Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 6 of 11 (Year 2019)

523 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 6 of 11 (Year 2019)”

1. Hi everyone,
   I just got a worrying e-mail from Greenback taxes about an FBAR case that allegedly has the expat community quaking in its boots, the case of Alice Kimble who was fined a whopping $700,000 fine. The good news is that Alice Kimble is not actually an expat. The bad news is that Jack Townsend has noted that the mistake in Alice Kimble’s form was one that happened in the early OVDP program.

2. @Publius

   I’m sure that by the time the dust settles and everyone realizes that there should be no quaking in boots, the expat tax industry will have found a bunch of new paying customers.

3. Kimble didn’t make a simple check the box omission on a form. She carefully kept secret approximately 1.5 million in UBS and HSBC accounts. Her r grandparents had survived the Holocaust. Her father opened the account to provide a safe haven ‘in case they had to escape America’ !
   She was an early OVDI participant and was hit hard.
   Quite a story. Not applicable to most of us.

4. My boots are plenty stable. I don’t file returns, I don’t file FBARS, and I don’t have problems. Expats need to realize that filing anything with the IRS just gives the IRS information they can use to attack you at a later date. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but there’s no predicting what screwy law the US will come up with next. Exhibit A is this new transition tax they just invented out of thin air.

   I don’t imagine the expat tax firms will be explaining any of this to their clients. I also don’t expect those tax firms to explain that Canada won’t collect on behalf of the IRS.

5. Publius:

   “I just got a worrying e-mail from Greenback taxes about an FBAR case that allegedly has the expat community quaking in its boots, the case of Alice Kimble who was fined a whopping $700,000 fine. ”

   Might be worth emailing them back to draw their attention to their error? The Kimble case is a RBT issue, not a CBT issue.

6. @Plaxy,
   US resident or overseas resident.
   Streamlined or not streamlined?

7. Monte is claiming a victory on GILTI for overseas small businesses.

   Hi All:

   Its official. In addition to getting two temporary forms of relief in 2018, we just won our first permanent form of relief since we started the movement less than one year ago! People will be able avoid GILTI taxes if they make the 962 election.

   There are certain ifs ands and buts to the election which we can discuss later. And the lawsuit aims for much more relief.

   But for now, sit back and relish a victory. I am unaware of any other expat tax advocacy that has ever won relief – permanent (or even temporary for that matter). Together, we accomplished something very difficult!

   https://www.facebook.com/groups/americansmallbusinesses/?multi_permalinks=623978348066983&notif_id=1551749305871459&notif_t=group_activity

8. @Plaxy,
   US resident or overseas resident.
   Streamlined or not streamlined

   Eh?

9. I’m very glad to hear of Monte Silver’s success. This will certainly be of help to many here and I’m very grateful to him for all his work. I’m still hoping to wake up one morning to the sound of a giant bandage being ripped off the festering sore that is CBT itself. Nonetheless, until that happy day, I will be thankful to those working hard on this mess one step at a time.

10. US Resident; OVDI

    See above

11. 2019.03.07. UK turns down U.S.-born Brit’s FATCA FOI request, after Canada, Oz obliged their citizens, Helen Burggraf, American Expat Finance.

    “The ICO [UK Information Commissioner’s Office] then proceeds to respond at length in explaining its decision to uphold HMRC’s refusal to comply with Jane Doe’s FOI request, detailing a number of factors it said had been taken into account, including the fact that it believed “disclosure of the requested information would prejudice relations between the UK and other states with whom it has tax treaties, including the USA, because such a disclosure would be perceived as a breach of the confidentiality afforded by an international tax treaty.”

    Text of ICO Decision, 2019.03.01.

12. As I’d mentioned on another thread, the FOI request detailed above provides a useful template for any private citizen who wishes to make their own access to information request in Canada. It costs $5 and you do it here:

    https://atip-aiprp.apps.gc.ca/atip/welcome.do

    Whatever data the CBC apparently received was very limited, simply the number of accounts reported, currently 600k per year. What would be more interesting is the number of persons who own those accounts, and the breakdown by both citizenship and country of residence. (My contention being that not many Canadian citizens resident in Canada – as opposed to US expats who are not dual, or Canadians living in the US – are being reported, yet.) One might also ask how often CRA availed itself of the FATCA data for its own purposes.

13. Killing the rule of law
    By Richard W. Rahn – – Monday, March 11, 2019
    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/11/over-taxation-hurts-normal-commerce-taxpayers-priv/

    Comment section.

