Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

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

2021.01.01.  This thread is now closed.  It continues at Media and Blog Articles Open for Comment – Part 8 of 9 – Year 2021.

**If clicking on a link brought you to the wrong page of this thread, CLICK HERE to go DIRECTLY TO THE MOST RECENT COMMENTS.**

This is a continuation of the Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments thread (part 6 of 9). 

Part 1 covers up until 26 May 2015.   Part 2 is  from 27 May 2015  to 1 January 2016.  Part 3 is 1 January – 31 December 2016.  Part 4 is 1 January – 31 December 2017.   Part 5 is 1 January – 31 December 2018.  Part 6 is 1 January – 31 December 2019. Part 8 is 1 January – 31 December 2021. Part 9  is 1 January – 31 December 2022.

 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 often very recent articles mentioned since this list was updated.

2020.12.04
How the IRS Prioritizes Compliance Work on High Income Non-Filers Through National and International Enforcement, IRS, Tax Connections.
2020.12.02
Constitutional lawyer Joseph Arvay remembered as tireless defender of the underdog, Bethany Lindsay, CBC, Canada. (Mr. Arvay was lead counsel for the ADCS constitutional challenge of the FATCA IGA legislation at Federal Court (Trial Division), 2014-2019.
2020.11.02
Goodbye, USA: The story of how I left the USA. Larry Salibra, Larry Salibra, Hong Kong.
2020.10.31
How the coronavirus made it nearly impossible to tenounce citizenship,, Adam Taylor, Washington Post, US.
2020.10.16
More Americans Are Renouncing Their Citizenship, Jo Craven McGinty, Wall Street Journal, US.
2020.10.15
Would I Ever Renounce My Citizenship?, Evan Edinger, YouTube.
2020.10.07
McAfee Founder Accused Of Evading Taxes While Allegedly Earning Millions, Reese Oxner, NPR, US.
2020.09.15
Toronto Star virtual event:  US Election 2020:  Why votes from abroad matter, and explaining the battle to overcome voter suppression, Toronto Star, Canada.  (Event occurs 2020.09.22)
2020.09.07
Republican group calls on Donald Trump to change Fatca [sic], Cristian Angeloni, International Adviser.
Geld aus den USA fur viele Pensionisten, ORF, Austria.

2021.01.01.  This thread is now closed.  It continues at Media and Blog Articles Open for Comment – Part 8 of 8 – Year 2021.

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

  1. JC: thank you for posting the information about Monte Silver’s lawsuit. Am in the midst of reading through it. Thanks again!

  2. Mark Blyth (professor of political economy at Brown university) hosted an interesting podcast with the 2 authors of a new book on the decline of US hegemony:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_3yUiUfZJs

    At around the 33 minute point Blyth brings up the issue of dollar hegemony which the authors admit is somewhat of a gap in their argument. However at around 36:30 they also talk about the widespread view that the US use of sanctions is irresponsible (held by allies and not just adversaries) and how it is leading to the search for workarounds which may hasten the demise of the dollar’s primacy.

  3. An interesting court ruling that would knock back FBAR fines considerably:

    https://americanexpatfinance.com/tax/item/481-texas-court-rules-non-willful-penalty-should-apply-per-fbar?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=News%20Bulletin%20July%2020%20Week%202&utm_content=News%20Bulletin%20July%2020%20Week%202+CID_a9ebdf7f5dd841bc2af1470ecea34cb8&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Texas%20Court%20rules%20non-willful%20penalty%20should%20apply%20per%20FBAR%20not%20per%20account

  4. Of minor interest, today’s CBC article about Canadian “participation” in the US election.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-campaign-law-1.5649705

    A U.S. federal report said there were 622,492 American citizens living in Canada who were eligible to vote in the U.S. election in 2016 — and only 5.3 per cent cast a ballot.

    The article interviews both the head of Democrats Abroad in Canada, and our old friend Solomon Yue from Republicans Overseas: “Yue said he suspects many U.S. expats simply don’t vote because they fear possible tax implications under the U.S.’s complex rules for citizens abroad. Nardi, on the other hand, said he’s never heard of a single problem for an expat voting in a federal race.”

    Nice of DA to admit that you won’t get chased down by the IRS if you choose to vote. Yue might be referring to state taxes specifically, but he’s always been a bit foggy on the details so who knows.

  6. It does rather suggest that most either don’t file or just do very straightforward returns. No mention either of banking problems due to FATCA, which is interesting.

  7. Yes, interesting as the question may be , no one is going to discuss matters of a somewhat personal nature , like death and taxes,on a bored panda website,

  8. Given the small sample size, I’m not hugely surprised that the subject never came up. Thirty responses, so even if you assume a higher compliance rate among expats than US persons overall, that’s still maybe only half a dozen who would be filing. Then from the 94 percent owe nothing figure, we can assume that of those who do file, it’s entirely possible that all of them have simple, straightforward FEIE returns. Regarding FATCA, some were long-terms expats in countries with light enforcement, others would have supplied an SSN and gotten on with it. Evil though they are, it’s clearly not the case that FATCA and CBT wreck the lives of most US-tainted persons around the world.

