Media and Blog Articles – Part 1 of 11 (to 26 May 2015)

3,971 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles – Part 1 of 11 (to 26 May 2015)”

1. And while we’re talking about books, no one has mentioned Amazon’s own discrimination against those living abroad. Whenever you buy a Kindle e-book from any country without a direct Amazon presence they add a $2 surcharge for no justifiable reason. If you’re in Canada or UK, you’re fine, but in any country in Asia, Latin America, Africa, etc., we get hit with the so-called Whispernet fee, as though there’s a toll booth on the trans-Pacific cables. My main reason for buying from Kobo instead (somehow they’re able to deliver e-books all across the big wide world without surcharge). The fact that Kobo is a Canadian company, not an American one, also cheers me.

   I’m looking forward to reading Future Crimes. I also recommend Glenn Greenwald’s No Place To Hide, about the Snowden files, including some very impassioned essays about privacy, government overreach and the decline of the US news media, both very relevant to our issues. All through the book you can practically substitute the acronym NSA with IRS, and it reads like the comments here on Isaac Brock Society. And it’s a real page-turner.

2. RE: Charl’s comment here …
   http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/media-and-blog-articles-open-for-comments/comment-page-137/#comment-5900857
   The podcast of this Cindy Graves Show is now available. The FATCA discussion begins at the 28:30 mark. Keith Redmond is once again in great form. Nice to hear some empathy coming from Florida.
   http://www.wbobradio.com/cindy-graves-show-33015/

3. More RUBBISH
   (And the author is a US citizen living in the UK, she should know better).

   http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2015/04/01/on-the-trail-of-the-elusive-u-s-expat-taxpayer/

4. @ Barbara – interesting to hear about Amazon’s extra Kindle charge.
   And thanks for the reminder about NO PLACE TO HIDE. I have made a promise to myself (now in my smaller home) to not buy books, but the library has a few copies (with a bunch of folks ahead of me in requesting the book). And this is just the beginning of this “new and amazing” century……. YIKES, what our grandchildren will be facing, and getting caught in during their naive growing-up years………

5. Good one in HuffPo:
   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendy-n-powell/around-the-world-americas_b_6957176.html

6. My Letter to the Editor of Canada’s National Post just submitted in response to April 1 print version of:

   http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/scott-brison-harpers-disdain-for-the-charter/

   “Liberal Scott Brison is not correct when he says that “Conservatives have never liked the Charter”. I am a Tory who is helping to sue the Harper Government over its legislation that tosses away, because of demands of the United States, Charter rights of Canadian citizens who have a U.S. “taint”. However, our group is still trying to get a straight answer from Mr. Brison’s boss — whether Mr. Trudeau would actually repeal the FATCA IGA enabling legislation if he formed the next government? I think I know how his straight-shooting predecessor Jean Chretien would respond to the American bully and the loss of our Charter rights.

   Stephen Kish
   Chair,
   Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty”

7. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/04/repeal-lawsuit.html
   Prof Caron reposts WSJ article. Comments allowed.

   Wednesday, April 1, 2015
   ‘Repeal, Lawsuit Pose Challenge to FATCA’
   By Paul Caron

   re;
   FATCA Wall Street Journal editorial, Checking the IRS Overseas:

8. Brand new Democrat Survey for April 2015.
   https://action.dccc.org/page/s/april-2015-survey?&source=em_pet_2015.04.01_b1_NP_april-2015-survey_ND

   It includes a box for comments. Tell them about CBT/FATCA (Be prepared for a whack of solicitation emails back, but you can unsubscribe).

9. @ calgary411 RE CBC Radio News – Alison Brunette: “2015 Tax Season Difficult for Dual Citizens”

   While earlier I said “someone should write to this Mayor”, I decided to be decisive and act. Below is the letter that I emailed to QuebecAM , after which I copied the entire letter and sent it, with an introductory paragraph, to the Ville de Stanstead Site (via the “contact us” page) asking them to forward the message to the Mayor, Mr. Phillippe Dutil, who was interviewed on this show.

   I will report back to IBS if I get a reply from either CBC or the Mayor. And, hey, if you wanted to you too could write to the CBC and the Mayor. Indeed, anyone want to start a campaign to write to the Mayors of all the small towns along our long long long Canadian-US border where there, too, they might have 20-30% duals due to moms being sent to US hospitals?

   Subject: 2014 Tax Season Difficult for Dual Citizens
   Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:46:23 -0400
   To: QuebecAM@cbc.ca

   Good afternoon,
   While I live in Ontario, a link to the Susan Campbell show about FATCA and US duals in Stanstead was sent to me. It was good to hear this issue making the airwaves, something that should have happened last spring when the IGA (so deftly hidden by the ruling government in the 350 pg omnibus budget bill) was being debated (as briefly as they could manage, and only in Committee). Our government was told by various legal experts that this legislation was illegal, went against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as many other laws, and could be challenged on that basis. But it was slammed through.

   Yes, they protected the banks but in the meantime they aided and abetted a foreign government in locating, an gaining a significant array of personal and personal financial information from about 1 million Canadians who may or may not even know that this foreign government sees them as taxable citizens. Imagine if France suddenly changed their citizenship laws and declared that they wanted to know about all the Canadians who have French heritage? True, the US has had it’s laws about gaining citizenship if one was born in the US, but they certainly haven’t done much to advise these “Accidental Americans” around the world about this prior to their hunt for money. Our government threw out the ambassador of Eritrea when this country tried to impose it’s expat-tax on Eritreans living in Canada, saying this was a human rights abuse. But to the US, our government caved.

   So now the entire country of Canada is paying their banks/investment firms to set up the infrastructure so that these “foreign financial institutions” can be VOLUNTEER/UNPAID ARMS OF THE IRS, aiding and abetting the IRS in it’s hunt for all financial levels of “US Persons” (and their joint-account spouses or business partners or ailing mother-in-law), swooping up and gathering all sorts of information about these individuals (and anyone who shares a bank account with them); only later will this information be used to drag these individuals through tax-court in the US.

   It is not just the expense of the individual filing their now-expanded tax report (the reporting of any ownership of Canadian mutual funds is particularly complex and onerous and has severe penalties for failure to comply), but each of the major Canadian banks has spent a million dollars to simply set up this “hunt” required due to the threat of economic sanctions from the bully to the south. And our government caved in. If they had stood up and said NO, how many other countries would have felt empowered to do the same? So now Canada has 2nd class citizens – – those with US taint do not have the same rights of financial and personal privacy that every other Canadian has. How does the CBC feel about that? Perhaps you should speak with Dr. Allison Christian (professor of law at McGill) and expand your coverage or this plague.

   The people of Stanstead (and other smaller communities along the border, as well as US Persons all over this country), need to learn more about FATCA and it’s effect all over the world (at least there is only one bank here in Canada so far that has established the discriminatory policy of fully refusing any account – savings, checking, investing – to any person with US-Personhood, unlike other parts of the world where this practice has been rampant) These people also need to hear more about ADCS and their lawsuit against the Canadian Government for signing the IGA (which, again, has made 1 million Canadians into those “second-class citizens with inferior rights). Lawsuits cost a lot of money, expecially when the government sees itself as having unending pockets to fight their own citizens who want to claim their rights.

   Your commentator did a reasonable job of reporting on this issue, but there were some errors. FATCA is not about individuals submitting their tax returns (this has always been required tho now greatly extended and complex reporting has evolved over the last few years) but about banks now having the legal responsibility to “out” their US clients to a foreign government in their (the US’s) NSA-style information grab across all national borders using the threat of severe financial penalties if these other countries (or their banks) do not comply.

   Also, it was suggested that the $2,350 cost of expatriation was the “exit tax”; this is not accurate. Yes, the cost of expatriation at a consulate has just last September been raised 500% (previously $400), but this is to pay for the service of having your renuncciation go through the approval process at the State Department. An exit tax is what a US person may have to pay if they have more than 2 million dollars (US) in their calculation of assets as of the day prior to this renunciation (including the value of their home, other property, cottage, car, boat, farm machinery, jewelry, stocks, bonds, business, art plus the value of their non-CPP pension going forward to the estimated time of their death). There are two other “tests” (ways) related to whether or not the IRS will deem you as “worthy” of an “exit tax” and, consequently, continue their “involvement” with you beyond renunciation…….

   Below I am attaching several handouts that were circulated at a recent meeting here about FATCA and US tax and citizenship issues. There are links to lots of well-researched articles and websites on this topic, as well as a plea for support for ADCS in their attempt to regain the full Charter of Rights and Freedoms status ithroughout Canada. It would be helpful to all those Quebec communities that you service – – that have 20-30% dual citizens – – to make them more fully (and fully accurately) aware of this information and what they can do to challenge this personally damaging situation.

   Sincerely,

10. Thanks for reporting here the correspondence you sent to Mayor Phillippe Dutil and to the CBC regarding the CBC Quebec Broadcast, reporting errors to and giving links to articles and websites that will help US-defined US Persons in that area. Good work. Let us know if you hear back.

    Updated link to the broadcast: CBC Radio News – Alison Brunette: “2015 Tax Season Difficult for Dual Citizens”, which includes input from John Richardson.

11. http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/01/pf/taxes/irs-penalties/index.html?source=yahoo_hosted

    ‘You’ve never seen IRS penalties like these’
    “.Imagine owing up to $600,000 in penalties on, say, a $20,000 bank account simply because you didn’t report it to the IRS.

    It sounds unbelievable. …………”….

12. More from Max Reed today in the Financial Post.
    “How far-reaching is the IRS’ power to collect taxes from Canada?

    With a very misleading “correction” to his March 7 article at the end — I’d call it an “incorrection.”

    “Note: The March 7 instalment of this column, about FATCA, stated that “most U.S. citizens in Canada won’t owe U.S. tax.” To be clearer, those U.S. citizens in Canada who have no American source income will probably not owe any U.S. tax.”

13. Bloomberg (from Daily Tax Report), March 30, 2015: “Inconsistent Handling of New Accounts Under FATCA Pacts Raises Concern”

    from part of the report…

    March 27 — Competent authorities should step in to resolve potential disagreements between the U.S. and other jurisdictions on how to treat new accounts under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said.

    In a letter to the Treasury Department released March 27, SIFMA said the U.S. appears to require that under intergovernmental agreements, banks must refuse to open or close new accounts if they can’t get self-certifications from the account holders.

    Conversely, the group said, the governments of both the U.K. and Canada have taken the position under their IGAs that financial institutions can open these accounts and don’t have to close them as long as the accounts are treated as reportable.

14. @ Calgary 411 RE “Competent authorities should step in to resolve potential disagreements between the U.S. and other jurisdictions…”
    These are early little cracks in the understanding of what the rules are; it will be interesting to see if, slowly but surely, there are more and more cracks and who/what nations will eventually walk away from the “game” in disgust. Bullies don’t know how to play well with others……

15. @Calgary411

    don’t have to close them as long as the accounts are treated as reportable.

    Sounds like report all accounts they send one letter to but get no response. This includes reporting private financial information of lots of nonUS persons.

16. Can I post this latest Democrats Abroad link here? Nothing really new, but they just sent it out again.

    https://www.democratsabroad.org/group/fbarfatca/march-2015-update-report-february-2015-fatca-door-knock

    1. Tying account closures and new account refusals to FATCA

    We have refreshed our request for Americans abroad to send us redacted copies of bank communications –letters, emails or policy statements – that document a link between the bank’s rejection of US customers and their obligation to comply with FATCA. Bank documents – with personal details deleted – can be sent to FATCA@democratsabroad.org.
    We have a number of documents sent to us by Americans abroad who responded to our June/July 2014 FATCA Survey, in which we also made this request. But FATCA was fully implemented in July 2014 and we suspect that many banks changed their policy regarding American accounts in the months following.

    We urge Americans abroad to spread the word about our need for this information and we guarantee that full confidentiality will be preserved.”

    Could help if they get detailed feedback. Not least in letting them know that same-country exception is but a bandaid and senseless for the EU, for instance. Residency-based taxation is the only real answer, even more than getting rid of FATCA.

17. @JC
    That is how I understand it. The UK government is probably trying to ease the pressure on the banks (which make up a huge part of the UK economy). It does seem, though, that it is effectively drawing a line at what it will do in terms of cleaning up the data it provides. Less than four per cent of the population in England and Wales are in credit unions, so many people will be affected.

18. Saving US Social Security?

    April 4, 2015, Fox News: “Gov’t program would fly in Central American children to join parents in US”

    American children to join parents in US

    By Peter Doocy
    Published April 04, 2015

    Now, the federal government is intervening so these children won’t have to make that trek -– they’ll get to fly into the U.S. instead. For free.

    A new State Department and Department of Homeland Security program seeks to stop the surge of immigrant children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador at the southern border by giving their U.S.-based parents the option to apply to have their kids picked up and put on a plane, without paying a penny.

    The parents are eligible as long as they have some sort of legal status. As first reported in The Daily Caller, this would include permanent residents and even illegal immigrants given a work permit and deportation reprieve under President Obama’s recent executive actions, though much of that is on hold due to a pending court case. Of them, those with children under 21 and living in El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras reportedly could apply.

