Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 3 of 11 (Year 2016)

2,818 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 3 of 11 (Year 2016)”

1. Hillary v Donald. Where Do They Stand on US Taxes, FATCA, FBAR & Immigration?
   Virginia La Torre Jeker

   http://blogs.angloinfo.com/us-tax/2016/10/28/hillary-v-donald-where-do-they-stand-on-us-taxes-fatca-fbar-immigration/

2. Despite all the rhetoric, remember that the presidential candidates are not bound by what is said as part of their campaign platform. What this means in the real world is that each candidate will often “talk the talk” much louder during the campaign, in part, to clearly distinguish themselves and set themselves apart from their opponent. Once in office, they may not “walk the walk”. The talk may soften or simply disappear; as I have said before, “talk is cheap”, whether by the Presidential candidates or the Internal Revenue Service.

   Correct. As with the Liberal government that replaced the Conservative government in Canada, talk is indeed cheap!

3. This author has just outed himself as an Accidental American and tried (unsuccessfully) to register to vote http://calgaryherald.com/life/swerve/mr-trump-tear-down-this-wall-is-an-american-born-canadian-able-to-register-to-vote-in-u-s-election

   (FB comments – I’ve already posted a link to the Introductory Materials page here)

4. US Gov’t to it’s overseas diaspora: “We can tax you, manipulate you, extort your country, extort your local banks, fine you, force you to pay insane fees, all while offering zero representation… because you are technically American…. But no, No voting for you.”

5. Commenter says dropped by Merrill Lynch because of FATCA:
   https://blog.socialsecurity.gov/protecting-your-identity-is-important-to-us/#comment-173894
   “….how can I manage to find another institution to pick me up as a client since Merrill Lynch is dropping me due to FATCA???..”

6. @Karen;

   re;
   “…On Nov. 6, 2012, the day of the most recent U.S. presidential election, I happened to be flying to Florida for a magazine assignment. The U.S. Customs agent eyed my Canadian passport. “You know,” he told me, “you could have registered to vote.”

   The sharp-eyed officer had spotted my birthplace: Norwalk, Ohio. Born in the U.S.A., as Springsteen sang, despite the fact that both my parents and all my siblings are Canadian-born. The chance circumstance of my arrival during the two-year period my father was studying at Oberlin College provided me with that precious legal technicality of American birth…….”
   http://calgaryherald.com/life/swerve/mr-trump-tear-down-this-wall-is-an-american-born-canadian-able-to-register-to-vote-in-u-s-election

   Will we be seeing a followup article about a subsequent painful experience for this ‘accidental’ where a keen eyed US border official again spots the author’s Ohio birthplace on his CANADIAN passport, and demands that he obtain and use only a US passport in order to enter and leave the US? And will he be pressured to obtain a SSN eventually? Thus being forced to exercise another one of those dubious ‘benefits’ of being born in the US despite having Canadian parents and a Canadian home and workplace. And then of course there is the new rule for dual Canadians – who now must enter and exit Canada on their Canadian passport, though there is apparently an exception for Canadian/US duals http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/dual-canadian-citizens.asp which is in conflict with the US law, so perhaps he won’t get grief from BOTH sets of border officials.

7. @Karen, So funny that the guy probably really wanted to vote for the dems. Now he gets to find out what that means.

8. More from Wikileaks: “The GOP is very active in raising money and garnering attention on both FATCA/FBAR and on Residence Based Taxation, as witnessed by Republicans Overseas Facebook page.”
   “The page itself doesn’t have many likes, but it makes a lot of noise in the overseas community and there are a number of blogs (pretty much hair on fire stuff) that raise the same issues and get folks all wound up, calling not for reform but outright repeal.”

   https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36871

9. More from Wikileaks J Podesta emails : “The GOP is very active in raising money and garnering attention on both FATCA/FBAR and on Residence Based Taxation, as witnessed by Republicans Overseas Facebook page.”

   “The page itself doesn’t have many likes, but it makes a lot of noise in the overseas community and there are a number of blogs (pretty much hair on fire stuff) that raise the same issues and get folks all wound up, calling not for reform but outright repeal.”

   https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36871

10. @ Charl
    A very hot find. Is J.J. Smallhoover implying we should all be using fire retardant for shampoo? I wonder if Sullivan ever replied to the FATCA/FBAR issue or did the forwarded e-mail just get dropped into his delete, don’t bother me with anything we can’t blame Putin for, box.

