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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)”

  2. @BB

    in addition, there is this:

    Many individuals pursuing renunciation request that a U.S.-trained and licensed attorney accompany them to the interview. This is possible at the discretion of the individual embassy or consulates.

    I remember Pacifica explaining this to me as I once thought it had always been the case that no one (including attorneys) should be present during a renunciation interview. She did say it was “at the discretion…”
    However, this seems to have changed in July 2015.

    https://fam.state.gov/FAM/07FAM/07FAM1260.html
    7 FAM 1262.3 Second Interview/Site of Renunciation
    (CT:CON-586; 07-06-2015 )

    f. In order for the consular officer to ascertain whether the renunciant’s action in relinquishing his or her U.S. citizenship is a product of his or her own free will, a parent, guardian, attorney, legal representative, or other representative should not participate in any interview, including a telephonic one, conducted by the consular mission member or attend the administration of the oath of renunciation.

    I am adding something Pacifica just wrote so that this main info is all in one place.

    ” When you inquire about renunciation appointments in Canada, the automatic reply e-mail also contains the sentence: “While you may choose to seek legal advice in preparing your forms, attorneys are not permitted to accompany an applicant to the Consulate.”

    This suggests to me that it is no longer ” possible at the discretion of the individual embassy or consulates.” According to a meeting in Toronto in June 2015, the reported cost was considerable.

    I am puzzled by this……

  3. @Tricia said “According to a meeting in Toronto in June 2015, the reported cost was considerable.” — the prices quoted by this mob in 2016 to people here in Australia have been outrageously high. Caveat emptor!

  4. @Nononymous said:

    “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.”

    A note of caution to USCs contemplating this strategy: some CRS countries’ laws may give citizens/residents a right to banking services, but lying – especially about AML/KYC-related issues such as tax-residence – might negate the right, and could also bring down other woe.

  6. @Tricia – is that CAD? The quote here was more than that for Streamlined and the same figure again for renunciation!

  7. Well that’s what I remember………..maybe I will modify a tad……..it was nearly 2 yrs ago. Never heard any set fee for Streamlined…………..

  8. @ Patricia,

    Yes, 7 FAM 1262.3 and 1262.2(f) were added in the July 2015 Foreign Affairs Manual, replacing the old 1263(b) which read:

    7 FAM 1263(b) (until July 2015) “The renunciant may be accompanied by his or her attorney as a witness, but posts should not be telling renunciants to get an attorney to act as a witness.”

    Note: By posts they mean embassies/consulates, eg diplomatic posts.

    Beats me why this firm is advertising about hiring them to accompany you to the renunciation meeting because 7 FAM 1262.2(f) and 1262.3 have been in effect for almost two years now. All I can think is maybe some consulate allows lawyers in despite this – though obviously they’re not supposed to. It’s misleading to imply that allowing a lawyer to accompany is standard, as is this firm’s description of a routine consulate meeting. What they imply as a routine meeting (one hour of important questions) sounds like something I’d put my foot down about 10 minutes into and report higher up the food chain (been there, done that, with quick results). Advertising like that disturbs me because if a person expects the meeting to be routinely confrontational/out-of-bounds/abusive and they happen to run into a rogue consulate, they won’t know that they don’t have to put up with that garbage.

    This firm implies you need a lawyer to help you at the renunciation meeting (which they describe as a “one hour crescendo”). Renunciation is very cut-and-dried, not much to ask except “do you understand,” etc. In a standard case, it makes no sense at all why a lawyer would sit silently in the meeting, letting such deviance from a standard 10 minute on-point meeting occur.

    If this firm had a really weird complicated case that did require an hour to sort out at the consulate, they should not be using one hour as an example of typical renunciation. Nor would that explain why they imply the typical renunciation meeting is a tricky confrontational situation. It can lead people to put up with harassment they don’t have to put up with.

  10. @BB & Karen & Pacifica

    I decided to send Mr. Marino an email via the Mondaq site. I do hope he sends a reply.

    Now I wish I had included a comment about this:

    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.

    On the Moody’s website, another article by Mr. Marino does refer to the fact that the Reed Amendment only occurs where the information is volunteered by the renunciant and that it has rarely been applied. Considering we have made that information rather visible, here and on other sites, many probably have already seen it. I also don’t see any justification for not including it in an article to the public.

    And unless something has changed, regaining U.S. citizenship is not dependent upon naturalizing again. I made sure before I renounced, that should my son keep his U.S. citizenship and was living in the U.S. and I was left alone here, he could sponsor me for a greencard……….I should look it up again but am sure I did not misunderstand that.

  11. Thank you Trish.

    The ONLY thing a renouncer needs to know about the Reed Amendment is to not mention taxes when renouncing citizenship.

    Pretty simple and doesn’t need a $300 – $500/hr lawyer to tell you.

  13. @BB

    I’d be willing to bet Mr. Marino is pulling a lot more tha $500 pr hr.

    It’s a little late- already sent……….sorry about that………….I don’t even know the total number offhand………

  14. 5411 was the total for the world appearing on Treasury’s lists during 2016.

    Eric wrote:

    “The IRS gave 2,365 names in this list [4th quarter 2016], making it the largest they’ve ever published. We had a total of 5,411 published expatriates in 2016 (1,158 in Q1, 509 in Q2, and 1,379 in Q3).”

