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. Prof. Allison Christians comments on the Panama Papers …
   http://taxpol.blogspot.ca/2016/04/evasion-avoidance-and-bashing-panama-in.html

   Tax justice advocates seem to envision an invasive global regulatory regime in which every person in the world will have all of their assets and financial information catalogued and tagged and made public to everyone else, in order to make sure no one can break any tax rules. If this is being done just for tax–that is, if this is what it takes to make the income tax “work,” I am not sure that the income tax is worth all of that trouble and everything given up to achieve it. That includes privacy, which appears to itself have become a suspicious word in certain circles, as if only those doing bad things have a desire to keep anything about their lives private. Let us recall Glenn Greenwald’s words on why privacy should not come to be seen as a sinister desire. It is possible to break the tax law like it is possible to break any other law. But is requiring everyone to show all of their assets to everyone else in order to prove no laws have been broken a valid response to this enduring problem? I cannot agree with this Orwellian vision of the world. I also do not think this view is sensible if the issue is really driven by tax. If it is, then surely we can find a less invasive way to fund public goods and services.

   Link to Glen Greenwald’s TED Talks presentation:
   https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters?language=en

2. Just a test:

   Hello @isukanya Will @cancivlib work w/ us? https://t.co/vsb95E3lV6 Or will u ignore 1 million Canadians 4 #FATCA?— Lynne Swanson (@LynneBlaze) April 21, 2016

3. @EmBee: Let us recall Glenn Greenwald’s words on why privacy should not come to be seen as a sinister desire. It is possible to break the tax law like it is possible to break any other law. But is requiring everyone to show all of their assets to everyone else in order to prove no laws have been broken a valid response to this enduring problem?</I.

   Too bad that Greenwald himself has been a huge cheerleader for digging through the Mossack Fonseca leaks and shaming everyone therein, even — especially — the ones who committed no crime:
   https://theintercept.com/2016/04/04/a-key-similarity-between-snowden-leak-and-panamapapers-scandal-is-whats-been-legalized/

   All rights must give way in front of tax collection, including the right to leave any country, the right to change your nationality, the right to privacy, the right to freedom from attacks on dignity and honour, etc.

4. Allison Christians for president!!!!

5. Kudos to Allison Christians. Privacy has gone down the drain.

   Sometimes I wonder how people 200+ years ago could think of writing into the US constitution protections like freedom of expression and protection against unreasonable search and seizure. They must be turning in their graves. Much more recently our grandparents could expect to have safe accounts in different places, memories of WWII, the Armenian Genocide, etc, showed that it was important to do that if you could.
   But now most people are happy to relinquish privacy and freedom.

   And her point that the tax may not be worth all this trouble is often lost to politicians.

   Ultra-simplified taxation with the same rules for all would greatly simplify things and render much of the tax-avoidance schemes unnecessary.

6. @Eric
   Releasing documents in the hopes that people will be appalled by what is allowed legally probably won’t work. In Britain, the whole story was twisted around against David Cameron, who turned out to have done nothing wrong, having paid all taxes owed. Hardly anyone cared that his parents did an excellent job of legally avoiding inheritance tax (which lots of people try to avoid because it cuts in at about half a million dollars).

   @Polly
   Don’t you mean Allison Christians for Prime Minister?

7. “How a US president and JP Morgan made Panama: and turned it into a tax haven”
   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/panama-canal-president-jp-morgan-tax-haven

8. @Publius
   She`d make a plausible candidate for both countries. 🙂

9. One of my wife pensions wouldn’t give us a balance this year. We asked them for it and as usual they would only send it by mail. After a few weeks a letter arrived saying they wouldn’t give us a balance without a good reason. This same outfit had told my wife they didn’t want to even talk to us because she is a ‘US person’. We got the balance on the last mail day before returns were due so I avoided having to do an extension. Obviously this pension is small and they really don’t want any costs or risks involved with dealing with us. They want it on hold till they can dump the money on us at 55.
   We can’t consolidate easily because UK FA’s won’t talk to a US person. Any outfit that will talk to a US person will tell you that our accounts are too small to deal with because of course it’s a lot of money to deal with this crap.
   I was as mad as hell so I emailed my congress women etc. I got automatically generated stuff back.
   Susan DelBene got an aid to call me. I spent a few minutes telling her on the phone that the whole thing is crazy. They can’t tax the pensions but we have to file the paper work. She thought the fines were crazy but of course it’s their fines.
   Of course this congress woman knows that she represents a huge number of immigrant tech workers who are having these problems. She has Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook etc in this area and a load more I am sure. Our local schools are full of immigrants children from a huge number of countries.
   Well that totally surprised me that they would reach out. I was also surprised they they don’t know about this issue already or at least say they don’t.

