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. US Customs and Border Patrol wants to collect social media account names at the border:

   http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/24/12026364/us-customs-border-patrol-online-account-twitter-facebook-instagram

   https://boingboing.net/2016/06/25/us-customs-and-border-patrol-w.html

   Does this seem over-the-top to anyone else? What will they ask for next?

   Federal Register proposed rulemaking (https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/06/23/2016-14848/agency-information-collection-activities-arrival-and-departure-record-forms-i-94-and-i-94w-and#p-7) – comments to Customs and Border Patrol by 22 August.

2. Liberty’s Elysium
   John Hanson 25 June
   https://cafemoi.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/libertys-elysium/

3. Wow! That is a very powerful statement. Not whiny. Not rabid anger like I feel sometimes but rational anger and description of rights. We need more of that in the press. Thanks JC.

4. The new GOP plan doesn’t seem to talk about territorial taxes outside of businesses.

   http://abetterway.speaker.gov/_assets/pdf/ABetterWay-Tax-PolicyPaper.pdf

   I am thinking there is some hope that PFIC rules might fall away but I can’t see much to support that beyond this statement:

   Only the so-called foreign personal holding company rules, which counter the potential for truly passive income to be shifted to low-tax jurisdictions, will continue to play a role in addressing potential abuse and will be retained under this Blueprint.

5. http://www.blacklistednews.com/Charlie_Rangel_Found_Guilty_on_11_of_13_Ethics_Violations/52194/0/38/38/Y/M.html
   So Charlie Rangel is guilty as charged. Are we sad? NO. Why?
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act

   Supplementing the reporting regimes already in place was stated by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) to be a means of acquiring more financial data and raising government revenue.[28] After committee deliberation, Sen. Max Baucus and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) introduced the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009 to Congress on October 27, 2009. It was later added to an appropriations bill as an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), which also renamed the bill the HIRE Act.[29] The bill was signed into law by President Obama on March 18, 2010.

   Now, what can be done about Max Baucus?

6. Moving abroad if Trump or Clinton wins? Not so fast
   Saturday, 25 Jun 2016
   http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/24/moving-abroad-if-trump-or-clinton-wins-not-so-fast.html

7. I think what that website above posted was from 2010 events http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/nyregion/17rangel.html, Rangel kept his seat, and is due to retire in 2017 http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/02/25/ny-congressman-charlie-rangel-who-was-censured-for-not-paying-some-taxes-set-to-retire-n2124531

   Last I read, Baucus was rewarded by Obama with an ambassador post to China;
   http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/guest/max-baucus-helping-farmers-and-ranchers-succeed-in-china/article_ed1062a9-9922-53fc-bf1f-4f6c4ffec1dd.html

   Last I could see, he is still there. Good they didn’t send him to Canada. Though perhaps it really makes no difference who they send. They’re all bagmen being rewarded for raising swag for Obama and the Democrats. The present one Hyman started his term by stating his list of what he was here to get from Canada for the US – including US Border cops operating on Canadian soil – . And Hyman is careful never to say a word about FATCA and US extraterritorial taxation of Canadian owned, generated and sited assets – I guess cause the US was content with its coaching of our government on how to sell the FATCA IGA. And now, probably talking to the CRA and the Justice Dept behind the scenes on the defence against the ADCS lawsuit. The last ambassador – Jacobson, tried to sell us a load of crop fertilizer that we should trust the ‘sympathetic’ IRS and US Treasury – they weren’t really out to extraterritorially tax the assets of Canadian grannies (but still working to FATCA and FBAR them) ;
   ““……. When I read all of this I was concerned. So last week I called the Commissioner of the United States Internal Revenue Service to see what we could do. I explained the problem to him.

   The result is that both he and I are sympathetic to the concerns. We are going to work together to see if we can’t find a way to accommodate grandma — and others — here in Canada. But we have to figure out a way to do it without letting the person who is trying to evade taxes in the Cayman Islands off the hook.

