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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)”

  1. Hey Muzzled,

    Sorry I didn’t reply to your message from a few days ago. I was away on a trip, taking the first substantial step toward an alternative citizenship and eventual cleansing myself of US taint. I avoid internet while travelling.

    I’ll be happy to send your letter to those six Big Men. If I can figure out which one it is among my messy archives. Maybe you can give me a link to your original post of that letter.

    I’m also considering sending each office a CD-ROM containing the entire FATCA.eu.pn website, which contains all the letters to the Senate Finance Committee from the last round. I’m worried their staffers would be afraid to insert CDs with some strange Asian postmark in their computers (unless I label the discs, “Hillary emails” in Russian). As tempted as I am to print the whole set six times and send them, that’s over 3600 pages total (6 x 600 pages), which would wreck my printer and cost a fortune to send. Any suggestions as to how to get these several hundred well written and poignant documents in front of their faces?

  2. Barbara,

    Thanks for your interest in helping me out … again! I’ve rewritten the letter for this specific mail-out. Maybe I could send it to you personally. I will ask an administrator to release my email address to you and we could correspond that way if you wish. Thanks again!

  3. Barbara: To address a method of getting the whole ball of wax in front of the “Big Six, I’m not sure that snail mail would do it. The CD would have been a great idea but I doubt they’d make it through security these days. I think a link to the website in an email is the best thing in this case. Frankly, the likelihood of any of this stuff getting read by the head honchos themselves is probably slim but at least their staffers will be swamped with correspondence on this issue and they’ll be more likely to pass it on to their bosses.

    Thanks for the amazing amount of work you’ve done on all of this!

  7. From the CRS article:

    “Under the Common Reporting Standard, dozens of countries will share information about bank accounts held by non-residents.

    Beginning in September 2018, the information will be sent to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which in return, will send information about Canadian bank accounts belonging to non-residents to their home countries.

    According to an update provided to G20 leaders earlier this month, 101 countries have signed on to the agreement. Canada has so far worked out information-sharing details with 42 countries.

    …One country refusing to participate, however, is the United States, which already receives information about bank accounts held by American citizens through its Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and other intergovernmental agreements, including one with Canada.

    While many governments are lauding the Common Reporting Standard’s potential for fighting tax evasion, experts like Queen’s University law professor Arthur Cockfield aren’t convinced it will be effective.

    “The general feeling out there in the industry is that very few of the big fish will be caught,” he said. “A few of the small fish, sometimes they are called suckers, may be discovered through this new information-sharing program, but there are just a whole bunch of loopholes so anybody, any crook, who doesn’t want his or her identity revealed, can usually find a way to do so.””

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tax-evasion-banks-cra-1.4209208

  9. Exactly. According to the ‘failing’ NYTimes, one of the participants at the meeting between Trump Jr., Kushner, and the Russkies was a Russian American financier who had been investigated for setting up 2000 Delaware cos. and a hundred bank accounts to llaunder Russian money. No problem doing it.

  10. For Canadians, there is an opportunity to raise the NAFTA issues with FATCA at the upcoming NAFTA townhalls;
    http://globalnews.ca/news/3605482/nafta-public-consultations/

    For ammunition, see many mentions of the conflicts with NAFTA created by FATCA by someone with expertise in both topics;
    Christians, Allison and Cockfield, Arthur J., Submission to Finance Department on Implementation of FATCA in Canada (March 10, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2407264 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2407264

    Cockfield, Arthur J., FATCA and the Erosion of Canadian Taxpayer Privacy (April 1, 2014). Report to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, April 2014. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2433198

    http://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/41-2/FINA/meeting-34/evidence#Int-8359630
    Standing Committee on Finance
    NUMBER 034, 2nd SESSION, 41st PARLIAMENT, EVIDENCE, Tuesday, May 13, 2014

  11. Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’

    Comment by the author inside the article tells it like it is:

    A large body of data demonstrates that the escalating risks to U.S. power have come not from outside U.S. power, but from the very manner in which U.S. power has operated. The breakdown of the U.S.-led international order, from this perspective, is happening as a direct consequence of deep-seated flaws in the structure, values and vision of that order.

  13. Barbara: Thanks for posting that *very* interesting article on the Pentagon study. While it doesn’t mention our “American expat tax revolution” we are certainly a part of the general backlash against authority that the author cites as a sign of our times. So be it.

  14. I can’t get into the site to read the article on the collapse, but the resistance to authority has been around since the 1960s. What I wonder about is the general loss of ANY roll models one could consider someone to emulate. Charlize Theron just went on record saying that she used to experiment with drugs and when asked how that was- she told the reporter it was a “blast”. Talk about encouraging kids to experiment with drugs! Then look at all the rap stars who denigrate women in their music and rave about their cars or their guns or their bling. And now there is even a president who talks about “grabbing pu–y” and nobody is appalled? Try to understand this? These are all people who are admired and show others how to live together as a society? What roll models has America created? It is like a farce. Imagine a country with real roll models who one can really respect because they have courage and integrity?

  18. @watcher
    I wonder how they plan to police it without something similar to Fatca and a % threat to banks? They lack the clout.
    CRS is no good as it only reports to country of residence.
    Maybe through passport renewal?

  19. South Africa wants to use CBT to punish whites for leaving, after they get kicked off their farms.

  20. @Bob
    They are just broke, my fears are that the UK will follow suit after the Brexit catastrophe.

  21. IF CBT was a concept which would spread, then America would have to put a stop to that!
    Just think of all the different nationals living in America! :))

  23. The news about South Africa is fairly confusing but I’m not sure they’re imposing full CBT. The articles mention a foreign earned income exemption available to South African _tax residents_, and that this exemption will be repealed. The timeslive.co.za article has the following quote:

    “One alternative would be to properly emigrate‚ in which case there is a deemed disposal capital gains tax event. SARS probably anticipates this likely move‚ as the 2016/17 tax return now has a specific disclosure hereon‚ which never previously existed.”

    It sounds like properly leaving the SA tax system (“properly emigrating”) involves an exit tax, but that some people were not “leaving” (perhaps to avoid this tax or because it’s difficult to do) and instead relying on this particular exemption to avoid paying tax on foreign earned income. I can’t read anything that flat out says “anyone who is now a citizen of SA will be taxed as if resident as long as they are a citizen”.

  24. Sorry, I had missed the second page of the internationalinvestment.net article where Nigel Green does indeed say that this is CBT. Still, the situation is quite confusing as other content in the articles sounds like it’s talking about a specific foreign earned income exemption available to SA tax residents. Perhaps the exemption will be removed specifically for citizens, so Nigel Green considers that to be CBT? Who knows…

  25. @CoffeeBean, it’s certainly all a bit unclear.

    It seems that South Africa is planning to impose a limited form of CBT on South Africans working abroad and whose income is not (or not as heavily?) taxed by the country in which they live. And ‘expatriating’ from South Africa for tax purposes appears to involve an exit tax, but not necessarily renunciation of citizenship. So not as bad as the US (of course).

    Still, the end result for some South Africans looks like it could be a tax debt to South Africa on income paid by a non-South African employer and earned while not living in South Africa. As already pointed out, it’s unclear how South Africa can enforce even this. And if implemented it will make South Africans less employable internationally than other non-US nationals.

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