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

You can access all years at this link: Media and Blog Articles – Links for All Years

 If clicking on a comment link brings you to the wrong comment, click here  to get on the most recent page of comments.(alternatively, to reach the most recent comment page, go to  the url in the bar at the top of your browser and delete everything after http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/media-and-blog-articles-open-for-comments-part-4-of-4)

Media and Blog Articles

EmBee suggested that it would be good if there was a thread for new articles, so that people would be aware of where to comment.   So, I created this permanent page.   I’ll make a permanent list of links posted here and keep adding to it,  but not deleting, so we’ll end up having sort of a  “bibliography” of FATCA/CBT articles.  [Note:  Some articles are not open for comments]

For more articles on FATCA, enter FATCA into Google then click on the link “more news for fatca” just below the most recent featured article.

Notes:

From JC:   To see #FATCA on Twitter for latest breaking news.  JC finds that is quite a good source and there even are some international articles that one may read using Google Translate.   Others may help certain tweets and articles remain in elevated position by retweeting them.

From Badger:   On an important archival note, please use the Internet Archive Wayback machine https://archive.org/web/ (see bottom right ‘Save Page Now’ box to enter URLs of webpages you want saved for posterity, and try to save backup copies of articles and other items of interest in some other form – such as a datastick or external drive. Some important and very significant webpages and the fulltexts of articles are no longer available (although some can be retrieved if someone using the Wayback machine saved them).

Be sure to read the comment stream for this thread — there are usually very recent articles mentioned there that aren’t on this list yet.

2017.12.28
It’s time to address the double standard about tax havens, Angela Wrights, Macleans, Canada.
The US Is Becoming the World’s New Tax Haven, The Editors, Bloomberg View, US.
2017.12.21
Rep. Dina Titus Supports Americans Abroad Tax Reform, Democrats Abroad, US. 
Now That The GOP Tax Bill Is Approved, The IRS Gets Busy, Brian Naylor, NPR, US.
2017.12.20
Taxpayers will have to wait to find out how they fare under new legislation , Renae Merle and Aaron Gregg, Denver Post (reprint from Washington Post), US.
U.S. Shareholders –Take Action by December 31, KPMG.
2017.12.18
Have You Ever Felt Sorry for the I.R.S? Now Might Be the Time, Patricia Cohen, New York Times, US.
2017.12.12
EU finance ministers issue warning to Trump over tax reforms, RTÉ, Ireland.
2017.12.11
Banque: les consequences étonnantes de l’accord FATCA, Edouard Lederer, Les Echos, France.
2017.12.10
As Australia ousts MPs with dual citizenship, Canada’s Parliament embraces many in its ranks, Kathleen Harris, Canada. (mentions MP who “assumed his U.S. citizenship was automatically rescinded because he did not meet several requirements for continued citizenship. [But when travelling to Washington] was told he was ineligible to enter the U.S. on a Canadian passport because he was a U.S. citizen. He was . . . allowed in on a one-time basis . . . it cost him $3,000 to later sort out the administrative requirements.”)
2017.12.09
The American Diaspora: Outreach and Organization, Victoria Ferauge, The Franco-American Flophouse, Japan.
2017.12.08
Foreign-owned banks to be hit by US tax rules, Financial Times, UK.
Trump Tax Plan Worries Europe, Christian Reiermann, Der Spiegel, Germany.

For articles earlier in 2017, click here.

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

  6. Consider the source here:

    “For example, many children born abroad to U.S. parents are automatically U.S. citizens and are therefore subject to U.S. federal tax law.”

    Really?

    “Assuming a renouncer takes the tax compliance steps need to avoid imposition of the exit tax, the actual process of renouncing one’s U.S. citizenship also has immigration issues of which to be wary. The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act includes a provision (known as the “Reed Amendment”) that denies a former citizen reentry to the United States if the U.S. Attorney General determines that the individual renounced for the purpose of avoiding U.S. tax. This is an example of why potential renouncers need qualified advisors: what a renouncer says during his or her exit interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate is critical.”

    Just the other day I had the pleasure of correcting a future renouncer who thought she had to provide a statement as to why she’s renouncing US citizenship. You don’t need a lawyer to tell you not to mention taxes (or anything else for that matter) when renouncing US citizenship.

    http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=580384&email_access=on&chk=1530580&q=950196

  9. Allison Christians reports that Shu Yi Oei (Tulane) has posted an important new paper on U.S. offshore tax enforcement, of interest.
    http://taxpol.blogspot.ca/2017/03/shu-yi-oei-offshore-tax-enforcement.html

    Excerpt from Shu Yi Oei’s abstract:
    “First, the U.S. has attempted to equalize enforcement against taxpayers with solely domestic holdings and those with harder-to-detect offshore holdings by imposing harsher reporting requirements and penalties on the latter. But in doing so, it has failed to appropriately distinguish among differently situated taxpayers with offshore holdings. Second, the U.S. has focused on revenue and enforcement, ignoring the significant compliance costs and social harms that its initiatives create.”