   My message on this one is to sit tight. We are not unreasonable. We are not unsympathetic. We are not irresponsible.”

   David Jacobson – U.S. Ambassador t0 Canada – October 18, 2011

   http://canada.usembassy.gov/ambassador/news-and-speeches/18-october-2011-ambassador-jacobsons-remarks-to-the-canadian-club.html”

   Harper gave the US access to the account and personal information of all Canadian taxpayers, citizens and residents with any hint of a US connection – and made ALL CANADIANS pay for it with increased funds to the CRA budget – to enforce a foreign, US law. Trudeau is formally defending that FATCA betrayal in court right now. Harper started the Beyond the Border ceding of Canadian sovereignty, including the spectre of US border police operating on Canada without being bound by Canadian laws https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/03/03/proposed-canada-us-border-police-teams-on-hold-over-legal-jurisdiction-questions.html and Trudeau is continuing the erosion;
   https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/03/13/trudeau-quietly-agrees-to-share-info-on-canadians-with-us-walkom.html http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ralph-goodale-canada-us-bill-1.3635990 http://iclmg.ca/cbsa-more-powers-and-yet-no-accountability/

8. @Badger
   The Jacobson link has been removed.

   @Neill
   Even a relaxation of PFIC would help. The U.K. is falling apart, literally, which could make it harder for Americans in Britain put money into things the U.S. approves of. Don’t worry: people are too busy yelling “Why are you still here?” at random immigrants or people who look like immigrants to pay any attention to emigrants.

9. @Publius,
   I feel exit will be better in the long run. Of course I was not allowed to vote. I think that taking away the vote must have cost them a lot of remain votes.
   For me it’s not about immigration but getting away from a bunch of socialist countries. Their latest idea was to have SS taxes paid by robots.

10. @Calgary411

    I believe this Isaac Brock Society Feature Material. There appears lots of discussion on the US definition of the Master Nationality Rule.

    https://twitter.com/kred65/status/747429573499969536

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/h1kfq8ko57xpzez/US%20STATE%20DEPT%20EXCHANGE%20MAY%20JUNE%202016.pdf?dl=0

11. Correction to my typos in my post above http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/media-and-blog-articles-open-for-comments-part-3-of-3/comment-page-75/#comment-7611837 re the current US Ambassador to Canada. His name is spelt ‘Heyman’.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Heyman

12. @JC, that is very interesting and important informaiton. Keith Redmond deserves kudos and thanks for his dogged persistence with the slippery representatives of the US – who are engaging in deliberate obfuscation and obstruction, in bad faith for example referring Keith and Accidentals in France experiencing FATCA and US citizenship banking problems back to the French government and French banks for recourse to a problem which the US is the direct cause and author of.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/h1kfq8ko57xpzez/US%20STATE%20DEPT%20EXCHANGE%20MAY%20JUNE%202016.pdf?dl=0

    The obfuscation and refusal to take any responsibility for the hardship that the US has DIRECTLY CREATED for those it claims as USpersons outside the US – including non-meaningfuls and accidentals is shameful. It claims people abroad only to burden, torment, fine and penalize them. Where are those infamous ‘rights’? The State dept. correspondent only reiterates the burdens.

13. A must-read (from bottom to top) provided by JC & badger:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/h1kfq8ko57xpzez/US%20STATE%20DEPT%20EXCHANGE%20MAY%20JUNE%202016.pdf?dl=0

    This parallel grows ever more apt:
    “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A[n administration] whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

    “Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our [former] brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War….”

14. The Republican leader [Ryan] implied Monday that he would have supported the campaign to leave the European Union because their argument for leaving embodied American values.

