Media and Blog Articles – Part 1 of 11 (to 26 May 2015)
You can access all years at this link:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/media-and-blog-articles-links-for-all-years/
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. You could mention such articles in the comment stream for this page, or if I see one on another thread, I can copy the link to here. I’ll keep adding to the list, but not deleting, so we’ll end up having sort of a “bibliography” too. [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.
Note also: JC suggests 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.
2015.05.26
New Survey finds US expat voting could impact 2016 Presidential Election, Greenback Expat Tax Services, NASDAQ GlobeNewswire.
This congressional committee wants to hear all your FOIA gripes, Colby Itkowitz, Washington Post, US.
The black money recovery skills of IT department are nothing to write home about, Vivek Kaul, The Daily Reckoning.
2015.05.25
The Intersection of US Federal Tax Law with Collection of International Information- – Including Other Federal Agencies, Patrick W. Martin, TaxExpatriaation, US.
2015.05.23
America the not so brave: America has led the global assault on tax dodgers and their enablers. But the reality still lags behind the rhetoric, The Economist, UK.
Cash Banned from Chase Safe Deposit Boxes, Matt Chilliak, Live and Invest News.
2015.05.22
US Steuergesetz hat unerwartete globale Konsequenzen, Colleen Graffy, Geopolitical Information Service. Also at Consequences of US widening net to catch tax dodgers, Colleen Graffy, World Review.
The horse may have bolted … but, Angelo Venardos, Asia Asset Management.
Important Correction: Passports Required to Enter and Leave US — but SSNs May be Optional, Patrick W. Martin, Tax Expatriation, US.
2015.05.21
Americans working abroad face unexpected financial issues, Sarah O’Brien, NBC, US.
Senate tax reform groups get more time, Bernie Becker, The Hill, US.
2015.05.20
Malaysia will defer FATCA reporting, FSI Tax Posts.
America’s Self-Inflicted Wound, Moises Naim, The Atlantic, US.
Janice Mays: The Tax Guru Who Guides House Democrats, Alex Brown, National Journal, US.
Sen. Rand Paul Launches Filibuster in Protest of Patriot Act Renewal, C-SPAN, US.
Is Nathan Merrill related to Tommy Hunter? He has resurrected a 3 month old article by Mea Mark, “Republicans flirting with tax evasion”.
Three of his latest comments to me (for which I won’t reply as I am done with him there):
” The state department posts how many people renounced their citizenship; it went up from 300 per year to 3000 per year. You want it to be true that there is a vast exodus of Americans because you want to be part of some great movement, just like everyone else does.”
http://freakoutnation.com/2014/01/21/republicans-flirting-with-tax-evasion/#comment-1339438724
NM also says (regarding the FATCA data which he seems to think is something we already collect here in Canada):
“The Canadian government does indeed collect data on transactions in Canada, and indeed has the same limit as the US does. It has all sorts of bank reporting requirements. I’m not really sure where you got the idea that it didn’t.
As for the rest of it, FACTA only cares about American citizens. If you aren’t an American citizen, it does not apply to you. If you don’t want to be an American citizen, then you should renounce your citizenship. It isn’t a free ride like you’ve been treating it; citizens have freedoms but also responsibilities to their countries. T hat’s re ality.
If you are the citizen of a country, you are, in fact, subject to its laws regardless of where you go according to said country – if you go murder someone in the US, Canada can charge you with murder.
You say you’re a Canadian, but you had American citizenship. If you don’t believe that you’re an American, then you should have renounced your citizenship regardless. You are upset because being an American citizen cost you something, but that’s the cost of being the citizen of a country – you have to deal with said country. If you don’t like it, you’ re free to renounce your citizenship.”
http://freakoutnation.com/2014/01/21/republicans-flirting-with-tax-evasion/#comment-1339578136
NM also does not see FATCA as violating section 15 of our Charter. He says:
“Wrong. First off, it is not discrimination based on your country of origin but on the basis of your citizenship, which is very much allowed under Canadian law; you can indeed “discriminate against’ non-citizens in the sense that there are laws which are applicable to non-citizens only (such as, say, immigration and residency laws). This is a very important difference and very trivial to understand, because otherwise you couldn’t control immigration into your country. You can, though, and you do.
Second off, you could argue that the banks’ choice not to do business with you is discrimination on the basis of national origin (though they could easily win this by pointing out it is an issue of citizenship, which is, as I noted above, something which the law can indeed legally reflect upon), but it is very hard to argue that FACTA is such discrimination for a large number of reasons; first off, it isn’t a Canadian law; secondly, it is not discrimination by definition (discrimination is about the prejudicial treatment of people based upon some trait people don’t like); thirdly, almost all countries require that their citizens behave in accordance with their own countries’ laws when overseas and most other countries don’t complain about this because they expect the same out of their own citizens when they go abroad.
