Media and Blog Articles – part 2 of 11 (Year 2015)

1,837 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles – part 2 of 11 (Year 2015)”

1. Caricom (Caribbean Community and Common Market): A collective bargaining unit for rights

   While the failure to progress the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) is a cause for considerable regret, there are other aspects of integration that have benefited the 15 member states in the past and that should be vigorously pursued now to advance their prospects in the international community. One of them is joint bargaining. By joint bargaining I mean the pooling of the resources of all member states to negotiate with other countries or groups of countries on issues in which Caricom states have a shared interest.

   There are a multiplicity of such issues. In relation to the United States of America alone, Caricom countries share great concerns about several matters. Among those matters is the cost to each country’s treasury of complying with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), a law passed in 2010 by the United States that has been imposed on Caribbean countries. Under the terms of that law, financial institutions in the Caribbean are required to provide information to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about accounts held by US taxpayers or foreign entities in which US taxpayers hold a substantial ownership interest.

   In a sense, financial institutions in the Caribbean have become agents of the IRS and have to spend money to satisfy the burden imposed upon them or risk being penalised in the US, including by the seizure of any assets that they may have there. By extension, Caribbean governments have also become IRS agents because they have to make sure that the regulatory, investigative and enforcement machinery is in place to monitor financial institutions within their jurisdictions to ensure compliance with FATCA. The cost of this machinery comes at a cost to Caricom governments, many of which are already cash-strapped and resource-poor.

   There is a case to be made to the US Government for compensation for the financial burden that FATCA places on Caribbean governments to help the IRS collect US taxes. While each Caricom country would have a sound basis for engaging the US Government for compensation on this matter, all of them would be better placed to make their arguments with the US Government and Congress if they did so together.

   Indeed, every country or group of countries, like Caricom that represents Caribbean governments, should make a case for US Government compensation.

   Should compensation for the financial burden of FATCA not also be an all-Canadian issue — a cost that the Canadian government and the Canadian taxpayer should be reimbursed for / the cost of this FATCA law the Conservative government so readily voted to override Canadian laws and rights — at this country’s own cost to carry out?

2. An interesting Medicare fraud article:

   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-20/medicare-fraud-is-committed-well-beyond-u-s-borders

   Expats who worked the 44 quarters (in the U.S.) required to be eligible for Medicare at age 65 are penalized for living outside the U.S.– “No soup for you!” Even though they are vested into Medicare, the benefit is unavailable outside the U.S.

3. Question regarding the Bloomberg article about “medicare fraud” committed abroad. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as BC Doc said, one is only qualified to receive such benefits after having paid in, as payroll or self-employment taxes, for 44 quarters. Every tax accountant I’ve spoken to has said you don’t have to be resident in the USA to pay into the system and rack up the 44 quarters.

   Therefore isn’t it safe to assume that those committing the “fraud” in Nicaragua were legitimately entitled to Medicare benefits, in every way except their foreign address? In which case, who is really committing the fraud, the US government, or people entering a “proxy” address to claim benefits that they paid for?

4. @BCDoc
   Boy- America really LOVES the FAT CAT myth of all those rich crooks overseas scamming them of money. Talk about creating a monster to persecute. It gives them the right to tax them blind.

5. Calgary: I agree! Every nation on earth that has been “FATCA’d” by the U.S. government (i.e. every nation on earth!) should have demanded compensation from the U.S. government for the costs of compliance with U.S. legislation. That simple action would have stopped FATCA dead in its tracks. After all, what’s the point of having a law that will allow you to collect a bunch of money if you just have to pay it all back in compensation payments to the governments of the people you’re collecting it from?

6. @Calgary411 and others:

   I would not rely on the National Review for an analysis of the Common Law meaning of “allegiance”, nor for the 14th Amendment one, although it’s true, if that’s what the article says or means, that neither the new USA nor the British Empire had a concept of “nationality” until … they did. The best sources are Clive Perry, and to a lesser extent (unlike Prof. Perry he was writing for a popular audience) Francis T. Piggott. https://www.google.ca/#q=site:uniset.ca+ligeance+of+the+king

   Neither Israel nor China had nationality laws at certain times, but both countries knew whom their citizens were “when they saw them”.

