Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 4 of 11 (Year 2017)

1,720 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 4 of 11 (Year 2017)”

1. @Mythster

   We know him best for this:

   https://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/pages/myth-vs-fatca.aspx

2. Guess that US citizens living ordinary lawful lives outside the US are not among the “public” that the Mythster Stack felt he had to serve with integrity;
   “….Stack has acted in the best interest of the public he served. More importantly, he has consistently worked openly and acted with integrity, whether he has had the support or opposition of any particular group. In this political climate, that is a rare skill.”

   Revisit his appearance before the EU – and the barriers erected when part of ‘the public’ he was sworn to serve – including UStaxablepeoplecitizens ‘abroad’ merely tried to just attend a ‘public’ event re FATCA in Brussels in 2013;
   http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/05/31/public-hearing-on-fatca-at-the-european-parliament-in-brussels/

   ex. “.Only once in the entire 2.5 hours was any mention made of the impact on people (those pesky “US Persons”). Other than that, discrimination, access to basic banking services, privacy issues and so on were not discussed. Though it was a public meeting attendance was tightly controlled. When I asked the OECD contact if any other NGO’s were going to be there, she replied, “Not to my knowledge.” From what I could see, the overwhelming majority of the participants were industry and government representatives though I did see at least one journalist.

   And that is a shame unless, of course, we limit the definition of “public” to mean bankers, tax policy makers, consulting companies and government bureaucrats. It is my own bias speaking here but I do think the discussion would have been greatly enhanced by the presence of more citizen advocacy groups. I would be very interested in knowing if any did apply and were turned away. If not, then all I can say is that they missed a great opportunity.”……
   http://thefranco-americanflophouse.blogspot.ca/2013/02/public-briefing-on-fatca.html

   and additional notes linked to, as archived:
   ‘Notes from the Recent OECD Meeting – TRACE and FATCA’
   February 17, 2013 Posted by Jim Calvin under FATCA, Financial services industry, TRACE
   https://web.archive.org/web/20131205115431/http://www.fsitaxposts.com/2013/02/17/notes-oecd-meeting-paris/

3. For more recent readers, a refresher on how we got here is not complete without exploring the excellent blog by Victoria Ferauge, called the Franco-American Flophouse, and in particular;
   http://thefranco-americanflophouse.blogspot.ca/p/the-diaspora-tax-war-of-2012.html
   as well as other pieces where she reports on the ‘public’ meeting in Brussels in 2013
   https://www.aaro.org/banking/402-european-parliament-committee-hearing-on-fatca

   Here are videos of the proceedings, which the Mythster attended.
   https://youtu.be/zRoU-JNFhr0
   https://youtu.be/eEmxooUYX-8

4. @ Mythster
   He won’t be missed by me and many other Brockers. The man wore blinders when it came to the facts of FATCA damage. Gone is good in this case. Here are some non-mythicals who won’t be sad to see Mythster Stack out of the Treasury Dept.
   http://we-are-not-a-myth.tumblr.com/
   @ badger
   That’s a good summary of how his “accomplishments” actually stack up for the FACTA affected.

5. Oops, a few extra characters snuck into my e-mail address and changed my wordpress icon. Above comment is really me, EmBee.

6. More reason why we know him as “Mythster” Stack;
   In 2013, in a statement to the EU Parliament, the Mythster said:
   ‘Global Cooperation and Intergovernmental Agreements’;
   In order to effectively combat offshore tax evasion, global cooperation is critical. To that end, the United States Treasury Department has published two model intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) that serve as a basis for concluding bilateral agreements with jurisdictions to implement FATCA. Treasury has been working to streamline the process of entering into an IGA so that any interested jurisdiction may enter into an IGA prior to January 1, 2014….”
   from;
   Statement of Robert B. Stack
   Deputy Assistant Secretary (International Tax Affairs)
   United States Department of Treasury
   Prepared for European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs
   Public Hearing on The Fight Against Tax
   Tuesday, May 28,
   2013
   https://polcms.secure.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/upload/ce7bbf24-c591-4baa-b2ca-c642d2005b7b/att_20130531ATT67068-5403795070600015324.pdf

   Co-operation, reciprocity, and ‘may’ enter into….