    “The confluence of these two policy commitments risks creating high costs for the wrong taxpayers. While offshore tax enforcement may have been designed to catch high¬-net-worth tax cheats, it may instead impose disproportionate burdens on those immigrants and expatriates who have less ability to complain, comply, or “substitute out” of the law’s grasp. This Article argues that the U.S. should redesign its enforcement approach to minimize these risks and suggests reforms to this end.”

  11. @Shovel

    Hence the surge in renunciations, yet the US lacks the impetus to fix the renunciation machine it has created when it unfairly burdens its own citizens in order to catch the elusive offshore tax evader.

    America would rather have taxpayers than citizens, sadly.

  13. @BB For a passing mention of the renunciation machine, see p. 57-58

    My longstanding analogy is that FATCA is like DDT.
    It might kill a few cockroach tax cheats, but its broad destructiveness outweighs any benefits. And just like DDT, FATCA must be banned.

    And here we have it…. Shu Yi Oei’s paper in a nutshell saying FATCA is more destructive than beneficial.

    Now, if only she hadn’t turned a blind eye to CBT.

  15. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-corporate-welfare-bonanza-for-tax-compliance-firms-1491163938
    SEARCH @ news.google.com: “A Corporate-Welfare Bonanza for Tax-Compliance Firms”
    Nigel Green writes:

    The IRS claimed last October that Fatca has helped it to collect $10 billion since 2009 from “taxpayers coming back into compliance.” But that figure lumps in penalties for filing deficiencies and money from all offshore enforcement programs. William H. Byrnes, a law professor at Texas A&M, believes the actual net recovery attributable to Fatca (subtracting IRS enforcement costs) may be closer to $200 million a year and possibly as low as $100 million.

    So if the inflow to the US Treasury is negligible then “Qui bono?” Yep, it’s the compliance condors.

    But the really big boodle goes to the accounting, law and software firms that help foreign financial institutions sift through millions of client accounts looking for American “indicia.” Although there is no official figure for the cumulative world-wide cost, the magnitude can be extrapolated from piecemeal disclosures by banks and the companies selling them services. These expenses, as Mr. Byrnes writes, are “staggering.”

  18. Nonymous: indeed, that Jatras Twitter thingie does link to some might strong stuff.
    I would never have imagined that my dear Democrats would have pushed me way out there with, “indeed”, strange bedfellows!

  19. The thought that I have any common interests at all with his ilk makes me want to take a long, hot, very soapy shower.

  20. @Nononymous:

    “The thought that I have any common interests at all with his ilk makes me want to take a long, hot, very soapy shower.”

    Perhaps you don’t, if the “Are you now or have you ever been” question is your main concen.

    If FATCA were to be repealed, would the banks stop asking US-born customers about citizenship?

    I don’t think they would, in the UK. Maybe elsewhere.

  21. “Looking a gift horse in the mouth”, keeps coming to mind. Not me though. I’m extremely grateful to have Jim Jatras and Nigel Green helping, as they have tried to do right from the get-go but in a less formalized manner than now. Would those who consider themselves to be travelling on a “higher road” start an additional lobby? If so, by all means, go for it. I’d be grateful for that too.

  22. @iota

    I’m actually less interested in whether Canadian banks ask the question than whether they make any effort to validate the answer. Currently they don’t seem to, which means that FATCA is little more than a theoretical threat to anyone who’s prepared to offer up untruths. Of the 300k accounts being reported this year (or individuals with accounts, I’m not clear on which it is) I wonder how many actually belong to dual-citizen Canadian residents, as opposed to accounts with US addresses. Not very many, I’d expect.

    @EmBee

    I suppose I’m grateful for the effort, though skeptical of its chances, but I would feel much better about it if the individuals involved were less vile.

  23. “I’m actually less interested in whether Canadian banks ask the question than whether they make any effort to validate the answer.”

    Speaking only of UK banks – I don’t think they could do that. They wouldn’t themselves have the legal power to compel a reply or see a CLN, they’d just decline the application if they felt nervous.

  24. @ Nononymous
    I haven’t explored every nook and cranny of Jim’s ideology but I know he is anti-FATCA, anti-CBT and anti-war. That’s good enough for me. (Other matters are in the American domestic domain so I don’t concern myself with them except in an interested yet often puzzled spectator’s way.) I never did and still do not understand the left-wing-right-wing thing (both wings of the same bird to me) but there are those who are fluent in Dem-speak and those who are fluent in Rep-speak and I think that the latter, at this point in time, has a better chance to get FATCA repealed than the former. Here’s hoping anyway.

  25. @iota

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens when UK banks start denying service to (potential or existing) customers with UK citizenship. It’s one thing to mess with an expat, but citizens have more rights.

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