get me wrong, I find his blog helpful too. He is a rare breed that understands the complete travesty and the predicament of US expats and is prepared to help the lower echelons at the same time as making a business from the upper group. He has a comfortable life in CA) without any reference to US exceptionism) so he has no intention of leaving or need of renunciation himself but he completely understands the problems of US expats.   That’s my take for what it’s worth.

23. Heidi – yes, I agree.

24. New IRS commissioner:

    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/23/trump-tax-lawyer-nominated-irs-commissioner-364620

25. From the Dutch report on Eritreans in the Netherlands.

    “The diaspora tax and financial contributions rather seem to be part of a system of fear and intimidation.”

    Where as Dutch pensioners are handing their Dutch old age pensions to the IRS out of good will, and the Dutch banking system is reporting their accounts back to the USA purely because it’s the right thing to do.

    It’s not like the USA would use fear and extortion to enforce US citizenship based taxation, eh?

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