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.
A very well written letter from John Richardson to Senate Finance Committee re Transition Tax posted today on Tax Connections. Are they even listening to our pleas?
https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/letter-to-the-senate-finance-committee-discussing-the-effects-of-the-transition-tax-on-americans-abroad-and-canadian-residents/
@ BB
John’s letter is excellent and we’ve come to expect nothing less from him. Bless his heart. How could anyone read that and ignore the gross unfairness of the ill-conceived and cavalier (MaryLouise Serrata’s term) implementation of the Transition Tax? Yet somehow they have … so far. I hope for your sake and the sake of hundreds of thousands of enterprising expats who live and work outside the USA that the dam of indifference breaks very soon. This MUST be fixed!
https://www.americansabroad.org/media/files/files/c850be73/aca-comm-testimony-irs-965-regs-22-oct-2018.pdf
Thank you, Embee. John nails it pretty much every time. Happy that ACA took the gloves off. Nothing vanilla about Marylouise’s presentation, was there. Will it make a difference? Who knows. Monte Silver doesn’t seem to think so. Hope he’s moving boulders behind the scenes, because I am so done!
@ BB
Is it trying to move boulders or trying to push on a string? I don’t know but I’m ready to see someone bring out a jack hammer to get something done. In the meantime I often think about someone here on Brock who once said the IRS wants numbers so just give ’em some. (I think it had something to do with someone else agonizing over what to put down on the 8854.) If TT doesn’t get fixed it may be what some business owners, facing an impossible task of compliance, will have to resort to — simply winging it and pleading innocence if ever challenged. After all, the IRS estimates it will only take 5 hours (!!!) to come up with “the numbers” so 5 hours worth is all they deserve.
BB & EmBee: Wow, what a comprehensive detailing of everything that is so very wrong with the Transition Tax and GILTI. Mary Louise did great, too! But, I have to ask: does John Richardson ever eat or sleep? He must be on this 25 hours a day. I’m so grateful to him.
Twitter chatter:
A number of congratulations to @RepHolding (R) North Carolina for his re-election.
Also some for Dina Titus @dinatitus (D) Nevada for her re-election
Background:
https://www.democratsabroad.org/rep_dina_titus_supports_american_abroad_tax_reform
There was some whiff of a hint that there could be a Democrat cosponsor of The Saving Citizenship ACT aka Territorial Taxation for Individuals. Could Dina be this person?
https://twitter.com/CrossBriton/status/1060080001381470209
https://twitter.com/zuludogm/status/1060046348865757184
https://twitter.com/SwissTechie/status/1060034193554632705
https://twitter.com/wisecroneknows/status/1059802498876219393
https://twitter.com/JasonPedley/status/1060032084624982016
https://twitter.com/JCDoubleTaxed/status/1060103124122095616
https://twitter.com/HeidiHasz/status/1060091743876591617
https://twitter.com/CrossBriton/status/1060104938599211008
Solomon Yue tweets:
Congressman Holding will be back in office next Wednesday. We will push #TTFI in a bipartisan way again next week.
Pls RT/Like on Twitter:
4h
https://twitter.com/SolomonYue/status/1060228129388617728
If they kerp their word, the Dems will be to busy going after Trump to care a wit about us. Not that the Repubs showed much more real interest.
I’m afraid Japan T is right. During Obama’s entire term, all the Republicans cared about was, in Mitch McConnell’s words, “making sure Obama fails”. They kept their word, and did their best to make sure nothing got done (FATCA happened in 2010, while there was still a Democrat majority). Now the shoe is on the other foot, we can look forward to two years of gridlock and revenge. Whether or not the TTFI bill gains bipartisan sponsorship, my hope of it (or ANY law of consequence) ever reaching the House floor is dropping…though it’s really tough for hope to drop below zero into the realm of negative imaginary numbers.
Holding onto hope …
https://www.americanexpatfinance.com/legislation/item/55-expat-eyes-back-on-rumored-tax-bill-sponsor-holding
This was sent to me earlier today: https://www.financierworldwide.com/eu-parliament-versus-fatca#.W-SSopNKhPZ
@ Muzzled no More.
“The EU parliament is calling on Member States and the Commission to ensure that the fundamental rights of all EU citizens, in particular those of ‘Accidental Americans’, are guaranteed, especially the right to a private and family life, the right to privacy and the principle of non-discrimination, as laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and in the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Well, the CRS destroys any privacy EU citizens once had.
The EU parliament also insists on the importance of guaranteeing the protection of data being transmitted to the IRS by Member States and by US internet platforms providing services to EU customers. “
CRS and “guaranteeing protection of data” are mutually exclusive situations. The ONLY way to keep a secret is to NOT share it.
“Although the fight against tax evasion by governments is legitimate, the means used to collect information on individuals should be proportionate to the goal – the collection of further revenue.”
This is scary. I thought the goal was to catch those who are criminally evading their tax obligations. If the goal truly is “the collection of further revenue” then the a heavier debt burden will tilt the balance more against whatever privacy is left and towards greater and greater revenue collection.
Not sure this is very helpful, especially with the EUs demand of recipricocity from the US, unless that was used to reduce the data the US demands, which I doubt.