So yeah. It doesn’t fit under article 15 because the requirement has to do with citizenship. ”
http://freakoutnation.com/2014/01/21/republicans-flirting-with-tax-evasion/#comment-1339490677
@Osgood, “It infuriates me that they continue to claim that non-US spouse data will not be reported. It is a false statement. ”
It should infuriate everyone that a Citizen of New Zealand in possession of a CLN can still have his/her private financial information handed over to a foreign power solely because of a US Place of Birth, but totally disregarding the CLN!!!
Read through all these IGA agreements and you suddenly realize that the banks have the discretion to decide they do not want to cure US Indica and instead report.
A new article by James Jatras about the coming FATCA train wreck which will occur the moment the US starts to execute 30% withholdings on payments to non-FATCA compliant banks.
Forbes: Is America About To Stumble Into A Credit Default?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/04/14/is-america-about-to-stumble-into-a-credit-default/
“In less than three months the Department of the Treasury will start trimming payments on portions of the $17.3 trillion-plus national debt, with unpredictable – and unstudied – consequences. Acting in violation of legal commitments to purchasers, the Department will chop 30% from interest payments due some foreign holders of hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars’ worth of Treasury securities. Possible results of this consciously inflicted partial federal default could include mass dumping of bonds by jittery holders, a rise in the rate the government pays for debt service, and undermining the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. The impact on the U.S. and global economy is, literally, incalculable.”
It ain’t over until the FATCA lady sings. The open threat of 30% sanctions (which is what they are) will be a mighty expensive song for many would be foreign investors. Common sense dictates that a significant number of private foreign investors will soon be moving away from US dollar investments. The moment the US starts to enforce FATCA sanctions will be the tipping point.
Russia has just dropped another bombshell, announcing not only the de-coupling of its trade from the dollar, but also that its hydrocarbon trade will in the future be carried out in rubles and local currencies of its trading partners – no longer in dollars – see Voice of Russia
http://www.sott.net/article/277104-Russia-and-China-announce-decoupling-trade-from-Dollar-The-End-for-the-USA-is-nigh
I was able to bring up Nathan Merrill’s blog posts on subjects other than FATCA. He quite clearly is an ASSHOLE. Here is just a small selection of his opinion’s on subjects other than FATCA.
Incidentally, as far as further LEGAL remedies go, I am VERY skeptical. We already have some protections in place for women, and they act as a significant deterrent, I think.
It should also be remembered what the Americans with Disabilities Act did – the purpose of the bill was to force employers to accommodate employees with disabilities. The RESULT was that employers just stopped hiring disabled people – people with disabilities are vastly more likely to be unemployed today than they were prior to the advent of the act. You never, ever want to do that when you’re trying to help someone.
And more:
And quite frankly, as far as uneducated people goes: I’ll be real honest here. I think that in the long term, uneducated people are mostly going to be screwed. There’s really no way around it. Every year, mechanization becomes more and more attractive, which means every year, automation becomes more and more prevalent. I go to the grocery store and I check myself out of it, with one guy watching 8 checkout stations. And people love it; almost everyone avoids the actual manned cash registers, and late at night, the lone person at the only register they keep open has no work at all most of the time when I go there; the people who are there that late all check out their Doritos and soda themselves.
Well, first off, talking about “strong female leads” is kind of misleading; there are plenty of STRONG women in movies, but not very many strong WOMEN.
Or to put it another way, they aren’t very strong characters, and aren’t really a sign of female empowerment. Something like My Little Pony is, ironically, a much better form of female empowerment.
I think that in the long term the changes are more or less inevitable, and the less people whine about the destruction of femininity and masculinity the faster it will tend to happen, but I can’t really say that for sure.
Not everyone was raised in a sexist environment; just more people
Nathan Merrill is a jerk with a capital J
Here is some of more of the wisdom of Nathan “the jerk” Merrill:
https://www.facebook.com/nathan.t.merrill
The worst thing about the whole rape movement is their hatred and lack of understanding of the justice system.
Here’s reality:
In the US, you are considered innocent until proven guilty.
This means that until you prove that someone committed a crime, that person is innocent, not guilty.
Skepticism about rape claims is incredibly necessary to have at all stages of the process, not because “oh god people lie all the time about rape” (though, it is worth noting that estimates vary wildly on how many false claims of rape occur, and even 8% is quite significant – for most crimes, the false rate is only 2%) but also because not everyone accused of committing rape actually did it (unfounded is not the same as “not guilty”; indeed, RAINN loves to whine about how most people who are reported for rape are not prosecuted or are found innocent, which probably means some fairly large percentage of those are, indeed, false reports, but not on the face of it unfounded) and because, even when people ARE raped, they still not infrequently misidentify their attackers (as proven by many people who have been exonerated by DNA analysis). Every individual case is unique, and needs to be treated as a unique instance.
Instead, you see horrible people crying out, saying “You cannot doubt their experience, because rape is a big deal!” This is an absolutely awful attitude to have. Every single case has to be individually tried. That means every time, you have to allow for the fact that this person may well be lying, may well be wrong about who their attacker is, or may not have evidence that they were raped.
And you know what? It is a good thing that being accused of rape doesn’t mean you automatically are considered guilty of it.
