Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 5 of 11 (Year 2018)
You can access all years at this link: Media and Blog Articles – Links for All Years
If clicking on a link brings you to the wrong page in the comment stream, click here to get to the most recent comments.
Media and Blog Articles
EmBee suggested that it would be good if there was a thread for new articles, so that people would be aware of where to comment. So, I created this permanent page. I’ll make a permanent list of links posted here and keep adding to it, but not deleting, so we’ll end up having sort of a “bibliography” of FATCA/CBT articles. [Note: Some articles are not open for comments]
For more articles on FATCA, enter FATCA into Google then click on the link “more news for fatca” just below the most recent featured article.
Notes:
From JC: To see #FATCA on Twitter for latest breaking news. JC finds that is quite a good source and there even are some international articles that one may read using Google Translate. Others may help certain tweets and articles remain in elevated position by retweeting them.
From Badger: On an important archival note, please use the Internet Archive Wayback machine https://archive.org/web/ (see bottom right ‘Save Page Now’ box to enter URLs of webpages you want saved for posterity, and try to save backup copies of articles and other items of interest in some other form – such as a datastick or external drive. Some important and very significant webpages and the fulltexts of articles are no longer available (although some can be retrieved if someone using the Wayback machine saved them).
Be sure to read the comment stream for this thread — there are usually very recent articles mentioned
2018.12.23
New bill could lessen tax woes for Canadian residents with US citizenship: but the outlook is bleak for thousands grappling with Trump’s repatriation tax, Elizabeth Thompson, CBC News, Canada.
2018.12.21
Tax Fairness for Americans Abroad Act of 2018! Let’s Get This Passed! Anthony Parent, John Richardson, Keith Redmond, IRS Medic. US.
TTFI bill introduced today, great news for Americans living in Canada, Reddit Forum.
FATCA: Significant Relief in New Proposed Regulations, Jeremy Naylor, Amanda H. Nussbaum and Martin T. Hamilton, Mondaq.
2018.12.20
Tax Fairness for Americans Abroad Act, Democrats Abroad.
2018.12.19
TCJA and US Expats, Karen Alpert, Fix the Tax Treaty, Australia.
2018.12.18
Why Banks Have Become Judge, Jury & Prosecutor and will Shut you Down Judged Guilty for Nothing That is Actually Illegal, Patriot Rising.
20`18.12.17
IRS Issues Proposed FATCA Regulations, Adrienne M. Baker, Joseph A. Riley and Jeff J. Kang, Lexology.
2018.12.13
IRS Issues Proposed Regulations on FATCA, Other Reporting Conditions, ABA Banking Journal, US.
2018.12.11
How the IRS as Gutted, Paul Kiel and Jesse Eisenger, ProPublica, US.
2018.12.08
December 2018 International Tax Reform Updates- FATCA -GILTI – TTFI, Anthony Parent interviews Keith Redmond and John Richardson, IRS Medic. (video)
2018.12.05
Explaining GILTI – Individual Impact, Karen Alpert, Fix the Tax Treaty, Australia.
2018.12.03
Luxembourg: Exchange Of Information Vs Data Protection: A Brave New World Of Transparency, Antoine Dupuis and Guilles Sturbois, Mondaq.
2018.12.00 (December 2018 edition)
EU parliament versus FATCA, Financier Worldwide.
Newsletter, Purple Expat.
Articles from earlier in 2018 are in the Media and Blog Articles 2018 Archive. Links to previous years’ archives are also at that link.
@Muzzled
My pleasure. The least I can do. I’d like for that long report to get a more permanent home here, if it’s useful, and I think others should periodically drop in on these “seminars” to see what changes. I would hire them if I had tons of money and reason to fret, but regular non-wealthy accidentals should stay the hell away.
@JapanT
The W8/W9 thing has been going on for years with any sort of US income source, including small stuff like (miniscule) royalties and honoraria for academics. Recently a client made me sign before doing some remote work for them. I got pissy, said I was Canadian and would pay Canadian taxes and had no wish to sign US government forms. They replied by saying that it was required, but for their own purposes (reporting I assume) and kept internally, the IRS would only see it in the event of an audit. So since I wanted the money I figured I had to sign one of the two, and the W8 was clearly the lesser evil. Nothing was withheld from payment, no withholding.