   The USA in particular has long experience in retaliating against troublemakers — especially dissident citizens, who were once, and by a certain section of the Right still are — denominated as communists. And those who were unaffected didn’t and don’t care. Think of Martin Niemöller. And, for that matter, I.F. Stone, whose career as muckraker and truthteller and leftist is beautifully set out in a 2012 biography (“American Radical”) by D.D. Guttenplan of The Nation.

7. Lol! For those of us who haven’t yet learned by now to “look before you leap”:

   http://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/beps-and-planet-mars/#.VdscaYhHarU

8. Forgive me if this has been raised before but the mention of Caricom reminds me of the opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership on the basis that, like other trade agreements including perhaps NAFTA it opens signatory governments to arbitration and compensation claims on the basis that domestic legislation has cost firms in the other signatory state(s) money. One case that comes to mind is tobacco labeling and marketing legislation, but who knows, FATCA might fit? https://www.google.ca/#q=trans-pacific+partnership+arbitration

   (Sorry but I don’t know my way around this site well enough, nor am I able to check in often enough, to know if this query is redundant.)

10. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tsx-markets-stocks-1.3201342 comment regarding MEDIA & POLITICIANS (just like ours in Canada regarding FATCA) …

    …pay attention to what the Politicians and the Media were NOT talking about.And here we are…

11. There is an interesting article called “Taxpayers sue IRS over data breach” where they say people are getting a class action lawsuit started …..hmmmmm……http://www.pymnts.com/news/2015/taxpayers-sue-irs-over-data-breach/#.VdtWxbztmko

12. Bloomberg: Hearing Set on Injunction to Stop FATCA Reporting Sep 4th

    http://www.bna.com/hearing-set-injunction-n17179935160/

13. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/08/24/why-it-now-costs-so-much-to-renounce-your-citizenship/

    One interesting snippet from the upcoming Federal Register publication: “At one post alone, renunciations rose from under 100 in 2009 to more than 1,100 in the first ten months of 2014.”

    According to Andrew Mitchel, renunciations listed in the Federal Register totalled of 3,415 for all of 2014. So either it is complete but running a long way behind reality, or it is not as complete as folk have claimed, or this single (unidentified) post genuinely processes 1/3 of all renunciations worldwide.

14. https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2015-21042.pdf

    logical?

15. @Nohdee
    The game is rigged. They have excuses for everything and none of the 70 objections were actually given a shot at actually being taken seriously. “This is the way we want it so shut the fuck up”

16. The right to renounce nationality is a basic human right. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3663&context=fss_papers

    The State Department user fee of $2,350 is already substantially above the world average annual wage of $1,480 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

    Beyond that, there is an exit tax which may be applied to assets that are not within the control, and sometimes not beneficially owned by, the “US Person” in question.

    Foreign states have rarely interfered with other countries’ attribution of their nationality; more common is to ignore such attribution when it conflicts or is seen as exorbitant. (There was a time, I seem to recall, perhaps from one of Manley O. Hudson’s early studies (this one is from 1952: http://legal.un.org/ilc/documentation/english/a_cn4_50.pdf ) when Argentina imposed its nationality on resident aliens; the law was repealed after diplomatic protest.)

    Other countries can engage in the type of legislative override of tax treaties common in the USA. They can also dispute or ignore foreign attribution of nationality to one of their own citizens (but that leaves open the question of EU/EEA/Swiss citizens exercising EU cross-border rights).

    I remember foreign retaliation (by Canada, Mexico, the UK, Switzerland, France and perhaps other countries) in response to American extraterritorial assertion of jurisdiction: Canadian Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/F-29/

    The IGAs and FATCA, it seems to me, can self-destruct in time as conflicts, hardships and draconian penalties and costs come to light. Laws that are widely ignored and repudiated do not have staying power, the more so when they are extraterritorial in nature.

    The publicity given to Boris Johnson’s dilemma may well (and ought to) give pause to those at risk. The Polanski and Marc Rich cases provide lessons on avoiding extradition, the Barrett case on the risks of a visit leading to a writ ne exeat republica over unpaid tax http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

    And as that Utah data center and the Big Data collection in TECS and other databases becomes better known, and the Manning, Snowden and Assange documents more easily searchable … well, you can draw your own conclusions.