You should always keep a healthy level of skepticism about any claims made anywhere. People can and do lie, and the idea that it is bad “for the movement” means that you’re really saying that most rape reports are lies; otherwise, why would you be so worried about people lying about rape?
No, the reality is you simply have to accept things as they are, and understand that people are innocent until proven guilty. A lot of people do rape, and a lot of people get raped, and a lot of people will never be prosecuted for it. But it is vastly better than the alternative.
FATCA Picking Up Momentum And US Gives Foreign Banks More Time to Register
http://taxconnections.com/taxblog/?p=23071#.U1G3fCe9KSM
FAT(CA) – No One Is Getting “FAT” Except The IRS
http://taxconnections.com/taxblog/?p=23082#.U1G5hCe9KSM
More on this “Russian” subject:
More Russia Behind the Headlines: Russia’s rise threatens America’s grip on global power
Ne Exeat Republica — The Next IRS Tactic vs. Expats and Accidental Americans?
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/35219/Wendy-McElroy-The-Next-IRS-Tactic-vs-Expats-and-Accidental-Americans/
@ X
That’s a disconcerting article to say the least. Excellent commentary down below. How many expats will naively wander into the Venus Flytrap the USA is about to become and then find themselves stuck in their dear old homeland, without a passport and unable to make their escape? I’d like to see this article as a separate post because it is vital for all those who enter The Land of the “FREE” to know what can happen now and will certainly happen more frequently in the future.
A new, well written blog post in New Zealand. This blogger has actually taken the trouble to do some real research into FATCA and the NZ government response.
https://ellipsister.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/fatca-nzs-insidious-future/
They are coming thick and fast in NZ: this one from the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties
http://nzccl.org.nz/content/guest-article-fatca-threat-nzers-civil-liberties
Thought provoking comment below the Daily Bell article on “Ne Exeat Republica” —
“Traditionally in political philosophy “government” has been defined as that entity that claims a monopoly on the use of force in a given geographic area. The US government puts a peculiar twist on this by claiming what amounts to an ownership right in all person connected in particular ways with a geographic area. With ownership being the right to determine the disposition of the property in question, and the US government claiming a right to determine the disposition of all persons connected to this geographic area in particular ways, the US government is standing out as by definition a slave state.”
“With that in mind, there are certainly parallels to the treatment of fugitive slaves in the US and this set of rules and regulations that the US government claims applies to expats and accidental “citizens.” Clearly the US cannot honestly be called the land of the free with a straight face.”
Thank you for the link, X.
Pair this with previous, http://mises.org/daily/5666, to realize the obscenity that might be in the next version of an Ex-Patriot Act.
How soon will it be before a wrestling champ becomes a victim of FATCA? HEADLINE: Obama’s imperial FATCA aggression tag-teams with Harper’s stealth FATCA concession to slam Wrestler X and hundreds of thousands of other Canadians to the mat.
Or will it be a famous hockey player? HEADLINE: Obama’s imperial FATCA aggression skates with Harper’s stealth FATCA concession to send Hockey Player X and hundreds of thousands of other Canadians to the tax penalty box.
Or what about a gold medal olympian? HEADLINE: Obama’s imperial FATCA aggression links with Harper’s stealth FATCA concession to send Olympian X”s and hundreds of thousands of other Canadian’s gold to the US treasury.
Do we have any cribbage masters? Is it possible to be a cribbage master? HEADLINE: Obama’s imperial FATCA aggression pegs with Harper’s stealth FATCA concession to skunk Cribbage Player X and hundreds of thousands of other Canadians.
Okay, I’ll stop now … you get the drift.
US Tax Law Could Snare Unsuspecting Canadians. Bill Mah, Edmonton Journal.
This article makes reference to the Edmonton Info Session, the Isaac Brock Society, and quotes Gwen in it.
I have commented on the article. Here’s another article that may explain why all this is happening. But again, we already know this:
http://www.internationalman.com/articles/when-in-rome
@ Em –
Lots of hockey, baseball & basketball duals out there, also actors, musicians, journalists.
While no cribbage-masters, we DO have a famous Chess Grandmaster dual (born in San Francisco, lives in Vancouver)……
I posted this here: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/04/21/report-on-alberta-information-session-edmonton/
@ LM
Okay … for that chess master in Vancouver. HEADLINE:
Obama’s imperial FATCA aggression mates with Harper’s stealth FATCA concession to capture Chess Master X and hundreds of thousands of other Canadians in a US tax endgame.
Re this article:
Earlier today there were 11 comments to this article. Now there are 4, but the 11 that were there this morning are not there. ???
@pacifica – I can still see them…there are now 12 since I just added another one. Did you click the “see more” button at the bottom? Maybe the browser is acting up?
They were in two different newspapers, the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald.
14 comments at http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/could+ensnare+unsuspecting+Canadians/9757598/story.html (Edmonton Journal)
1 at http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/could+ensnare+unsuspecting+Canadians/9757598/story.html (Calgary Herald that picked up the Edmonton Journal one)