   We know that FATCA is NOT reciprocal, never intended to be, and it was imposed by threat – therefore NOT cooperative, and it was NOT ‘may’, but really ‘shall’ – enforced by extortion at the the point of the US FATCA sanction gun.

   That was 2013, now looking back from 2017, it is STILL clearly extortion, STILL clearly – as designed, not reciprocal in any true sense on the US behalf and STILL clearly not and never intended to be a cooperative venture that was meant to be collaborative in any sense between sovereign autonomous nations.

   So, any statements by US spokespersons like the Mythster Stack were disingenous and thus intentionally and willfully false and lacking in integrity when made to the EU and the rest of the globe.

   No-one is calling him to account for the ‘service’ he rendered, which continues to see law abiding US citizens living outside the US deprived of legal local banking due to the FATCA he helped impose/sell to the world on behalf of the US government. Merely because of flimsy ‘US indicia’ with NO economic connection – like a geographic location of a person’s mother’s birthing bed/birthplace.

7. And that is a shame unless, of course, we limit the definition of “public” to mean bankers, tax policy makers, consulting companies and government bureaucrats.
   According to the US: banks, companies, etc. are people and therefore the public. We are criminal myths and do not exist and would belong in jail, we did.

8. I’m glad to have re-sparked this debate on Stack.

   We should also take a moment to remember Sophie in’t Veld. her party (D66) gained significant following in last week’s Dutch election, especially amongst voting expats.

   http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/03/d66-wins-dutch-expat-vote-overtakes-the-vvd/

   http://www.sophieintveld.eu/

   https://youtu.be/3uVZiFNkDsA

9. https://youtu.be/5ySw1vrqbjQ

10. Thanks for the reminder about the important and determined work of MEP in’t Veld on the issue of FATCA as well as issues such as data protection.

    Here are other threads on IBS where we have tried to follow her work;
    https://isaacbrocksociety.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/two-prominent-members-of-european-parliament-raise-concern-over-fatca-five-agreement/
    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/04/04/video-of-discussion-on-fatca-in-eu-parliamentmust-watch/comment-page-1/
    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/05/21/more-from-mep-sophia-int-veld-today-on-fatca/#comments
    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/fatca-and-the-netherlands/
    http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/fatca-and-the-eu/

    And at the EU Parliament;
    http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en/search?q=veld+AND+fatca

11. We should encourage them to put their money in a foreign bank account and not file the FBAR:

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028810201

12. George: just read your comment “I guess we both missed the lecture on what being offshore was supposed to be.” having a good laugh with that this morning over coffee, in my sweater, glancing outside at the gray sky and wet grass. Once again this year I’ll pay a total income tax rate of 42% and 21% VAT on my purchases. And again I’ll file FBARs with a bunch of zero-containing accounts, and I’ll feed my US tax preparer some (carefully sterilized) data that satisfies the form monster. And again I’ll wonder if my bank will send a follow up letter to the previous Fatca notice that I ignored. Wasn’t being an expat supposed to be looking for shade by the palm tree as the blue sea sparkled and my bank accounts grew unhindered by the quaint notion of taxes?

13. Might contain something of interest to people if you have access to it from say a university library.

    The Unresolved Constitutional Issues of Puerto Rican Citizenship
    http://search.proquest.com/openview/bc63200fe85c01f6f062fd335be95832/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=996363

14. I hope that ALL Canadians as in *A Canadian is a Canadian is a Casnadian* will be reflected in this important petition:

    Open Media Petition: “Canada! Fight for our Privacy!​”

     Canada! Fight for our Privacy!​

    It’s outrageous that Canadians have almost zero protection for their personal data when it’s shared with the U.S.¹

    And now, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has agreed with us and is urging key ministers to ask their U.S. counterparts to add Canada to a list of countries that are given protection under the U.S. Privacy Act.²

    Add your name to the letter to these ministers to demand that they take action to fight for our privacy!

    Honourable Ralph Goodale P.C., M.P.
    Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
    Public Safety Canada
    269 Laurier Avenue West
    Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0P8

    Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan P.C., M.P.
    Minister of National Defence
    Department of National Defence
    101 Colonel By Drive
    Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0K2

    Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould P.C., M.P.
    Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
    Justice Canada
    284 Wellington Street
    Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8

    Dear Ministers,

    Canadians are calling on you to take action to protect our private, personal data in the U.S.