Compliance condor claiming that completely non compliant citizens of other nations are going to get tax bills regardless and enforced through QI agreements, regardless of that nation refusing to help the US with collection.
Folks might like to keep an eye on him and perhaps reduce his client base slightly. 😉 Not sure if this link will work…
https://www.quora.com/What-happens-if-an-American-citizen-living-abroad-does-not-pay-US-taxes/answer/David-S-Lesperance/comment/77545550?__filter__=all&__nsrc__=1&__snid3__=3459226484
“…claiming that completely non compliant citizens of other nations are going to get tax bills regardless and enforced through QI agreements,”
Sounds like a lot of effort for poor returns.
If I was the USA (which thank the Lord I’m not sir), I would just look at introducing a registration system, such as Holding’s allegedly-proposed legislation, or the scheme suggested by ACA. Allow those who want the passport but don’t want the hassle of filing, to register as “non-US-resident.”
Renew your US pasport? Certainly, sir. Which filing option?
Those who don’t want or need the passport are probably not worth the trouble of chasing.
In any case,
As I was saying…
In any case, the big penalty money comes from the ones who do file. Not from the ones who don’t.
A lot of effort for poor returns, exactly. The Cambridge grandmother recently robbed by the IRS spent in the region of $12000 prove she eventually owed $300 and to renounce, which is why the US tax compliance industry so love this little game.
Regardless, out compliance condor paints a picture where hundreds of thousands of resident citizens of other nations who refuse to file or have any dealings with the IRS at all are going to wake to find their bank accounts emptied.
Personally I think that’s the biggest load of scaremongering bollocks I’ve heard in quite a while, but can you imagine the political backlash if it happened? It would just hasten the end of this crap, and not before time.
Regarding the Quora piece, right at the very end of the exchange, Lesperance makes one point that I tend to agree with, unhappily. I used to think there would be great public outrage if the US ramped up collections in Canada, but the every time there’s a story about this on the CBC site and I look at the comments, my confidence in that outrage drops to near zero.
They have successfully painted us as tax cheats. What outrage there may be is directed at we “tax cheats”.
@Mike
We have a history with Mr. Lesperance. He is not a condor. He helps high net worth individuals “save on taxes” by taking on other citizenships.” He has been going on about the QI program for years. Karen Alpert and I researched that and it is not true.
His license has been suspended by
the Tribunal of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he has not
returned to Canada. Thanks for reminding me to recheck that case:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2017/05/18/irony-because-its-the-law-for-once-not-applied-to-non-willful-expats-but-a-citizenship-lawyer/
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onlst/doc/2017/2017onlsth164/2017onlsth164.html
“The Cambridge grandmother recently robbed by the IRS spent in the region of $12000 prove she eventually owed $300 and to renounce, which is why the US tax compliance industry so love this little game.”
This dual citizen could simply have renounced, paying $2350.
“…a picture where hundreds of thousands of resident citizens of other nations who refuse to file or have any dealings with the IRS at all are going to wake to find their bank accounts emptied.”
It’s rubbish though.
Tax advisers wanna make a living. What do you expect?
“…can you imagine the political backlash if it happened? It would just hasten the end of this crap, and not before time.”
There is nothing to happen. The US doesn’t show the slightest signs of trying to somehow use the QI programme to force banks to empty the non-US bank accounts of any US citizen, let alone hundreds of thousands. A reality-check is needed.
It’s just tax advisers, trying to scare up clients.
@Mike
I don’t have a Quora account (I try to keep this hobby under control) but you might want to reply to the thread with both mention of Mr. Lesperance being a forced exile, and also a link to the research on QI not providing a collection mechanism.
https://www.quora.com/profile/David-S-Lesperance
Ewww … is that snake oil David’s rubbing into his hair? His tax booga-booga can seem like an asp bite but only if you listen to him. I don’t and won’t.
“The Cambridge grandmother recently robbed by the IRS spent in the region of $12000 prove she eventually owed $300 and to renounce, which is why the US tax compliance industry so love this little game.”
Was she robbed by the IRS? They seem to have done nothing but process the forms and cash the $300 cheque.
It seems Ms Grimley paid (or was asked to pay) $9000 to a tax advisor. Even though she reportedly had only her pension and “modest retirement savings” to report.
What did s/he do, I wonder, to justify such a bill? Enter his client into streamlined and feed her numbers into a software package to generate three years of returns, plus the 1040NR and 8854?
All of it stuff she would have been better off doing herself with a free software package; and then she would still have her $9000. Pity no one pointed her to forums like this one where she could have got help.
The expensive adviser got her what she probably was always going to get from the minute she decided to file – a bill for $300 US tax.
A bit of a blow, no doubt, and certainly unfair. However, if as reported Ms Grimley had only her pension and “modest savings” to live on, the loss of $300 to the US would have been nowhere near as devastating as the loss of $9000 to the tax adviser.
Pity she didn’t just renounce and tell the lot of them – the tax adviser, the IRS, Left Foot Forward, and her MEP – to get knotted.
She didn’t even need to renounce, she just needed to forgedaboutit.
She was born in the US, unfortunately, so she did need to renounce, in order to keep her bank and HMG from sending her private personal information to the IRS. 🙁