    He should then be sympathetic to our cause.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/06/28/speaker-ryan-implies-would-have-voted-in-favor-brexit.html

15. Absolutely a must-read, Shovel. The conversation now has its own post: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2016/06/28/dominant-and-effective-nationality-another-attempt-to-get-clear-answers-definitions-from-the-us-department-of-state/

16. US seeks travellers’ social media IDs
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36650857

17. @Publius and others;
    re my post above http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/media-and-blog-articles-open-for-comments-part-3-of-3/comment-page-75/#comment-7611837
    Here is the fulltext of what former US Ambassador Jacobson claimed in 2011, (the link as Publius notes, is no longer functioning from (was removed from?) the US Embassy in Canada website).

    Here is the link to the original webpage from the US Embassy, courtesy of the Wayback Machine (very handy for any of you looking for archived pages that we’ve posted links to that no longer exist in their original location!);
    https://web.archive.org/web/20111023200917/http://canada.usembassy.gov/ambassador/news-and-speeches/18-october-2011-ambassador-jacobsons-remarks-to-the-canadian-club.html
    https://web.archive.org/web/20111023200917*/http://canada.usembassy.gov/ambassador/news-and-speeches/18-october-2011-ambassador-jacobsons-remarks-to-the-canadian-club.html

    Courtesy of the post by @Duke of Devon, this is currently the advice that Minister Lebouthillier would give Canadian grandmas and all other CANADIANS affected; ““I understand (our) policy can create a compliance burden….. For U.S. tax obligations these individuals can contact the IRS or consult with a tax professional qualified in U.S. tax matters….. I trust the information I have provided is useful.” Signed Hon. D. Lebouthillier.” http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/fatca/comment-page-136/#comment-7612681

    Jacobson was at the very least naive, and at worst, exceedingly disingenuous;
    http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/u-s-campaign-to-catch-tax-cheats-snaring-canadians
    http://globalnews.ca/video/1549430/canadians-paying-additional-taxes-after-gov-shares-tax-info-with-u-s/

    But what is Minister Lebouthillier’s excuse?

18. @Neill
    I suspect that the people leading the Brexit campaign had your vision in mind, what worries me is that Brexit was largely voted in by people like those in the place where you grew up (which you did well to get out of because it is now on a list of Britain’s 10 worst places to live). And they weren’t supporting it because they wanted less government. They got promised a lot of things that simply aren’t going to happen and what happens when they realize it. In the long term economically it is probably much of a muchness.

19. @Publius,
    I don’t think the people who voted for exit are racist. That’s just convenient for the other side. Just the same way that all conservatives int he US are racist.
    I don’t see where I am from on the top ten worst places in Britain. Then again I expect there is different lists each year put together by different people.

20. Forbes: “Is Rand Paul Right About Tax Treaties and Financial Privacy?”

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanellis/2016/06/28/is-rand-paul-right-about-tax-treaties-and-financial-privacy/#38bef21e6f9f

    My comment on this article:

    “Rand Paul is “Right” to oppose all new tax treaties which are used to facilitate the implementation of FATCA and GATCA. Bob Corker’s recent letter supporting the treaties was disingenuous.

    This article misses the mark about the seven tax treaties Rand Paul has been opposing. Senator Bob Corker’s recent letter in support of those treaties is riddled with falsehoods. Those treaties are directly connected with the implementation of FATCA, which the RNC has passed a resolution to repeal. FATCA is a very bad law passed by a Democrat controlled congress. It is the primary reason so many Americans living abroad are being forced to renounce US citizenship. Rand Paul wants the new treaties to pass, but not until they amend the unconstitutional information exchange part which goes much further than US domestic reporting requirements.”

21. ‘The Power Of Attorney Foreign Account Trap’
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2016/06/28/the-power-of-attorney-foreign-account-trap/2/#520e99c0c222
    Jun 28, 2016 @ 08:43 AM

22. Immigration.ca (Live and Work in Canada) – Canada to Adopt Border Exit Controls (with Audio)

23. Another aneurysm bursting moment:

    “That may be true, but consideration should be given to the chilling effect CRS might have on domestic capital formation. If you can imagine a world in which the U.S. adheres to FATCA while every other country participates in CRS (which is where things are currently headed) there’s an incentive for foreign capital to flock to U.S. banks. We’d enjoy a competitive advantage to the extent that we are less transparent. Replace FATCA with CRS and that incentive goes away, although global transparency is presumably enhanced.”