10. Trump likes Delaware:

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/23/donald-trump-loves-onshore-tax-haven-delaware/

11. @Neill, re; “Trump likes Delaware:”.

    Yep, and so does VP Biden, because;
    “…… A member of the Democratic Party, Biden represented Delaware as a United States Senator from 1973 until becoming Vice President in 2009….”…….
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden

    Obviously Biden didn’t have any problems with Delaware’s main industry (*”.Delaware collected roughly $860 million in taxes and fees from its absentee corporate residents in 2011. That money accounted for a quarter of the state’s total budget..”….) and Delaware’s main industry has no problem with Biden or the Democrats ( https://www.opensecrets.org/states/cands.php?cycle=2008&state=DE ) – since he was its Senator for 36 years.

    For more on incorporation secrecy as an important part of Delaware’s economic engine, see;
    “…..1209 North Orange, you see, is the legal address of no fewer than 285,000 separate businesses.

    Its occupants, on paper, include giants like American Airlines, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Coca-Cola, Ford, General Electric, Google, JPMorgan Chase, and Wal-Mart. These companies do business across the nation and around the world. Here at 1209 North Orange, they simply have a dropbox.

    What attracts these marquee names to 1209 North Orange and to other Delaware addresses also attracts less-upstanding corporate citizens. For instance, 1209 North Orange was, until recently, a business address of Timothy S. Durham, known as “the Midwest Madoff.” On June 20, Mr. Durham was found guilty of bilking 5,000 mostly middle-class and elderly investors out of $207 million. It was also an address of Stanko Subotic, a Serbian businessman and convicted smuggler — just one of many Eastern Europeans drawn to the state.

    Big corporations, small-time businesses, rogues, scoundrels and worse — all have turned up at Delaware addresses in hopes of minimizing taxes, skirting regulations, plying friendly courts or, when needed, covering their tracks. Federal authorities worry that, in addition to the legitimate businesses flocking here, drug traffickers, embezzlers and money launderers are increasingly heading to Delaware, too. It’s easy to set up shell companies here, no questions asked…”…….

    ………”President Obama has criticized outposts like the Caymans, complaining that they harbor giant tax schemes. But here in Wilmington, just over 100 miles from Washington, is in some ways the biggest corporate haven of all. It takes less than an hour to incorporate a company in Delaware, and the state is so eager to attract businesses that the office of its secretary of state stays open until midnight Monday through Thursday — and until 10:30 p.m. on Friday.

    Nearly half of all public corporations in the United States are incorporated in Delaware. Last year, 133,297 businesses set up here. And, at last count, Delaware had more corporate entities, public and private, than people — 945,326 to 897,934.”…….

    …..Delaware today regularly tops lists of domestic and foreign tax havens because it allows companies to lower their taxes in another state — for instance, the state in which they actually do business or have their headquarters — by shifting royalties and similar revenues to holding companies in Delaware, where they are not taxed. In tax circles, the arrangement is known as “the Delaware loophole.” Over the last decade, the Delaware loophole has enabled corporations to reduce the taxes paid to other states by an estimated $9.5 billion……..”………..

    from;
    *How Delaware Thrives as a Corporate Tax Haven, NY Times
    By LESLIE WAYNEJUNE 30, 2012
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-corporate-tax-haven.html?_r=0

12. More on Delaware as a tax haven;
    http://itep.org/itep_reports/2015/12/delaware-an-onshore-tax-haven.php#.VwV0PhIrLKI

13. I would like discussion of this yet not to derail any other activities – as we know the FATCA Party – The Democrats – are no friend of US persons overseas. And we know this about Clinton, their likely nominee. I plan to input here into the DA platform. They say the last day to submit is 27 April. I would like a bunch of Brockers to submit comments: There are a lot of mini experts here on CBT and its drawbacks.