  9. There appears to be a regulatory victory for GILTI. If a 18.9% overall tax rate applies or higher, companies operated by USP overseas are exempt from GILTI reporting and tax.

    Major victory for our “David” of “David & Goliath” fame Monte Silver and his legal action (although on Twitter Democrats Abroad were claiming credit with a meme with “We Won” on it.

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/1596833103935124/?multi_permalinks=2810168742601548&notif_id=1595336677021935&notif_t=group_activity&ref=notif

    Would be nice if such thinking – if a country personal tax is above XX% – were applied to CBT.

  10. JC: Is there a place where we can read the text of this “regulatory victory” without signing up to a Facebook page? I’m glad to know that something is happening in our favour and would like to know the details. Thanks!

  16. Now possible to open this page so posting here instead (please delete previous post on other thread).

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/09/us/us-citizenship-renounced-data-trnd/index.html

    Analysis is mostly nonsense but the increase is interesting. Presumably still clearing a backlog from last year.

    This is the article on which the CNN piece was based.

    https://bambridgeaccountants.com/us-expat/2020/8/9/americans-continue-giving-up-citizenship-at-record-levels

    A corrective comment has been posted, and awaits moderation. People obviously aren’t renouncing because of COVID, given that the consulates all closed because of COVID.

  17. @ Ron,

    I’ll delete the previous post. Strange about not being able to post on this thread earlier. I was also not able to post about ten minutes ago (ten minutes after you). Also not sure why your comment went into moderation — or maybe you meant in moderation at CNN. But sometimes the software here gets wacky and does that or even sends a comment to spam. The latter’s very very very rare, though.

    Good chance for a reminder to all: Because of things like that or some internet weirdness, if doing a long comment, good idea to compose and save it in Word (or whatever) and paste it in the comment box.

  18. By awaits moderation I meant on the Bambridge Accountants site – I figured someone ought to point out that there haven’t been any renunciations since April. (CNN killed all comments some years ago.)

  20. To my great non-surprise, after 48 hours Bambridge Accountants responded to neither an article comment nor direct reply pointing out the silliness of their suggestion that renunciations are way up during the pandemic when the consulates are all closed.

  21. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/12/how-donald-trump-is-driving-americans-to-renounce-their-citizenship
    from The Guardian Wed 12 Aug 2020 07.00 BST
    Opinion
    US news
    ‘How Donald Trump is driving Americans to renounce their citizenship’
    Arwa Mahdawi

    “…….The US’s global tax reporting requirements are a major reason why many people decide to cough up the $2,350 (£1,775) fee required to officially cut ties with the US. Boris Johnson, for example, renounced his US citizenship in 2016 after complaining about the “absolutely outrageous” US tax demands. Nevertheless, it seems that Trump is sending an increasing number of expats over the edge…….”………

  23. So now it makes it into the Guardian without any error- or sanity-checking. Sometimes you wonder about how much time journalists put into their work. Time for a comment or e-mail methinks.

  24. What follows is the content of an email sent to me from a person who was a frequent participant here at Brock until recently. She gave me permission to share it with all of you. It is news, directly from the source. It’s a tad long for a comment but I thought this the best place to put it:

    Hello News agencies, Democrats Abroad and others,

    I was born in Washington, DC almost 75 years ago but moved to Canada in 1969 to follow my spouse (also a US citizen) who was taking a first post-PhD job here. In little time, our children were born here (births were registered at the US Consulate) and we continued to liked it in this “foreign realm” – it became our home – so we ended up staying and staying and staying until we eventually took Canadian citizenship in the mid 1990s (while still maintaining our US citizenship).

    Then, when the scourge-to-the-world FATCA was introduced, the privacy of our finances were going to be further invaded on a lie of reciprocity to the CRA and every other country’s tax office) and US tax reporting became +++++++++ more complicated (something spouse, as a Professor of Economics, had never minded doing over all those many years, even the cross-border calculations), and with our children having chosen to remain in Canada well into their adulthood, even tho they had dual citizenship and could have moved to the US, both spouse and I (after 40 years here) decided to renounce our US citizenships (who needs this FATCA CR*P????).

    So, despite the many factors, accounting considerations and months of time involved, these renunciations legal documents and hurdles were accomplished in 2012 and 2014 (after the cost at the US Consulate was virtually nil but before it suddenly with little notice jumped to the globally outrageous $2,350 US – – our cost was still around $400 US$).

    Now, today, almost 8 and just over 6 years renounced – – and not having personally filed anything with the IRS in all this time (and each of us having received full confirmation documentation that the renunciation process was officially completed, all last tax forms received, no word of goodbye but here’s your no-longer-valid passport back, and we have no feelings/questions at all about why you two are turning your back on the good ole rah-rah USA), spouse and I each just received in the mail “Economic Impact Payments” from President Donald J Trump ($1,200.00 each, signed by Vera S Robinson???)!!!!!

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: