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The Isaac Brock Society

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. @ Bubblebustin
    Half and half, I’d say. He’s got a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde wing and often flaps both at the same time. Today he’s gliding on his Dr. Jekyll wing. It’s a good composite letter.

  2. Yes, EmBee, I have the same observation. He does at least have a firm grasp of the issues, and doesn’t try to beat “the laws is the law” crap into people’s heads. I find it annoying though when he does the OVDI-Streamlined roundup for people with unreported bank accounts and filing issues with little distinction between non-residents and homelanders.

    A condor is a condor, I suppose, and it matters not whose bones you pick.

  3. @JC
    Forbes Article: what is “ok” about it? When you have to give up your citizenship because you cannot save for retirement- what is OK about it? How can it be Ok to pay taxes to a country from which you get nothing in return? As we saw in Yemen or Lybia – you are not even evacuated when things get dangerous. I understand if people want to get Social Security because they plan to retire in America- then these are the only people who should pay US taxes from abroad.

  5. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Trump to fix things for your last breath.

    “Connections between Canadians and the U.S. have never been as numerous or transparent as they are now: many Canadians own U.S. property, have U.S. spouses or partners, and have children and grandchildren born or living in the U.S. As of January 20, 2017, Donald Trump is President of the U.S. If he repeals or otherwise changes U.S. inheritance taxes, as he said he will, things won’t just change for Americans; they’ll change for many Canadians, too. But whether that will actually happen remains to be seen, and even if it does, it will take some time to kick in and will only affect the estates of those who die while the change is in effect. Canadians with U.S. connections should, in the meantime, be planning and can only do so based on the current rules.”

    http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=562352&email_access=on&chk=1512548&q=950196

  6. Polly: Bingo! That statement in Wood’s letter stuck out like a sore thumb to me to.There ain’t nothin’ “OK” with Americans having to file a single sheet of paper or pay a single dime to a country in which they no longer live. If they move back there … fine. They should start paying at that time and not a second earlier.

    Despite this gaff, I’m glad to see Robert continuing to write on our issue.

  8. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38735399

    ‘US authorities have seized $20m (£16m) in cash discovered in a bed frame under a mattress in a Massachusetts flat. ‘

    It wasn’t an expat trying to bank locally after being denied a bank account due to FATCA.

    Note that the mattress and money laundering didn’t belong to anyone ‘abroad’. Somebody should alert Richard ‘Dick’ (Harvey the FATCAfather) and ask if they checked that US resident’s toothpaste tube for diamonds.

  10. Re: the “Canadians With US Connections: Key Estate Planning Strategies” article, I don’t know the ins and out of US estate tax law or much of anything about US tax law, but two things I do know about jumped at me in this article.

    Ms. Dykema writes:

    “And for tax and estate planning purposes, much depends on whether an individual is a “U.S. Person”: any of a U.S. citizen, a person born in the U.S., or a U.S. “resident” with a U.S. “domicile”.”

    Incomplete misleading statement. A person born in the US who relinquished their US citizenship or a person born to a diplomat (not so common but they do exist), for example. We know this, but not everyone who will read that article does. I’m going to drop her an e-mail re that because it’s really basic and really important.

    This also caught my eye:

    “Though it’s presumed that a person’s domicile is their place of birth (so for Canadian Snowbirds, Canada), that presumption can be rebutted.”

    The presumption of domicile is tied to residence, not birth. It is very common for a person to at some point in their life change their domicile of origin (birth) for a domicile of choice (maybe even change their domicile of choice more than once during their lifetime).

    If someone needs to prove where they are domciled, whipping out their birth certificate ain’t gonna do it. More like how much time you spend in each jurisdiction, what you do in each jurisdiction, what your ties are to each jurisdiction. Now. Not in the year on your birth certificate.

    (BTW, a bit off topic, the general rule is you can have more than one residence at the same time, but only one domicile at a time.)

  14. @Barbara, Am I missing something? After all the comments that were made on the RO Territorial Tax Proposal, have they released an updated version? I sure hope they didn’t submit the original version.

  16. @Karen: From all I can gather, RO have submitted the proposal they published on January 6. But I can’t actually be certain of that.

    There’s also a peachy photo of Michael DeSombre meeting Reince Priebus in the White House:

    https://www.facebook.com/republicansoverseas/posts/613258392191293%3A0

    What with Trump wreaking total havoc upon the world and the environment at the moment, I wish-I wish-I wish he’d slip in an Executive Order to repeal FATCA, or at least the IGAs. Now is the perfect time! Throwing a bone to all us “rich overseas tax cheats” will seem mild in comparison, in the furious eyes of those holding up their pitchforks against so many other issues.

  18. @JC
    I did not see my comment over there, but I did see yours. It was the absolute BEST comment I have ever read on the topic and you hit every point and drove it home.

  19. @Polly. I have three comments in there. Yours is yet to be called out and is at the end.

    @Everyone. Twitter Rally tomorrow Wednesday @ 10 a.m. EST against #cbtax and #FATCA. Use #FATCA hashtag. Seach for #FATCA in twitter. Go to “LATEST” and retweet and like there, not just on the “TOP” page.

  24. Thanks for that https://twitter.com/khamal/status/824398319271247872 re T &T @JC.

    Fancy that a small country like T & T has a better sense of sovereignty and the democratic process and wellbeing of its citizenry and residents than many/most of the early adopters/enablers of the FATCA IGAs- like Canada.

    In the meantime, Canada continues to waste our own Canadian tax revenues in defending the interests of a foreign government via an unconstitutional and very possibly illegal IGA legislation which passed hidden in an omnibus bill with haste and without full Parliamentary debate or discussion, and our CRA abuse our Canadian taxpayer money remitting local legal Canadian account and personal data to a foreign country against the Canadian citizen/resident owner’s will.

  25. @Cheryl, when you read the headline how many people do you think is a mass resignation?

    The truth is that they could all sit around at a table at McDonalds.

    But besides….its employees of a foreign country so frankly my remarks are what Rhett Butler told Scarlett in the end.

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