    If the USA loses its economic pre-eminence (maybe less likely today than it seemed a year or more ago) it will lose its power to bully and coerce. For now the problem is that the injured parties are individuals, not major economic interests with political and diplomatic clout and not obviously the treasuries of major treaty partners or the EU. If and when the American Chamber of Commerce takes an interest on behalf of its multinational members then maybe the Congress will take notice.

    Until then it’s every expat for him- or herself. And statistically, most are doing nothing: readers will have seen IRS filing statistics (which, unlike the claimed number for american citizens abroad, at least have a valid basis for citation).

17. Quote from State Department: “At one post alone, renunciations rose from under 100 in 2009 to more than 1,100 in the first ten months of 2014.”

    This could possibly be the US Embassy in Bern. An August 2013 article at swissinfo.ch said this: “The US embassy in Bern told swissinfo.ch last October (2012) that 411 cases had been processed in the first nine months of 2012, compared to a total of 180 Americans who gave up their passports in the whole of 2011.”

    http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/goodbye-uncle-sam_rise-in-us-passport-renunciations/36688996

    If 1,100 was for renunciations only, then it could be expected that there were around 2,200 renunciations and relinquishments at the post in question for the first ten months of 2014, or 200 per month.

18. A Bloomberg Op-Ed piece on birthright citizenship (written in part in reaction to Donald Chump’s recent inflammatory statements). Readers can leave comments– offers an opportunity to leave comments about unwanted birthright citizenship as a particular burden due to CBT and FATCA.

    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-25/beyond-birthright-citizenship

19. How new global tax rules could erode your financial privacy
    Mary Teresa Bitti | August 25, 2015

    http://business.financialpost.com/legal-post/how-new-global-tax-rules-could-erode-your-financial-privacy

    Comments Open.
    Compare n contrast FATCA and CRS. Roy Berg has a lot of attention in the article.

    Lawsuit mention: “The program is controversial. Canada’s participation in this system is the subject of an on-going federal lawsuit in Canada.”

20. I just tried to put a link in the Financial Post article and it got placed in moderation.

21. US Expats Taking FATCA Matters Into Their Own Hands
    August 24, 2015 by David McKeegan
    http://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/blog/us-expats-taking-fatca-matters-into-own-hands/

    DISQUS

    They blocked me from retweeting as they did not like my comments about their recent survey – as I commented ‘sales dressed as survey’ and some insensitive questions. However, they did have a very nice presentation of that survey results: http://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-US-Expat-Opinion-Survey.jpg And this article looks fairly good.

22. 2015.08.26. Which will come first: A decision in the FATCA legal challenge or the first exchange info? Mary Teresa Bitti and Jules Melnitzer, Financial Post, Canada.

23. Another compliance condor article, but with a twist:

    http://www.insidecounsel.com/2015/08/26/understanding-fbar-and-fatca-what-anyone-with-a-f?page=5

    Near the end of the article there is a mention of the Bopp lawsuit:

    An interesting side note is that a lawsuit has been filed in federal court, Crawford v. U.S. Department of Treasury, by Rand Paul and six others that seeks to strike down many of FATCA’s provisions. This complaint alleges that FATCA is unconstitutional because the intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) the Treasury Department has reached with foreign countries violates Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, requiring two-thirds of U.S. senators present and voting to approve a foreign treaty. The complaint also alleges:

    – The Heightened Reporting Requirements for Foreign Financial Accounts Deny U.S. Citizens Living Abroad the Equal Protection of the Laws
    – The FBAR Willfulness Penalty is Unconstitutional under the Excessive Fines Clause
    – FATCA’s Information Reporting Requirements are Unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment

    Comments are open and some mention of the Canadian ADCS lawsuit should be made.

24. WSJ Opinion, August 27, 2015 “Fatca Can Catch Ya In the U.S., Too

25. @Calgary411 WSJ never likes me to comment.

    Point to be made: if you live overseas all your every day accounts – potentially all your accounts – are exposed to massive and excessive FBAR and FATCA fines. So it is very much not the same. If you live overseas you may be denied partnership or job, or job promotion on the basis of signature authority on accounts. If you live in the US your actives in your home country: partnership, job, promotion will not be impacted by FBAR/FATCA.

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