Media and Blog Articles – Part 7 of 11 (Year 2020)

213 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles – Part 7 of 11 (Year 2020)”

1. Rocco Galati tweeted this short tribute:
   “Joe Arvay, a great advocate and constitutional lawyer passes away. The constructional bar will miss him, and Canadian society loses a great asset in protecting our rights.”

   And there’s a piece about him in the Vancouver Sun:
   https://vancouversun.com/news/joseph-arvay-one-of-canadas-leading-constitutional-lawyers-dies-at-age-71

2. https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-warns-state-local-police-about-china-targeting-people-on-us-soil-173731020.html

   The Chinese are a bit crude about targeting people .and ,of course, the American don’t target people at all. They simply “request” other nations to do it for them and in a much more genteel fashion.

3. Same old same old:

   https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-11/a-letter-on-tax-from-9-million-u-s-expats-to-janet-yellen

4. A Letter From 9 Million U.S. Expats to Janet Yellen

   The next Treasury secretary could make the lives of millions of Americans easier at no cost at all.
   By Andreas Kluth
   December 11, 2020, 10:00 PM GMT+11
   https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-11/a-letter-on-tax-from-9-million-u-s-expats-to-janet-yellen?sref=xSjBfHPF

   Please RT/Like
   https://twitter.com/andreaskluth/status/1337367653598588928

5. “Same old same old”.

   Indeed, a letter requesting that Americans should be allowed to leave and stop paying their fair shares is going to get about thirty seconds of her time before being filed in the waste paper bin, if that.

   I applaud the effort, I just think it’s a complete waste of time.

   Speaking of which, Ron. It’s a complete waste of typing time responding to Steve Slatin on Quora, he’s wilfully blind to the enormous caused by FATCA because he’s benefitting from them. 😉

6. I’ve lost track of whether this had been posted earlier this year here on IBS, but 2020 also saw the loss of constitutional law scholar Peter Hogg, who tried to warn the Canadian government of the time (then Conservatives under Harper) of the unconstitutional aspects of the FATCA enabling legislation they created and enacted ( https://www.greenparty.ca/sites/default/files/attachments/peter_hogg_fatca.pdf ). Longtime readers here may remember that Hogg’s letter was obtained by the Green Party’s leader Elizabeth May via freedom of information ( http://elizabethmaymp.ca/publications/press-releases/2013/03/13/implementation-of-fatca-likely-unconstitutional-says-leading-constitutional-expert/ ) and made public.

   Obituary: Peter Hogg
   Feb. 4
   https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-new-zealander-peter-hogg-quietly-shaped-canadian-law/
   “Peter Hogg, a New Zealander who became this country’s pre-eminent constitutional scholar, was sometimes called the 10th person on the nine-member Supreme Court of Canada.
   A textbook he wrote, Constitutional Law of Canada, published in five editions and updated annually in a loose-leaf version, is the work most cited by the court, found in a remarkable 190 decisions – the first in 1979, the most recent on Friday.”……..

   See also;
   https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/renowned-legal-scholar-and-lawyer-peter-hogg-dead-at-80/325955

7. This recent hacking incident of US government agencies, including the Treasury and Commerce departments shows how potentially vulnerable our banking and financial information is via the forced imposition of US extraterritorial FATCA onto the entire globe – without reciprocation, without cause and without recourse, and how unjust the application of US FBAR law is to those living, working and banking locally in the non-US countries where they are located.

   Why should those living outside the US, in the countries where they live and work and pay taxes have their personal and financial information sent to the US – collected under duress, and without any robust, rational or just cause – and sent across borders to where it could be made vulnerable?

   “……US government agencies, including the treasury and commerce departments, were among dozens of high-value public and private sector targets known to have been infiltrated as far back as March through a commercial software update distributed to thousands of SolarWinds clients worldwide.

   A US government statement indicated the Pentagon used the software. It said it had “issued guidance and directives to protect” its networks. It would not say – for “operational security reasons” – whether any of its systems may have been hacked….”…..
   https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/16/us-institutional-secrets-exposed-hack-russia
   https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/15/orion-hack-solar-winds-explained-us-treasury-commerce-department

   Would FATCA signatory countries, and FBAR filers even be told if their information was compromised?

8. Further to the above;

   “…The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday asked the IRS for a briefing about whether sensitive taxpayer information was stolen as part of the SolarWinds hack.

   “Given the extreme sensitivity of personal taxpayer information entrusted to the IRS, and the harm both to Americans’ privacy and our national security that could result from the theft and exploitation of this data by our adversaries, it is imperative that we understand the extent to which the IRS may
   have been compromised,” Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.”…..
   from https://thehill.com/policy/finance/530682-senators-request-irs-briefing-on-solarwinds-hack

   Consider that in light of this question raised in Canada’s Information & Ethics Committee on April 14th, 2016 but whose point was not meaningfully addressed by the CRA or anyone else;
   https://openparliament.ca/committees/ethics/42-1/8/pat-kelly-8/

   Just exposes how disingenuous and toothless the Minister of Revenue and the CRA’s responses are when they issue empty assurances that Canadian’s data sent to the US under the FATCA IGA are safe;
   ex.
   https://openparliament.ca/committees/ethics/42-1/8/pierre-luc-dusseault-2/
   https://openparliament.ca/committees/ethics/42-1/8/diane-lebouthillier-1/
   https://openparliament.ca/committees/ethics/42-1/8/diane-lebouthillier-4/