11. @EmBee
    I’ve got a raging wildfire in my hair at the moment. (They are getting rightly nuked on twitter by JC and some crazy wisecrone at the moment. Join in if you can, the more voices the better.)

    What REALLY sticks in my craw: They are MORE than well aware of the problem and could care less. Mr. Smallhoover is from the DA, obviously KNOWs the problems as he stated in the letter, yet dismisses the response as overreacting. How can you understand the issues and then dismiss them? I don’t get it.

    Well so much for CBT/FATCA ruining my nights sleep AGAIN! (Funny, I KNOW they KNOW about this disaster and do not care yet every time that is remade apparant to me I become completely beyond enraged…again.)

12. Maybe having your hair of fire isn’t such a negative thing – it may actually be a warning beacon which you ignore at your own peril.

    “That odd idiom–believed to have originated among Navy aviators, intended to convey a sense of hair-raising urgency–quickly became the phrase of the day as the hearings got under way. First it came from Richard Ben-Veniste, a commission member recounting allegations that President Bush ignored Al Qaeda before the attacks, despite warnings from alarmed officials:
    “People like [CIA] Director [George] Tenet, people like [former counterterrorism chief] Richard Clarke, are running around, as they say, with their hair on fire, in the summer of 2001, knowing something big is going to happen,” he said.”

    http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-04-04/news/0404040403_1_source-of-american-slang-naval-air-museum-foundation-commission-member-recounting-allegations

13. If Trump (or Clinton) becomes president, I’m outta here
    Posted on November 1, 2016 by Brad Hoppmann

    http://www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/if-trump-or-clinton-becomes-president-im-outta-here-23483

    https://twitter.com/JCDoubleTaxed/status/793573401273053185

    I have my “Berlin Wall II” comment in, now over an hour in moderation.

    I have “from New York to Texas” in moderation responding to terry, yet visible here on Facebook:
    https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmericanExpatriates/permalink/681509928681749/?comment_id=681562312009844&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D

14. @JS,
    On Bill O’Reily tonight they covered Brian Cranston saying he will leave.
    For example here:

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/10/31/bryan-cranston-will-move-canada-donald-trump-wins-election/

    I mailed Bill (oreilly@foxnews.com.) to let him know how great it would be if liberals got to eat their own financial cooking. Others should mail also as the audience is big.

15. It looks like the U.S. government is making it much more difficult for dependent U.S. passport holders to get ITIN numbers if they live outside of Canada and Mexico and aren’t connected to the military . How problematic is this?
    https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/new-requirement-for-dependents-whose-passports-dont-have-a-date-of-entry-into-the-u-s/?#.WBnZb4XXLIU

16. Interesting twist:

    https://www.thestar.com/news/immigration/2016/10/31/thousands-of-immigrants-quietly-giving-up-permanent-resident-status.html

17. You all might want to start poking through this resource, courtesy of wikileaks;
    https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Congressional_Research_Service#_note-1
    https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Change_you_can_download:_a_billion_in_secret_Congressional_reports

    Note that;
    I see that Wikileaks says of the Congressional Research Service:

    “Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO.
    Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet.”

    https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Congressional_Research_Service

    Wikileaks also says:

    “How many of the reports have not been seen before?
    Almost all.

    We have sent the reports to OpenCRS, a great service run by the Center for Democracy and Technology which collects released CRS reports.

    Of the 6,731 reports we sent to OpenCRS, 6,284 were new to the OpenCRS collection.

    Many CRS reports focus on long-term issues, such as the United States relationship with other countries, or key legislation. These reports keep the same report number over decades of editions. Of the 6,284 reports not in OpenCRS, 4,079 were new editions and 2,205 were completely new.”

18. I leave it to those who understand what this is about to consider:
    https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-11-01/html/2016-26382.htm

    Federal Register Volume 81, Number 211 (Tuesday, November 1, 2016)]
    [Notices]
    [Pages 75867-75874]
    From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
    [FR Doc No: 2016-26382]

    ———————————————————————–

    SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

    [Release No. 34-79172; File No. SR-OCC-2016-014]

    Self-Regulatory Organizations; The Options Clearing Corporation;
    Notice of Filing of Proposed Rule Change Related to Compliance With
    Section 871(m) of the Internal Revenue Code

    Note: do a ‘find’ search of the document. It is lousy with the search term FATCA, and seems to center on withholding.

