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. The Times of Israel on closure of bank accounts of foreign residents

   http://www.timesofisrael.com/why-is-bank-leumi-telling-foreigners-to-close-their-accounts-and-whats-the-link-to-israels-malignant-black-economy/

2. ‘IRS Spent $15 Million on Flawed FATCA System Rollout’
   WASHINGTON, D.C. (SEPTEMBER 22, 2016)
   BY MICHAEL COHN
   “The Internal Revenue Service spent $15 million on a delayed implementation of an upgraded system for handling an aspect of the Foreign Account Tax and Compliance Act, but the software did not deliver the expected business results, according to a new report.”………….

   “…The IRS implemented Withholding and Refund Release 2.0 in time for a revised February 2016 deployment date and the new system was built in accordance with the requirements, but the IRS spent $15 million delivering functions that TIGTA believes have not provided the intended business results. The IRS first identified data matching issues in May 2015,” said the report. “Although the initial data matching issues were resolved, the IRS identified new data matching issues as recently as February 2016. The IRS does not have a timetable for when the latest data matching issues will be resolved and automated functionality will provide all of the expected business results.”…”….

   http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/tax-practice/irs-spent-15-million-on-flawed-fatca-system-rollout-79339-1.html

3. See TIGTA report as mentioned above;
   https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2016reports/201620077fr.pdf

4. @iota – That Israel Times article is all one sided justification of FATCA for chasing tax cheats, claiming that Israelis around the world are using Israel as a tax haven. I did not see mention that Israel would have a tax cut on investment earnings/income in all this – as in first right of taxation. And the article makes no mention of the US as a top tax haven itself. And of course no mention in regards to the collateral damage of innocents.

   https://twitter.com/JCDoubleTaxed/status/779090423285370880

5. Swiss guy writes about his renunciation experience in Bern. 2 or 3 weeks delay in booking, renunciation oath sworn February 2015, DC claims they finished the paperwork in April 2015 but he didn’t actually get his CLN until January 2016.
   http://www.foreignbynature.com/becoming-un-american/

   Also cross-posted on Zerohedge:
   http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-22/un-becoming-american-one-mans-painful-journey-renouncing-citizenship

6. Oops, last should say “DC claims they finished the paperwork in April 2015″ not February.

   Also, an American student producing a radio documentary on Americans expats and the election is trying to find people who’d be willing to do 15-minute Skype interviews. If that description fits you, see the reddit post:
   https://www.reddit.com/r/expat/comments/54389x/looking_for_american_expats_to_interview_for_uni/

7. News over the last day or so suggests the IRS is going to target people who paid the Obamacare tax penalty or who filed an exemption to needing essential coverage. If you remember they expected so many people not to have insurance that they created a bucket load of ways to claim you could not affect coverage etc. Tax pros basically thought there was little chance anyone with a brain would pay the change.
   More people either paid the fine or got an exemption that took the tax credit.
   The idea appears to be that getting a letter from the IRS will scare people into getting insurance. Obama wants young people to have it to subsidize the sick people who have entered the program. They need a bunch of people to overpay to pay for the sick ones.
   Now I am wondering if they will send out letters to Americans abroad.
   Anyway a link from today:

   http://amac.us/irs-target-citizens-arent-buying-obamacare-insurance/

8. Why doesn’t this stuff fall foul of the anti-discrimination clause in say the US Canada tax treaty?

   http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/09/23/vancouver-foreign-buyers_n_12158526.html

   In particular article XXV(6):

   6. Notwithstanding the provisions of Article XXIV (Elimination of Double Taxation), the taxation on a permanent establishment which a resident of a Contracting State has in the other Contracting State shall not be less favorably levied in the other State than the taxation levied on residents of the other State carrying on the same activities. This provision shall not be construed as obliging a Contracting State to grant to residents of the other Contracting State any personal allowances, reliefs and reductions for taxation purposes on account of civil status or family responsibilities which it grants to its own residents.

9. FATCAnatics in Trinidad are really milking the fear factor in trying to scare Trinidadians and subvert the democratic process and sovereignty of Trinidad – falling all over themselves to force their fellow parliamentarians to rush through enabling legislation without due consideration:
   https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2016-09-24/economists-warned-higher-prices-if-fatca-bill-not-passed

   Previous stories quoted a lobby block formed from banks and business groups – ex. Chamber of Commerce – willing to sell their country, its sovereignty, their fellow Trinidadians in exchange for kissing the US posterior – and get on with business as usual – legislation paid for by Trinidad’s revenue base and by taxes and higher account fees paid for by ALL Trinidadian taxpayer and accountholders.

   This is an interesting FATCA IGA struggle to follow because it is receiving much more coverage in their local press than ours received – of course partly because the FATCAnites like the banks and the Chamber of Commerce are trying to cast their lobbying in the best possible light and are weaponizing the coverage to demonize any delay due to sober thought and due process.

10. ‘Americans Abroad – NEWS FLASH — IRS Won’t Be Helping You Any Day Soon!’
    September 25, 2016
    http://blogs.angloinfo.com/us-tax/2016/09/25/smericans-abroad-news-flash-irs-wont-be-helping-you-any-day-soon/

    Not really news, since we know the IRS is all about the stick and no carrot, all threats and no ‘benefits’ or service to those it adamantly pretends are US RESIDENT “taxable persons” despite living entirely outside the national boundaries of the US, but it is now out in the open that they have NO intention of providing actual services or ‘benefit’ for those abroad that they love to demonize as ‘non-compliant’ – and whose local ordinary bank accounts are held where expats actually work, earn, pay taxes and reside – the very same local legal assets that the US Treasury mischaracterizes and generalizes as ‘foreign’ and ‘offshore’ – in order to use the FBAR and FATCA stick to extort those outside the US with.