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2016/06/29/should-the-u-s-adopt-the-oecds-common-reporting-standard/2/#25b346d34819

24. Seems like prime evidence mounting for FATCA to be WTO and NAFTA challenge material since the US gets all the benefit from dominating the financial markets unencumbered by any of the associated high ongoing compliance costs to implement FATCA reciprocity and the CRS. It is consolidating its dominance as the worlds biggest tax haven:
    “…….. consideration should be given to the chilling effect CRS might have on domestic capital formation. If you can imagine a world in which the U.S. adheres to FATCA while every other country participates in CRS (which is where things are currently headed) there’s an incentive for foreign capital to flock to U.S. banks. We’d enjoy a competitive advantage to the extent that we are less transparent. Replace FATCA with CRS and that incentive goes away, although global transparency is presumably enhanced.

    The question for policymakers is how to strike an appropriate balance between promoting fiscal transparency and protecting our national economic interests. I like to think these priorities are not in conflict, but the tension between adopting CRS and sticking with FATCA may challenge that belief……..”
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2016/06/29/should-the-u-s-adopt-the-oecds-common-reporting-standard/2/#25b346d34819

    So, how is it that softwood lumber is a trade issue entering a litigation phase again for the US and Canada that has been fought tooth and nail by Canada for years http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/us-canada-softwood-lumber-talks-stalled-litigation-looms-sources/article30393552/ , but encumbrance of our local financial sector with associated costs (even taking into account ALL Canadian taxpayers paying re the CRA facilitating and paying for systems to collect and transmit the info to the US) plus the costs to Canada of hobbling a large portion of the directly affected USdeemedUStaxablePersons population from benefiting from local savings options like the TFSA, Canadian mutual funds, tax free sale of our principal residence, etc.

    Prof. Cockfield raised the WTO and NAFTA aspects of FATCA. Ex. “.We’re not sure how many Canucks are going to be involved, but certainly the number is in the hundred of thousands. Thousands of Canadian businesses will also be implicated in this new regime. For instance, if you are a U.S citizen who has signing authority over an account, then that account information will go south of the border. A U.S. person who substantially owns a Canadian business will now have a foreign government looking at that account information. It could, in my view, harm cross-border competition, frustrate cross-border mobility. I believe it violates the NAFTA agreement. I’ve written a book on the topic of NAFTA tax law and policy, and it’s my opinion that FATCA, again, violates certain provisions within NAFTA..”
    https://openparliament.ca/committees/finance/41-2/34/prof-arthur-cockfield-1/

    Now that warning of the NAFTA and WTO issue seems even more relevant as the continuing absurdity of any pretense that the US will ever do anything other than dangle an ever further in the future and theoretical ‘aspirational’ FATCA ‘reciprocity’ is obvious. They will never participate in the CRS either.

    But the Sunny Libs haven’t raised the NAFTA and WTO issue, and won’t – since they’ve chosen to die on the FATCA IGA hill defending the FATCAnization of Canadians and the waste and abuse of our Canadian taxpayer money implementing FATCA and fighting us – their fellow citizens rather than attack or repel the US invasion and insult to Canadian sovereignty and autonomy it represents.

25. Connect and contrast Canada’s active defence of and capitulation to the FATCAnization and subjugation of Canadian data and local savings by commenting (still open) on this article re softwood lumber defense and litigation by Canada:
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/us-canada-softwood-lumber-talks-stalled-litigation-looms-sources/article30393552/comments/

    ‘U.S., Canada softwood lumber talks stalled, litigation looms: sources’

    David Ljunggren
    OTTAWA — Reuters
    Last updated Friday, Jun. 10, 2016 2:04PM EDT

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