19. Link to;
    https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/11/01/2016-26382/self-regulatory-organizations-the-options-clearing-corporation-notice-of-filing-of-proposed-rule

    ‘Self-Regulatory Organizations; The Options Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing of Proposed Rule Change Related to Compliance With Section 871(m) of the Internal Revenue Code’

    A Notice by the Securities and Exchange Commission on 11/01/2016

20. So, how does FATCA and its punishing compliance costs for Canadian and other ‘foreign’=non-US FIs and non-FIs fit with US priorities in the TPP?

    FATCA imposes costs and trade and competition barriers for our local FIs and non-FIs which US counterparts do not bear. FATCA already noted by Arthur Cockfield as an issue under the WTO and NAFTA.

    In 2013 the Congressional Research Service stated that;
    “….. A high priority for the United States in its negotiations of bilateral and regional free trade agreements has been increased market access for services providers, especially financial services, including insurance and banking……….”
    ( The Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Issues for Congress http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/211412.pdf Congressional Research Service June 17, 2013 ).

    Seems to me that even if FATCA raises no direct tax revenues for the US Treasury, it does give the US financial sector an unfair advantage by imposing barriers on all the rest of the world’s FIs and non-FIs, while exempting US ones – decreasing market access for non-US FIs and increasing it for the US.

    And,
    How does complying with and imposing FATCA interact with the TPP section on Financial Services?
    http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/TPP-text/11.%20Financial%20Services%20Chapter.pdf

    I don’t know enough about this to comment, only to raise the question and to post relevant resources when I find them.

21. Re the TPP, NAFTA (and FATCA), I found this recent comment by Obama;
    “…Finally, one final point, and it’s crucial. Because Canada and Mexico are a part of the agreement, TPP represents an opportunity to renegotiate NAFTA. In fact, by raising environmental and labor standards and beefing up enforcement, TPP will fix a lot of what was wrong with NAFTA in the first place…” http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/10/28/president-obama-explains-the-difference-between-tpp-and-nafta-in-laymans-terms/2/#2cc10d7f376f

    So, given that the financial service and insurance sectors were identified in a CRS report to Congress as important trade area priorities for the US, and that Obama is touting the TPP as a way to open up NAFTA, one wonders how this will all interact with US unilaterally imposed, extraterritorial meddling enforced by US FATCA’s extortionate withholding provisions on the financial and non-financial sectors of Canada.

    And the promised ‘public consultation’ on the TPP?
    http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/10/why-trudeaus-tpp-comments-undermine-freelands-credibility-on-canadas-biggest-trade-deal/

22. The US citizen writer of the article below doesn’t seem to have a clue about FATCA, FBAR and US extraterritorial CBT and their effects on a non-US spouse and family living in Geneva, France or anywhere else outside the US:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/opinion/sunday/foreign-spouse-happy-life.html?smid=tw-share
    Foreign Spouse, Happy Life
    By LAUREN COLLINSOCT. 15, 2016

    The ACA happily tweeted it without any references to the hardship that couple will endure due to FATCA.
    https://twitter.com/ACAVoice/status/789768608557699074

23. @badger

    It’s too close to the election for ACA to mention anything that might affect the expat vote 😉

24. @Bubblebustin I wonder if ACA is using the Dems ploy at obfuscation on matters of tax for US persons overseas. Maybe who ever is twitting is clueless as to their mission. Or, the twitterer is a member of Dems Abroad aka The Democrats. Or, perhaps they like the feel good happy talk that I see the embassy twitterers obsessed with.

    The Sleeper Issue for 9 Million Americans that the Media Will Not Cover
    By Abraham Katsman
    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/11/the_sleeper_issue_for_9_million_americans_that_the_media_will_not_cover.html

    Disqus!

25. New article at American Thinker:

    The Sleeper Issue for 9 Million Americans that the Media Will Not Cover

    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/11/the_sleeper_issue_for_9_million_americans_that_the_media_will_not_cover.html

    Comments are open.

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