    “The beatings will continue until morale improves” – and the IRS will continue to work very hard AGAINST doing anything constructive to encourage the ‘compliance’ it pretends is its aim. I can only continue to conclude that it is penalties it really wants from those outside the US since it continues to abandon any even the flimsiest of pretenses that it is providing any actual ‘assistance’ to those abroad it claims it has the sovereign right to extraterritorially tax and punish. Making FATCA even more objectionable than it already is.

    Keep up the good work IRS!

11. Thanks for posting more good reading for us, badger.

    Americans Abroad – NEWS FLASH — IRS Won’t Be Helping You Any Day Soon!
    September 25, 2016

    (and neither will any Canadian MP or other Canadian government representative — they just tell you, SORRY, you will have to get US accounting and tax advice from a US tax lawyer or accounting professional, which is exactly what the IRS tell you if you are ever able to get through to any of their Helpline, etc. — your case is too complicated, that is *just the fact that you live outside the USA homeland*).

12. @badger

    Americans aboard get an extra courtesy hang up. Lucky us.

13. @calgary411,

    Sorry but this really isn’t very often about you living outside the US. It’s about having foreign assets.
    I don’t live outside the US but I have a whole host of problems caused by having foreign stuff.
    I have played a game where I ring the IRS to ask about various foreign taxation issues. You get transferred 3 or 4 times before they tell you this is not within their remit.
    I can go to a US tax lawyer and ask about the taxation of my UK pensions. They will tell you that any kind of analysis would be too expensive for the assets I have. So how are they taxed. Well of course you can accept the worst case. Anything else is a grey area.

14. Thanks for pointing out (again), Neill. Our Canadian assets (my family’s) held in our local foreign financial institutions are (to me, absurdly US-deemed) foreign — for purposes of the US IRS and deemed residence in the US for its tax purposes. Yours and that of others is not the same, as you really reside within the borders of the US but have some residual foreign assets.

15. @Bubblebustin, I guess its just another one of those elusive ‘benefits’ of US citizenship – as per the CBT apologists.

16. @calgary411,
    Concentrate on where you live to get same country exception.
    In the end they don’t care about any of us. You guys they might give a minute snuff about and reward you with SCE.
    I honestly think it’s all lost and my only plan to to empty my pensions in 3 years. It can only get worse.
    I decided it was lost when the lawsuits fell over one by one.

17. Pastor prays for FATCA passage

    http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,233684.html

18. We’re all heretics then, Ellen D.

19. Good night — keep prayer of FATCA passage out of the hands of *religious leaders*. Must be some bumper stickers available too.

20. Sad commentary of what you are caught in, residing within the borders of the US, Neill. Although you have come up with a plan to empty your pensions in the next three years, your situation seems another for what USCA hightlights:

    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2016/09/25/fatca-harm-finally-makes-it-to-a-novel/comment-page-1/#comment-7672689

    Destruction of *US Citizens* in whatever way it is accomplished, including FATCA, is not fiction.

21. Running into duals & former green-card holders lately– they have no idea about any of this!!!!

    Directing them here….ffs.

22. @ calgary411

    “Good night — keep prayer of FATCA passage out of the hands of *religious leaders*.”

    It was all over the moment the Vatican signed an IGA. History has shown time and time again that religion is usually part of the problem, and only rarely the solution. The FATCA experience so far has been entirely consistent with that conclusion. The Pope himself has decided that protecting obscene Vatican wealth is a higher calling than advocating for the basic human rights of US Persons. But, as we know, this is far from the first time the Vatican has made such deals with the Devil…

23. Related to Trinidad and Tobago pastor’s call for prayer re FATCA …

    July 12, 2016: “US pressure hurting local financial sector, expert says”

    Warner said Antigua & Barbuda has to deal with the extra territorial pressures from the United States, which demand the implementation of the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

    “Our regional efforts for the most part have led to the signing of several intergovernmental agreements. Our regional governments and institutions are still trying to get the understanding of FATCA, an act that the enactors themselves are still trying to understand and implement,” he said.

    …

    “Yet banks and other countries continue to de-risk customers, investors and even other countries. Instead of trying to conduct proper risk assessment, they react out of fear based on stereotypical and defensive factors,” he said.

    September 10, 2016: “Government, Opposition to meet on FACTA legislation”

    PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Sept 10, CMC – Government and opposition legislators are to meet here on Monday as the deadline for meeting the September 30 deadline for passing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance ACT (FATCA).

    …

    Young quoted from a Cabinet Note dated May 23, 2013, indicating that the then government was aware that FATCA, “became law on March 18, 2010.

    “The then government… led by the then Member for Siparia …were aware of the obligations and the international obligations that had to be fulfilled by Trinidad and Tobago,” he said, adding that it was interesting that in May 2013, Persad-Bissessar’s Cabinet considered the matter and “the implications for the failure to subscribe to this legislation and to execute the agreement that was only executed a few weeks ago in August by this administration”.

    Young said that the legislation will have no effect on Trinidad and Tobago nationals, unless they are resident in the United States and have an obligation to pay tax in the US.

    Parliament will resume on Wednesday to further discuss the bill.

24. Amen, Deckard!

25. @Iota
    California will gladly tax anyone who votes in the state elections (according to Kirsch, that should not be happening for federal elections, but the wording California uses was incredibly vague last time I looked). I would love to see California taken to court if it is taxing people who voted in federal elections, since there is no rationale: California sure as heck isn’t going to be sending the state’s national reserve troops out to rescue its former residents who live abroad.

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