@Eric + everyone
Please occasionally post links to Reddit or other forums where egregious scaremongering goes on. (Though it’s not like I don’t waste enough time on this.)
I did know that if one has/had US sourced income that they had reporting at the very least to do and possibly taxes to pay.
How about this. Over five years ago, my wife did a three month secondment in the US. Despite the tax treaty and she not owing any FEDERAL taxes, she had to pay STATE taxes, she had to file US taxes. Three years of returns were required. She was also to answer the following questions on her tax form.
Under the heading of “Tell us about your family” they asked about spouse’s SSN, employment, income, filing status and many more.
They asked for the actual time assigned in the US and out.
They asked, “Do you own any real property?”, and “Do you own your primary residence?”.
I wonder what use the IRS has for such information from a Japanese National living in Japan who happened to spend 90 days one year in the US.
There were many more similar questions but these were the only ones I could write down looking over her shoulder as she hurried to get it done before the deadline.
@Petlover
If any children are already known to the IRS – i.e. you have already identified them on tax returns – then what the hell, take the free money.
If the children are not known to the IRS, then preserve their anonymity.
@Nononymous
Yes, my kid is known to the irs. I do all my own filing because I can’t afford a tax preparer, however, I can’t figure out the foms for claiming the refund. The schedule says I qualify and to proceed to the form, but then the form asks about substantial presence and I no longer qualify (as far as I can tell). If it wasn’t such a headache for me to comb through the publications trying to resolve the conflicting information, then it might be worth it for the free money. It is simply ridiculous that an average person can barely manage to file on their own without paying huge fees for help.
@Japan T: “Yes, but as Amazon has many branches, Amazon UK and Amazon Japan, how is it US based income if one published through one of those companies?”
As someone who has published both print and e-books through Amazon, Smashwords, CreateSpace, IngramSpark, and others, I can confirm that in every case, one publishes through the US-based company. Either you file a W-9 form (which for odd reasons they only make you update every three years or so), or you agree to 30% US withholding tax. It makes no difference if most of your books are sold outside the USA.
This adds another layer of terror for me. Because of this, I have reportable US income every year, classifiable as royalties. This means I am at additional risk if I decide to not file my 1040 every year. Although I can’t exclude royalties on my 2555 forms, the income has never been enough to exceed my and my husband’s combined normal personal deductions, so we never owe any US taxes. But it’s still way more than the minimum required to file a US tax form in the first place. So, on top of every other sob story I’ve related in these forums, I’m saddled with this ongoing attachment to the USA. I’ve considered just claiming to be a non-US entity and sacrificing the 30%. But that would be a lie which could also end up biting me in my cute little behind.
@plaxy
“What benefit do nations get from signing up to AEOI? They get FATCA/CRS-compliant status and avoid being blacklisted as secrecy jurisdictions complicit in tax evasion, money-laundering, and terrorist financing. They get increased access to information about what their banks are up to. They get, to varying degrees, information about the unreported offshore accounts of their own residents.”
Keeping what one already has is not a benefit. Their must be a gain for it to be a benefit. If they wanted access to what their own banks are up to, why did they wait for a foreign law, FATCA, to compel them to write laws giving them this access? Until, FATCA, info on offshore accounts was of little interest as they do not have CBT, if only because they had no way to compel FFIs to report to them and no real method to tax based upon the info the received. The fact that they now do is just their attempt to get as much good, as they see it, as possible from a bad situation.
Is the US concerned about being blacklisted? Negotiations normally are an exchange of carrots with the threat of the stick to either side if don’t play by the rules. This seems a lot more lik one side is giving all the carrots under threat of the stick. What carrots is the US giving? What stich do they get for not playing along?
https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/8tvc43/downsides_to_renouncing_us_citizenship/
Try not to facepalm at the comments.
Strangely enough, another similar thread a few hours earlier got much smarter readership who upvoted the correct comments and downvoted the incorrect comments. Must be a timezone thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/8to7xv/any_former_americans_here_that_have_renounced_or/
Japan T: On the contrary, cross-border income of their resident individuals and entities is hugely interesting to RBT countries who tax residents on their worldwide income. See the Zucman paper on “The Missing Profit of Nations”.