    “I think many Americans are going to be surprised to learn that illegal aliens here in the United States are getting the Obama administration to go and get their children and fetch them,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, told Fox News. “And all at our expense.”
    …
    But not everybody believes this program will be a drain for taxpayers.

    “I think it’s good for the tax base,” said Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha. “Every year, 13 billion dollars are put into the Social Security Trust Fund from undocumented immigrants. So if you have immigrants here who are working, who are doing the jobs that need to be done, that’s money going into our tax system. People will say that it’s free health care, that it’s free education. Nothing in this town is free.”

    Still, critics are concerned this new policy sets a dangerous precedent, ignoring the long line of people waiting to get into this country through more traditional immigration channels.

    “My gosh, what does the rule of law mean if you break the law to get here, and then you get the government to help bring the rest of your family?” Fitton asked.

19. FATCA: Five Years Later

    https://www.depositaccounts.com/blog/fatca-years.html

20. New “No-Rule” AreasGlobal Compliance News, April 5, 2015: “Announced by IRS – FATCA is Added to the International No-Rule List”

    …Traditionally, the issues on which the IRS refrains from issuing letter rulings or determination letters tend to be inherently factual. In the domestic area, there are a number of modifications but no major additions to the no-rule list; in the international arena, however, the list was expanded to include Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”) issues.

    International No-Rule Areas

    In the international no-rule area, the IRS will “not ordinarily” rule on FATCA issues unless the taxpayer can establish “unique and compelling” reasons. This addition to the list is the only change made to the no-rule list of international issues.
    …

21. @Calgary
    What the hell does that mean? I read it through and it was chinese to me. “Not ordinarily rule”? What does that say?

22. Larry Summers published a commentary in the FT called “Time US leadership woke up to new economic era” which addresses the creation of the AIIB. It begins with:

    “This past month may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. True, there have been any number of periods of frustration for the US before, and times when American behaviour was hardly multilateralist, such as the 1971 Nixon shock, ending the convertibility of the dollar into gold. But I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China’s effort to establish a major new institution and the failure of the US to persuade dozens of its traditional allies, starting with Britain, to stay out of it. ”

    This excerpt covers the US’s fining overseas banks for US dollar transactions with (US) sanctioned countries, the failure to clean up the tax havens in the US, Fatca and, for example, trade disputes with Canada:

    “Other countries are legitimately frustrated when US officials ask them to adjust their policies — then insist that American state regulators, independent agencies and far-reaching judicial actions are beyond their control. This is especially true when many foreign businesses assert that US actions raise real rule of law problems.

    The legitimacy of US leadership depends on our resisting the temptation to abuse it in pursuit of parochial interest, even when that interest appears compelling. We cannot expect to maintain the dollar’s primary role in the international system if we are too aggressive about limiting its use in pursuit of particular security objectives. “

23. Here’s Bloomberg’s take on the Larry Summers commentary in the FT and the full commentary at Summers’ website:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-06/larry-summers-the-past-month-may-go-down-as-a-turning-point-for-u-s-economic-power

    http://larrysummers.com/2015/04/05/time-us-leadership-woke-up-to-new-economic-era/

24. Canada is in the same boat as US when it comes to legal issues:

    http://bazonline.ch/wissen/medizin-und-psychologie/Das-Unispital-fuerchtet-sich-vor-Amerikanern/story/25955864

    “Aus Angst vor teuren Haftpflichtklagen behandelt das Zürcher Unispital keine Patienten aus den USA und Kanada.”

    “US-amerikanische Staatsbürger haben es heute nicht nur als Kunden bei Schweizer Banken schwer. Auch als Patienten sind sie nicht unbedingt gerne gesehen, so sehr fürchtet man sich hierzulande vor dem amerikanischen Rechtssystem. Am Universitätsspital Zürich (USZ) werden aus diesem Grund US- oder kanadische Staatsangehörige ohne Wohnsitz in der Schweiz nicht behandelt, wenn es sich nicht um einen Notfall handelt. Die Spitalleitung wollte diese Restriktion zwar aufheben, ist damit nun aber am Einspruch des Kantons gescheitert.”

    Note to Democrats Abroad: A nice illustration for those of you proposing Same Country Exception. Here’s one where it’s in operation!

25. Polly, I think it says these will not be issued (relating to FATCA): http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Exempt-Bonds/TEB-Private-Letter-Ruling:-Some-Basic-Concepts, unless the taxpayer can establish “unique and compelling” reasons.

    Anyone else?

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