14. Why the U.S. and the Worldwide Tax
    Systems Have Run Amok
    By Bruce Zagaris*

    http://freedomandprosperity.org/2019/publications/why-the-u-s-and-the-worldwide-tax-systems-have-run-amok/

15. Nononymous:

    …the FOI request detailed above provides a useful template for any private citizen who wishes to make their own access to information request in Canada.

    Perhaps the person or persons who drew up the UK FoI request may in fact have been thinking more in terms of Australian or Canadian law rather than UK law. That might explain the questions about citizenship – irrelevant under UK law.

    • Amongst the account holders whose information was forwarded to the IRS –
    How many are British citizens, including British citizens who hold another citizenship?

    How many are resident in Britain?

    How many are both British citizens and British residents?

    These questions might be relevant in some countries – not in the UK, as far as I can see. There is no reason it might be ok to report the UK account of a UK-resident USC with ILR status (PR status), but not ok to report the UK account of a UK-resident dual US/UK citizen.

    Under current UK law, residents with visa status have fewer rights than residents with ILR status; residents with ILR status have fewer rights than residents with dual citizenship; and dual citizens have fewer rights than citizens who are not dual (in that the latter cannot be stripped of their UK citizenship, and would have grounds for a complaint to the regulator if a bank treated their account as reportable under the IGA.)

    All are in exactly the same boat, as far as the UK IGA is concerned. A UK-resident USC is a UK-resident USC is a UK-resident USC. Only ditching the US citizenship gets you out of that particular boat.

16. Apologies if this was posted before, but;

    The Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson is going to retire at the end of this July https://taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/news/nta-personal-message?category=Tax%20News .

17. I said:

    Under current UK law, residents with visa status have fewer rights than residents with ILR status; residents with ILR status have fewer rights than residents with dual citizenship; and dual citizens have fewer rights than citizens who are not dual

    Moving to each new stage is expensive – a massive fee charged by the UK for processing the applications for each of the required visas, for ILR, and then for naturalisation; then a final massive fee charged by the US for processing the renunciation of US citizenship.

    All these fees used to be low or non-existent. Opportunities for acquiring (single) UK citizenship, which used to exist decades ago when I came here, are now out of reach if you can’t pay the fees.

18. @ plaxy
    I did a rough calculation using Canada’s immigration fee schedule and from visitor visa to permanent resident card to citizenhip certificate (with a Canadian spouse sponsoring a non-Canadian while living in Canada) the journey today would cost about $2000. NEW this year is a biometrics fee of $85. And yes, then there’s an additional $3000 (CAD) cost if the applicant is American and chooses to relinquish that citizenship after becoming a Canadian. So it’s FEE-fi-fo-fum, they’ll empty the pockets of everyone. Destitute asylum seekers are another matter.

19. EmBee – yes, basically when the supply goes down or the demand goes up, the price gets bigger.

    In the UK, non-EU immigration got squeezed so the fees went up.

    In the US, FATCA increased demand for CLNs so the fees went up.

    Canada’s fees sound moderate compared to the UK though. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visa-regulations-revised-table/home-office-immigration-and-nationality-fees-29-march-2019

20. Call to Action from our overseas representative to the US Taxpayer Advocate Service: Sign petition to New Zealand Government to withdraw from FATCA:

    Petition to NZ Parliament to withdraw from #FATCA. You do not need to be a NZ citizen to sign (indeed, I am not a NZ citizen + I signed). So please sign!

    https://twitter.com/TAPInternation/status/1109218893451706368

21. NZ petition signed

22. A certain amount of fun is being had here:

    https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/how-to-file-u-s-tax-returns-in-canada/

    https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/dual-citizens-of-the-united-states-and-other-countries-read-the-commentary/

    https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/the-united-states-imposes-a-separate-and-more-punitive-tax-system-on-us-dual-citizens-who-live-in-their-country-of-second-citizenship/

    Feel free to pile on.

23. Pretty funny. If one were to, say, post a comment at Tax Connections explaining to an Accidental that they should not enter the US tax system and the IRS is powerless to touch them, the comment will appear for a few hours and then disappear. Which suggests some entertaining editorial disagreements with the moderators.

    Flood that comment board. Lord knows there’s nothing much to talk here just now.

24. Thanks Nononymous for the links. From:
    https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/the-united-states-imposes-a-separate-and-more-punitive-tax-system-on-us-dual-citizens-who-live-in-their-country-of-second-citizenship/#.XJl0p4VumdM
    I have read hundreds of expat stories over the past 7 years and I’m putting this one here because I think it should be on record, on Brock.