    Therefore,

    @Calgary411 may we make this a feature?

    http://www.democratsabroad.org/2016_draft_platform?utm_campaign=platform16noncc&utm_medium=email&utm_source=democratsabroad

    I already see they don’t propose to do away with FBAR that includes the nasty requirement of reporting of accounts with signature authority such as for employer, partnership, business, community – that is very much career limiting and detrimental for US persons overseas to engage in all these activities.

    Also, we know that the centre of the Republicans and the Democrats need a lot of selling to and persuasion – why then do Democrats Abroad not put anti CBT issues on their website thus trumpeting them out for all to see – instead of (if you go now to their website), Priorities>Taxation then only some text devoted to FATCA SCE. Hiding the issues, in my opinion.

    Comment has been made on Facebook the distinction between the DA Platform and the Platform of the DNC, that they are not equivalent, and a DA platform by itself irrelevant. So, we need to hear of Herculean efforts to get removal of CBT and other issues raised onto the main Democratic party platform.

14. @JC (and Calgary411)

    Per JC’s request, I have created a separate post about DA’s draft 2016 platform:

    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2016/04/24/comments-invited-for-draft-2016-democrats-abroad-platform/

15. Democrats, republicans- it doesn’t matter. It is all about “making America great again” and this means that if USA becomes the new Switzerland thats just fine and dandy. NOBODY in America is going to go after these shell companies- or anything else which brings money into America. NOBODY. It is up to the rest of the world to band together and fight it. America will not do it. Ever.

16. @Deckard1138 That way the DA platform input request may just last 12 hours or so as new posts here push it down – so less impactive than an IBS feature. That’s the intent?

17. Thanks, Deckard.

18. The blatant hypocrisy of this method *to make America great again* is mind-boggling.

    Can the rest of the world, fragmented, uninformed and complacent as we generally are, band together to fight it? We are being swallowed up by the US Empire who have no moral compass toward the rest of humanity on this earth and the other sovereign countries in which they reside.

19. Thanks, JC. I’ve added it to the Surveys, Petitions, Submissions – Let Them Know What You Think! page
    .

20. Wow. The claim is Guya gets multiple (he says dozens but lets assume that’s overboard) accidental clients each week:

    http://www.taxprotalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6547&sid=0ac9ce485ece7a193c995ca66fbb5c1b

    How they start:

    >Your client’s first task will be put together a dossier of medical, school & work records since age of 2
    >to satisfy the SSA. You may already have discussed streamlined procedures, FBARs, PFICs,
    >8938s and so on with the client.

    Wow. That sounds like a whole lot of fun. You have to do a load of stuff so they can take your stuff.

21. @Neill

    I believe that the SSA has eliminated the necessity of proving foreign residency in the process of obtaining a SSN.

22. @Calgary411

    I hear it as “Make America ‘grate’ again”.

23. @Bubblebustin,
    The SSA angle is new to me. Can you explain what goes on (or did)?

24. @Neill

    When I applied for my first-ever SSN in 2011, I had to travel to the closest of the SSA’s so-called “field offices” in Washington state with documents proving that I lived continually in Canada since I left the US at 12 years of age in 1968. I can’t recall many of the documents I brought along with me, but school transcripts were one of those that they approved of.

    I can no longer find reference to this requirement when searching the net for info on how to apply for a SSN as a non-resident, so I believe they’ve eliminated its necessity. The instructions no longer include it, nor the necessity to travel to the US any more it seems:

    https://ca.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/social-security/

25. @Bubblebustin,
    Sounds like the crazy visa stuff we had. When we changed from visa to EAD or maybe green card then we always had to leave the US to do it. So we would go to Canada cos you can drive there. They get upset though that all these people drive to the embassy to do the stuff that they force you to do. So later you had to have an appointment and they pushed back. We got an appointment later anyway.
    We had the same crap when I gave up my green card and went back on the H1B visa. I had to do something similar to renouncing. The embassy guy explained to me how it was such a big deal to give up the GC etc. Looked at me like I was mental. Of course their rules made me have to do it. After a few years I got a new GC. Now I am a citizen forced in no small part by their rules.

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