“ Until, FATCA, … they had no way to compel FFIs to report to them”
What stood in the way was the data protection/ privacy rights of the accountholders, and the secrecy rights of the banks. The FATCA withholding threat made banks eager to sacrifice their secrecy rights in return for protection, and gave the governments a “public interest” justification for stripping USCs of their data protection / privacy rights.
“This seems a lot more lik one side is giving all the carrots” Indeed, which is why the EU is threatening the US with blacklisting. I agree that the threat is unlikely to lead to increased reciprocity, since all concerned are well aware that the US federal government doesn’t have the power to force its tax-haven states to give up their secrecy. More likely (IMO) the blacklisting threat will be traded off for concessions elsewhere. Time will tell.
“Try not to facepalm at the comments.”
You see exactly the same ignorance on similar forums, and of course the usual smattering of Americans overseas who have not personally had any problems(yet) and so there are no problems for anyone.
As long as you’re not earning more than $104,000 there’s not a care in the world!
“What stood in the way was the data protection/ privacy rights of the accountholders, and the secrecy rights of the banks. The FATCA withholding threat made banks eager to sacrifice their secrecy rights in return for protection, and gave the governments a “public interest” justification for stripping USCs of their data protection / privacy rights.”
I think it was the tech, rather lack there of that stood in the way. Didn’t take long at all for these privacy rights to fall once the tech allowing for quick and easy transfers of huge amounts of data was up and running.
As far as RBT goes, I’ll never understand what claim any country has on money earned outside its borders as long as it stays outside of its borders. Earnings should be taxed at their source as it is the country of its source which provides what ever benefits and protections the earner would enjoy.
““This seems a lot more lik one side is giving all the carrots” Indeed,”
To me that reads ‘extortion’.
“I think it was the tech, rather lack there of that stood in the way. Didn’t take long at all for these privacy rights to fall once the tech allowing for quick and easy transfers of huge amounts of data was up and running.”
It’s the other way round.
The data merchants (including Palantir of course) stepped in quickly and ever so helpfully as soon as the opportunity arose; the opportunity couldn’t arise until the FATCA withholding threat made it possible to claim the public-interest justification.
But I agree that once the FATCA compliance software was up and running, it was much much easier for banks to incorporate CRS compliance.
@Japan T
“As far as RBT goes, I’ll never understand what claim any country has on money earned outside its borders as long as it stays outside of its borders. Earnings should be taxed at their source as it is the country of its source which provides what ever benefits and protections the earner would enjoy.”
Hear, hear! I feel the same way. All the cross-border reporting from source country to residence country to citizenship country seems hugely inconvenient and complicated. It could all be so simple. The motivator, I think, is greed. The US, for example, sees all those US corporate profits piling up offshore and starts salivating at the thought of sinking its teeth into a large serving of repatriation tax. Simplicity has no role to play, just as the ideas of fairness and morality are cast aside when money is up for grabs.
“The motivator, I think, is greed. ”
Revenue, certainly. That stuff that (among other things) pays for residents’ benefits.
CBT is clearly unfair, but fortunately unenforceable. Taxing the offshore income of residents is not unfair in my book, and what’s more it’s the law of the land.
I report my minuscule bit of offshore income (US SS), and don’t object to paying the tax, any more than I object to paying tax on my home-source income.
“Taxing the offshore income of residents is not unfair in my book…”
Depends on who is doing the taxing. I think the simplicity of taxing money where it is earned, or possibly stored, seems more practical than having to fill out dozens of forms to declare it and would also eradicate the need for many tax treaty clauses used to avoid taxation on “offshore” money.
If I am a US resident who receives patent income from an EU country, then why shouldn’t the EU get the taxes on it instead of the US? Why bother including and excluding all the various incomes with tax treaties that only create bureaucratic hassles and hurdles? One might end up paying taxes on certain incomes to several countries, but just think of all the savings in tax preparation time and fees. If a resident of one country is going to spread their income sources around the globe, then the other countries should see a tax benefit for providing those possibilities. Tax it where the income is created, basta!