    SMDW
    March 19, 2019 at 12:11 pm

    I knew about citizenship based taxation before I married and moved abroad with my foreign national spouse. The US embassy here when I asked them about it gave me the very wrong information that I would not have to file a US tax return so long as I didn’t exceed the tax treaty threshold. They are still telling US citizens here that opening those citizens up to fines, penalties and potential prosecution. The limited services they provide are not cheap, must be done through an appointment and often the people working there are often rude and unhelpful.
    Thankfully I was a stay at home mom so did not go into employment. Later circumstances would see me too disabled to work so never had an income of my own to file. My foreign national spouse has been our sole source of income. I shudder to think had I listened to the embassy the mess we would be in now 20 years later.
    Things changed when FATCA was enacted, suddenly the bank we had accounts with for years became almost hostile. I was informed to keep our basic account and half paid mortgage I had to fill out some forms – they weren’t really explained to me just told they were necessary. We didn’t know that all our information would be turned over to the IRS including my spouses although he’s not or ever been a US citizen/green card holder. We couldn’t open interest bearing savings accounts for our children – their classmates had them including duals of other countries just not my US dual children. They would allow us to open a basic account that charged bank fees that would eat anything deposited into it.
    When our home was damaged in a freak storm we were denied a loan although we had good credit and met all the other criteria. For years we struggled doing repairs as we could to make our home liveable thinking it was the financial crisis behind the denial of the loan. It wasn’t until years later when a friend that is a bank manager for another bank explained that there was only one reason – my US citizenship. He told me “off the record” that banks were trying to shed customers with US connections as FATCA compliance was very expensive especially for the small banks – of which our local bank was one. The best thing I could do for my family was to renounce my US citizenship.
    Imagine my surprise that the service that had been free and simple suddenly had a price tag of $2350 plus tax compliance incorporated.The embassy here demands that one submit their “exit” tax forms at the time of renunciation. The financial crisis meant my spouses income had been frozen so we were living on the same income we had before the crash – the fee was more than our monthly income. It wasn’t easy between having a family of five, cost of living and trying to cope with diy repairs to our home so we had no savings. Knowing we couldn’t afford it I asked if there wasn’t some exemption or help available for citizens like me – firmly told no and that I would have to pay any taxes owed before I could renounce, the fee was non-refundable so any mistake could prevent the State Department from approving it.
    Each time I hear the words “tax reform” I feel dread, I used to hope that the problems and hardships Washington put on their emigrant citizens would be fixed but instead they’ve become worse. Our children are now coming of age to renounce, over the next 3 1/2 years we will struggle but we will see them freed. My oldest has just renounced, he was treated like dirt and informed that he would never be able to travel to the US among other threats during his process.
    My renunciation has been complicated by the fact I didn’t have an income, my spouse is a foreign national not subject to US tax and the fact we own a home. I’ve been told to get him a TIN, which I refuse to do and that I would have to “prove” how I financially survived which I can’t without bringing him into the nightmare of the US system. I’m disabled and could receive government benefits provided by the government here but due to differences in systems the US may consider them taxable causing even more stress – so I don’t. I paid in 20 years worth of social security before ever coming here but will never see a dime (our embassy doesn’t handle social security matters). My spouse has paid our full share of taxes here which is much higher than in the US.
    I tried reaching out to senators and representatives, other than sending me various “newsletters” and to solicit campaign donations never received a proper response. It’s clear to me they would rather embrace the false narrative of the wealthy fatcat expat tax cheat than the reality that we far from wealthy and face just as many challenges as those in the homeland, more when you add it the legislation and practices the US imposes on those that no longer live in the US.
    Even the plight of accidental americans doesn’t reach their stone hearts. How can one of the wealthiest countries in the world justify robbing the poor, disabled and elderly that have never called the US home or benefited in any form from the US? What an abuse of power this nation uses to extort every last cent they can from these people that never asked for or wanted US citizenship.
    I have ancestors that fought in the revolutionary war of independence to create this nation – to free it from tyranny and injustice. One has to wonder what they would think of what that nation has become and what it does to honest law abiding citizens. Perhaps if they could see it today they would have stayed under King George.

25. @USCA

    Regarding the taxconnection web link . I think they should be chastised for allowing such comments on their site ,after all the comments do not mention tax filing questions. Maybe IBS should have John Richardson here to cool USCA ‘s heels. Or better yet, why not move over to taxconnection and leave USCA’s here alone to field all those many incoming tax filing questions.

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