    More details and links in his post of 8 February 2017.

  15. What people really need to do before making ANY decision on US taxes/renunciation etc is spend as much time as necessary right here, reading up on the subject. Even if they do end up seeing a professional, better to be completely informed beforehand. Helps to weed out the bs and bad advice. Also important to retain control of the information given to the professional. I.e. don’t just hand the professional a big pile of paper and ask them to sort it out — recipe for disaster.
    Very important warning against Reed amendment, thank you. I am keeping that in mind so that if/when I relinquish the reason will be that I love Belgian weather so much I never want to leave. Absolutely nothing to do with, what was it, FATCA and CBT? (sarcasm)

  16. @Fred (B)

    The Reed Amendment serves as a muzzle more than anything. So much for free speech!

  17. @Fred (B)
    During my relinquishment interview, the interviewing officer, would every now and again. (at least 5 times, maybe more) would change her aggressive tone to a kind of “let’s do small talk” tone, then drop a comment along the line that so many are renouncing for financial reasons. Usually she did this when I was busy (distracted) proof-reading a document, busy looking through my documents for an original so she could copy it again, (distracted) or waiting for her to staple something. This was the only time she could be described as almost friendly or at least not quite mean. This was a blatant attempt to get me to make a comment about taxes. Just ignored the comment (no reaction at all) completely. Careful with the “nice” ones, though, they could slip a “small talk” attempt in without it standing out like a sore thumb.

  18. Unforgiven: Jeez. Why am I not surprised? This is a horrible situation where telling the (obvious) truth can make you lose access to the US in the future. It is like the abusive parent you cannot tell the truth to because there’ll be hell to pay. It’s all the more ironic that in many cases renunciation is necessary not to avoid any tax, but just to be able to live a normal life again, bank, buy, sell stock and real estate, like any other normal resident of the country we live in (where many of us pay more tax than they would in the US). So, yes, it’s for tax reasons, but not as if we were escaping the US with millions of unpaid income tax (in which case one could not get a CLN I imagine). And, of course, like that abusive parent, once the children learn NOT to tell the truth, the information is lost. Which can be convenient. By bullying people into denying that they renounce for tax reasons, it becomes easy to say: “look, we asked and people are saying taxes ain’t a problem.”

    Thanks for sharing that, and congratulations on not falling into that trap.

  19. Well it was easy to see through (BTW, this probably belongs in a different section, but it came up here and I feel a need to “talk it out”). I’m not sure if I ended up with Dumb & Dumber, Laurel & Hardy, what, but the officer and her assistant tried to play the good cop / bad cop routine to get me to renounce instead, even though my relinquishment was a straight forward (Bilderbuch) relinquishment. No idea why, seeing as between the relinquishing act and the appointment the fee for applying for a CLN based on a relinquishment already came into effect. Maybe habit, because I was one of the first to pay the fee for relinquishment.
    Anyway they mostly ended up playing bad cop / bad cop. If it wasn’t such a stressful time for me and of such seriousness for my life, it could have been funny.
    She said at the end she had to “cut the interview short” because it had been over 90 minutes. I think it was more like 2 hours (felt like a lifetime), but I was in no shape to look at the clock till I was halfway to Würzburg.
    The entire thing was not about whether I relinquished, but if I relinquished at the exact second I thought I did because if I was off by 5 minutes then I didn’t relinquish because I had already relinquished and therefore did not relinquish and therefore must renounce instead. Some examples:
    I signed two oaths: one to be loyal to democracy when I turned in my paperwork and one to not work against the principles of the German Grundgesetz just before I signed my Einbürgerungsurkunde. Both were noted on my application under the appropriate category, but I also wrote that I specifically relinquished with the acceptance of the German citizenship.
    Argument 1: I thought I relinquished with the first oath, so I didn’t think I had citizenship when I signed the Einbürgerungsurkunde, so I didn’t relinquish and need to renounce, because the oath was “too weak”.
    Argument 2: same again only with the other one.
    On other example: my Einbürgerungsurkunde was stamped with the date of approval, then dated next to my signature on the day I signed it.
    Argument 1: the approval date was the date in which I became a German citizenship, so I couldn’t have relinquished with my signature, I need to renounce. Acted as if they had never seen an Einbürgerungsurkunde (excuse me: American Consulate in GERMANY?) Had to check this in the legal section after I explained that it was the day of approval and not the day of acceptance.
    Argument 2: I supposedly didn’t know this at the time, so I thought I already had citizenship when I signed and therefore could not have relinquished with my signature and must renounce. (I had just finished explaining to her with special emphasis on how the German officer explained the exact process to me and the exact time at which I became German, twice once before I applied, next right before I signed).
    It goes on and on; one aggressive hare-brained attempt to split hairs that weren’t there after the other. A sudden attempt at small talk just has to stick out.

  22. @Charl
    I cant get in there to comment- but could somebody please write that in the meantime – AMERICA is the biggest tax haven in the world and will hand out information to nobody
    Piss me off. I am so TIRED of this hypocrisy.

  24. @ Charl
    On the hill (again). I am tentatively saying that whatshappening might finally see what really is happening (sometimes they turn and then turn back again). Good work. And what about Erik? WOW, what a personal, compelling, well-written way to drive home the points the article and the FATCA-literate commenters are trying to make.

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