    Recently, you heard from Commissioner Therrien that there is “a significant gap in protection of Canadians’ personal information south of the border.”

    He suggests that “this gap could be meaningfully addressed if the United States were to add Canada to the list of designated countries under the Judicial Redress Act. I would therefore strongly urge the Government of Canada to ask the United States to add Canada to this list.”

    He also specifies “if this were done, my understanding is that the Executive Order would no longer apply to Canadians, as the Order applies ‘to the extent consistent with applicable law’. As a long-time ally and close trading partner, I believe that Canada should ask to be given the same level of protection as that granted to the various European countries designated as ‘covered countries’ on January 17, 2017.”

    We urge you to take his advice on board, and to urgently call upon your U.S. counterparts to strengthen privacy protections for Canadians.

    Sincerely,

15. I thought I’d check in on what Democrats Abroad was up to and listened to a very recent online town hall meeting with Keith Ellison, Deputy Chair of the the DNC. Neither FATCA or CBT were brought up once during Ellison’s participation in the discussion which centered around gaining more Democrat seats, addressing homelander’s problems and fundraising for the DNC.

    Don’t waste your time listening anywhere before 58 minutes in, after Ellison leaves. I fail to see how DA can make the claim here that taxation is such an important issue to them when they ‘wanted to but didn’t get around to’ addressing either FATCA or CBT with the deputy chair. Note that the Americans Abroad Caucus led by Carolyn Maloney is no longer functioning. DA still prefers SCE over the GOP’s FATCA repeal, and a mention of the Republican’s effort to go to Residency Based Taxation is an opportunity to support the DNC!

    http://www.democratsabroad.org/town_hall_keith_ellison_speaks_to_democrats_abroad

16. @Bubblebustin,
    To be fair it’s not clear to me that republicans overseas care that much about taxes based on the questions they asked prior to the election that I talked about here at the time.

17. In a competition, RO is way ahead of DA – before and after the election.

    By the looks of it, any chance to change CBT is going to have to piggyback on corporate tax reform.

    Grover Norquist is interviewed on Fox Business:

    http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5365740790001/?#sp=show-clips

18. Grover Norquist also published in ATR: http://www.atr.org/tax-simplification-should-include-repeal-fatca

    This is GREAT to have him both understand the situation and fight for us.
    (comments open)

19. Grover Norquist is a useful ally, but I just wish the next story on the ATR site wasn’t about Scary George Soros and his evil globalist minions etc. etc.

    I realize that the campaign against FATCA makes for strange bedfellows, but this gets perilously close to the tinfoil-hat brigade. (Mind you, the tinfoil-hat brigade now seems to effectively run the country so that’s probably who we’ll need to work with.)

20. Free-market groups urge repeal of Obama-era offshore tax law
    By Naomi Jagoda – 03/21/17 04:43 PM EDT

    https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/policy/finance/325072-free-market-groups-urge-repeal-of-obama-era-offshore-tax-law

21. From FATCA TRACKER, FATCA Repeal On Agenda Of U.S. Republicans:

    https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/fatca-repeal-on-agenda-of-u-s-republicans/#.WNKGr5FfOhA

22. There’s a flurry of fury over FATCA in articles today:
    http://www.valuewalk.com/2017/03/deveres-campaign-repeal-fatca/
    https://cei.org/blog/time-repeal-foreign-account-tax-compliance-act
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nigel-greens-campaign-to-repeal-fatca-and-the-center-for-freedom-and-prosperity-lead-coalition-of-23-groups-calling-on-congress-to-prioritize-fatca-repeal-300427745.html
    There’s probably more out there too. It’s a good PR day for everyone fighting for the demise of FATCA.

23. Oh here’s another one:
    https://cei.org/blog/time-repeal-foreign-account-tax-compliance-act

24. @EmBee GREAT reply to “Tax Guy” on The Hill article. You’ve sure got a way with words!
    (All the nasties were out in full force again here. From homelander prospective: Renounce or return, stop whining, no one cares).

25. @ Charl
    I’m just catching up on Tax Guy now. I’ve got some choice descriptions of him going on in my head but I’ll just call it obstinance here. Hard Pressed, swk, Double Taxed, don quixote, BarbiQPork, honeebadger and YOU (nobody does it better) are keeping my upticking finger blissfully busy.

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