   The Minister even claimed that the FATCA IGA and the Liberal implementation of the Conservative’s IGA “protects” dual Canadians;
   “After we had obtained all the information about FATCA, we clearly would still have entered into agreements with the United States. FATCA is an American act. The position that was taken at the time really allowed the Canadian banking system, and Canadians with dual citizenship, to be protected.”
   https://openparliament.ca/committees/ethics/42-1/8/diane-lebouthillier-8/

   And of course, there is still NO reciprocity from the US;
   https://openparliament.ca/committees/ethics/42-1/8/diane-lebouthillier-3/

   If you need a refresher on just how non-existent or toothless Canadian government agencies the answers or recourse on offer to those whose records are caught up in FATCA information dumps to the US, (even if the IGA shouldn’t apply to them) then read through this in its entirety:
   https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/ETHI/meeting-8/evidence

   Now, look at how the # of records Canada sent to the US under the FATCA IGA continues to rise;
   Question No. 88
   Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
   3:45 p.m.
   Conservative
   Pat Kelly Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB

   “With regard to the increased number of tax files shared between the government and the Internal Revenue Service in the United States: (a) how many files were shared in (i) 2017, (ii) 2018, (iii) 2019; and (b) what is the reason for the dramatic increase in the number of files being shared in 2019?”

   Question No. 88
   Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
   January 27th, 2020 / 3:45 p.m.
   Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine Québec
   Liberal
   Diane Lebouthillier Minister of National Revenue:
   “Mr. Speaker, Canada is one of 113 jurisdictions that have signed a model 1 intergovernmental agreement, IGA, with the United States of America, U.S., with respect to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, FATCA.

   Under the IGA, the CRA acts as a conduit to facilitate the transmission of financial account information of “U.S. persons” from Canadian financial institutions, FIs, to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, IRS. Information regarding “U.S. persons” can be found under article 1(ee) of the IGA: https://www.fin.gc.ca/treaties-conventions/pdf/FATCA-eng.pdf.

   In response to part (a), the approximate numbers of records sent to the IRS under the IGA for the years in question are as follows: 600,000 in 2017, for 2016 tax year; 700,000 in 2018, for 2017 tax year; 900,000 in 2019, for 2018 tax year.

   In response to part (b), with respect to the increase in records over time, the following factors are of particular relevance.

   In addition to the IGA, the common reporting standard, CRS, was implemented in July 2017. As a result of this development and FIs’ desire to align their compliance requirements for these two regimes, more U.S. reportable accounts were identified. Also, when the CRS came into force, legislation was amended to require self-certification on all new accounts for both the IGA and CRS, which also resulted in an increase in records.

   Furthermore, as the exchanges under the IGA operate by records and not by account holder, more than one record can exist for any person or entity. As time goes on, new accounts are opened and there are changes to account information, such as updates to an address or to produce a tax identification number, which creates additional records, even though they relate to a single account and taxpayer.”
   https://openparliament.ca/debates/2020/1/27/diane-lebouthillier-2/

   For a refresher, great reading, and revelations in the Canadian parliamentary record re FATCA, do a keyword search ex;
   https://openparliament.ca/search/?q=FATCA&sort=date%20asc , and also try “information exchange” AND US.

   This is why the legal challenges must be supported financially, and continue – here and elsewhere in the world against the forced imposition of the extraterrritorial US FATCA law on Canadian and other countries’ sovereign soil.

9. So, should we care whether Canada dumps FATCA information to a foreign country, that has threatened us with harm, without our consent or warrant?

   Is privacy of our information important? Should we care or ignore?

   Canada’s Justice LaForest, writing about privacy protection and our Canadian Charter section 8:

   “[T]hat right, like other Charter rights, must be interpreted in a broad and liberal manner so as to secure the citizen’s right to a reasonable expectation of privacy against governmental encroachment…”

   “[P]rivacy is at the heart of liberty in a modern state…Grounded in man’s physical and moral autonomy, privacy is essential for the well-being of the individual. For this reason alone, it is worthy of constitutional protection, but it also has profound significance for the public order. The restraints imposed on government to pry into the lives of the citizen go to the essence of a democratic state…”

   “Finally, there is privacy in relation to information. This too is based on the notion of the dignity and integrity of the individual. As the Task Force put it (p. 13): “This notion of privacy derives from the assumption that all information about a person is in a fundamental way his own, for him to communicate or retain for himself as he sees fit.” In modern society, especially, retention of information about oneself is extremely important…”

10. @ Badger,
    Thanks for letting us know that Peter Hogg passed away earlier this year. I’m sad to learn this. Thinking of him, I remembered how, back in ’13, when I was *really* down in those dark times after my OMG day, it perked me up when he weighed in on FATCA because he is held in such high repute on Constitutional issues. He’s left quite a great legacy, IMO. And hopefully our Appeals panel will be as clear-sighted on Constitutional matters as he was.

11. Decent article about FATCA, Accidentals and various lawsuits in Time, as of yesterday:

    https://time.com/5922972/accidental-americans-fatca/

    I quite like that it’s very focused on banking problems and FATCA, not making grand claims about US tax filing obligations (which presumably most of these folks are smart enough to ignore).

    Someone really needs to get in touch with that Dutch guy who’s suing his bank (Ronald Ariës) and explain to him that he can either renounce or get an SSN to shut his bank up without having to file US tax returns – he will not be on the hook for taxes owed, though if he keeps talking about it in the press he’ll be the next Boris.

12. Or, as I advise people, just make up a SSN and give it to the bank. A bank will have no way of knowing that it’s not a real number.

13. BREAKING: Accidental Americans reel after Dutch court says bank may close account of retired KLM pilot
    December 24, 2020

    https://americanexpatfinance.com/news/item/610-dutch-court-says-bank-may-close-account-of-accidental

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