Just to be clear, I am not opposed to paying taxes. I simply fail to see the sense in endeavoring to only being taxed where I am a resident/citizen. The nations of the world appear to be engaged in a race to claim the most taxes and taxpayers, while ignoring the issue of ever-increasing difficulty reporting diverse income sources in a global economy. Taxing at source eliminates the need for a lot of red tape and the revenue would even itself out world-wide. It might also help put a damper on imperialist policies, like GILTI and the repatriation tax, because one nation wouldn’t be making every other nation susceptible to its tax laws.
We’ll have to agree to differ.
@plaxy
“I report my minuscule bit of offshore income (US SS), and don’t object to paying the tax, any more than I object to paying tax on my home-source income.”
Okay. What would be the issue with not reporting that miniscule bit of US SS and not paying taxes on it in your country of residence, but, instead, paying US taxes on that US SS money? After all, the US is providing the benefit and millions of US citizens/residents are paying into the program and should reap the tax revenues of that money, no? That sounds much fairer to me.
“Taxing the offshore income of residents is not unfair in my book…”
Oh? On what basis is it fair to tax this?
Let me use my British friend living in Japan as an illustration. Let’s say that long before he moved to Japan, he built up an amount of savings and bought himself a residence to live in. Upon deciding to move to Japan, also decided to not sell his property but to rent it out. The rent money paid to him would go into an account he has in GB. He naturally pays all taxes due to Her Majesty’s government. Upon what basis does Japan have a right to tax or even know about any of this?
If there is a dispute between his tennant and himself which leads the tennant to light the place on fire in a huff of anger, will Japan fly a fire brigade to the UK to surpress the conflagration? Will Japanese police then open an investigation and if they catch the arsonists bring him to trial in Japan, all on the Japanese tax payers yen? HA! Of course not.
In leiu of this, does the Japanese Government maintain, at Japanese taxpayer expense, expeditionary fire brigades and police units to handle such cases?
HA! Of course not.
Will GB’s government hand the Japanese taxpayer, via the Japanese government, the bill covering these costs borne by the British taxpayer?
If not, then Japan has no right whatsoever to his assets nor data concerning them.
Unless, we are in fact just property for the various nations to decide among themselves what share if each of us belongs to which nation. In which case, we have no say in the matter and should just pack this whole thing up and enjoy what scraps our masters leave us.
“The nations of the world appear to be engaged in a race to claim the most taxes and taxpayers ”
The rich nations, yes. Exactly the point if Zucman’s paper, which demonstrates that they’d be wiser to focus on the income that’s tucked away in tax havens.
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/TWZ2018Slides.pdf
“”I think it was the tech, rather lack there of that stood in the way. Didn’t take long at all for these privacy rights to fall once the tech allowing for quick and easy transfers of huge amounts of data was up and running.”
It’s the other way round.
The data merchants (including Palantir of course) stepped in quickly and ever so helpfully as soon as the opportunity arose; the opportunity couldn’t arise until the FATCA withholding threat made it possible to claim the public-interest justification.”
Nah, nah nah. There had to first be tech to collect, collate, store, maintain and transfer such amounts of data before FATCA could even be viable.
I have no doubt that nations have long dreamed of having such power themselves, but it would have taken shiploads of paper just to start it up and most of the human population on the planet to even make a dent in compiling it.
The data merchants are just using tech in “new and wonderful” ways. They may have developed some of the tech for it, but the tech had to be there before this could happen.
Imagine your favorite sports car on a road in the 1700s.
“What would be the issue with not reporting that miniscule bit of US SS and not paying taxes on it in your country of residence, but, instead, paying US taxes on that US SS money?“
That’s not an option that interests me. If it was taxed by the US I wouldn’t claim it. As it is, I gain and my country gains, and devilish America loses, so it’s all good. 😉
“we are in fact just property for the various nations to decide among themselves what share if each of us belongs to which nation”
More accurately:
“It’s up to the various nations to decide among themselves what share of the income of each of us belongs to which nation”
I don’t get it. What’s the problem?
The definition of a slave is one who is denied the fruits of their labor. As income is the fruit of labor, then you are saying we are slaves. If that be the case, we should disabuse ourselves of any other notion and enjoy to the greatest extent posdibke, the scraps our masters leave us.