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. Hot off the press- Neue Zürcher Zeitung says that Switzerland and China have signed an agreement to ease trade with Renminbi in Switzerland.

2. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/07/20/child-sex-trafficking-banking-and-the-new-world-order/

   I thought the long but interesting article above did not relate to FATCA until I read this:

   “They” are telling you the Middle East situation is about oil… to some degree it is. To a larger degree, however, it is about making central banks around the world compatible with Rothschild central banks, especially in the Middle East. It’s what the Arab Spring which began in 2010 is all about; it’s what none of them had and the Rothschilds want them to have: A central bank with firm ties to the IMF that can get each nation so deeply in debt that it will never be able to get out and, since debt equals slavery, residents of the Middle East will be servants to the central banking system. Some of them already are. But the central bank and debt concepts have a more difficult time in the Middle East than they had in America because Islam does not believe in usury and compound interest-based borrowing.

   I think ultimately the goal of FATCA (a vital step) is to bring every FFI in the world under the control of a centralized entity. Currently that appears to be the IRS but when FATCA becomes GATCA then the “They” will have the whole world in their bloody hands, thanks in part, to that big fat FATCA FFI registration database. Then comes the financial monitoring of every individual on earth (USPs are just the beginning) which will make everyone a debt target and therefore a debt slave and fodder for the NWO. As many of us have said and I will say it again, FATCA is all about control.

3. Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd would like to interview people for a column about the effects of US tax policy/FATCA on Canadians.

   Mr. Todd made contact with PatCanadian, due to Pat having contacted the Vancouver Sun regarding their coverage of this issue. He is doing research for a column from the viewpoint of Canadian citizens who are affected by this and he asked if Pat could help him locate others, across Canada and especially in BC, who would be willing to speak with him.

   If you’d like to contact Mr. Todd, his e-mail address is dtodd@vancouversun.com
   You can see some of his recent columns at this link http://blogs.vancouversun.com/author/douglastodd2/

4. No myths here, but plenty of stacks:
   http://www.c-span.org/video/?320557-1/hearing-us-tax-code

5. @notthattara
   Oh that was great! Somebody up there actually gets what we have been saying till our lips bleed- that extraterritorial taxation is bad for the country. I was fascinated by the news that Japan and England have also changed their tax laws. And all the talk about corporations “expatriating” (inversions) is just such a blatant parallel to people doing the same. I feel this gives hope for tax reform- and it should be quick judging by the emergency situation at hand. Hopefully the negative principle of CBT will be seen as a whole.

6. Metro Vancouver Woman Joins Movement to Drop US Citizenship, Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun.

   Thanks for spreading the word, PatCanadian!

7. That was fast. Good work, PatCanadian. Thanks for stepping forward and being interviewed for Douglas Todd’s story.

   You can comment to the article through Facebook at this link: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Metro+Vancouver+woman+joins+movement+drop+citizenship/10056687/story.html

8. A really great article, one of the best I’ve seen up to now. The photo of a woman holding the Canadian flag while hiding in the shadows with reference to “joining the movement to drop US citizenship” really sums up the situation.

   It was also great that article mentioned IBS, MS and ADSC. That needs to happen more often.

   Nice job Pat and kudos to the journalist who wrote it.

9. From Douglas Todd’s article: “Instead of each year hiring an accountant to fill out confusing U.S. tax forms simply to declare she has no investments or income south of the border, Pat has quietly sent off a request by mail to “relinquish” her American citizenship.”

   It’s not income and investments south of border that Canadians are mostly terrified of reporting. He seems to have missed how US tax compliance is potentially bankrupting to many who’ve committed the crime of saving for their old age in Canada.

10. @BubbleBustin
    I agree with you.
    I was panicking when I first heard of FATCA. I am a retired widow and all my saved money was Canadian earned by my late husband and myself. I had left the USA in the 60s and became a Canadian citizen . Fortunately I became a Canadian before 1995 which enabled me to go last year to the US Counsel and request my relinqishment. They tried to get me to renounce but by being on this blog I learned I just had to relinquish. I got my CLN sent to me this year. I hope this woman will be able to get her relinqishment and CLN.
    I hope we will see more excellent articles like this and more brave people like this lady.

11. @northernstar

    I sent him an email about that. I never got a response from my first. Maybe I will now.

12. What’s this “request by mail” to relinquish US citizenship that Pat sent in, and to whom did she send it?

13. You can’t do it anymore. At one time, you could apply by mail — at least as recently as the mid-1970s, but I don’t know when that procedure was changed.

    However, today in order to get a CLN, the person has to attend at a consulate and sign the required forms in the presence of a consulate officer, and the consulate has to send the documentation to DC. Dept of State, 7 FAM 1224, 7 FAM 1227(d).

    If you send a request by mail to DC (I know someone who did), they send it back instructing you to go your consulate, so it just wastes time.

    That and something else jumped out at me, so I sent the author an e-mail with some info on these. Overall, though, pretty pleased with this article.

14. I am sure (based on mistakes in news articles I had been interviewed for regarding my family / my son), that it was a communication problem — in that Douglas Todd did not understand the process and exactly what was being relayed to him. The person who has been interviewed does not get to see what will be in print about them (although I now try to make sure they get my son’s story absolutely correct). There will be some readers who, after reading the article, will erroneously be sure they can just send their relinquishment papers in somewhere (and I think we’ve discussed that from time to time at Brock). Pacifica has all of the procedure set out in the Consulate Report Directory here: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/consulate2/, another reason for researching right here.

    Here is PatCanadian’s explanation of what happened to her claim to relinquishment at the Vancouver U.S. Consulate: http://maplesandbox.ca/2012/renunciation-and-relinquishment-what-are-the-differences-is-there-a-difference/comment-page-23/#comment-50530

    I’ve been in shock for the past few days and slowly recovering. I received a phone call from Matthew Bunt, Chief of American Citizen Services Unit at the US Consulate in Vancouver. He told me that he was denying my relinquishment and it could be sent to Washington that way or I could come in and renounce. He said that this was because I used my US passport for travel between the US and Canada after obtaining Canadian Citizenship. We had discussed this at my interview. I had told him that I was simply trying to comply with the law as I understood it. I seriously considered renouncing but decided against this for the time being. I called him back with some questions prepared.

    Someone else answered his phone and advised me that Mr. Bunt had “moved on”. I obtained this person’s name for my records. This individual was a temporary replacement for Mr. Bunt. He told me there would be a permanent replacement in September.

    I asked my questions of the temporary replacement, who had already looked over my file. I told him that I knew of individuals who had used a US passport after obtaining Canadian citizenship with successful relinquishments. The key issue is the intent in using the passport.

    He told me that my relinquishment determination is made in Washington by the State Department. I told him to go ahead and send in the papers.

    I don’t like the idea of a renunciation but if the relinquishment is not approved, I certainly will go ahead with it. They told me 3-6 months. I feel terrorized at this point. Watch out for the Vancouver US Consulate.

    It could be clarified by comment to the article. You can comment to the article through Facebook at this link: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Metro+Vancouver+woman+joins+movement+drop+citizenship/10056687/story.html

15. Thanks, Pacifica, for your more clear answer and for sending information on to Mr. Todd. It is hard to hear this whole story and get all the facts absolutely correct.

16. @ Calgary,

    I suspected that too, misunderstanding regarding how this particular application was sent to DC — and also had, as you did, a concern that someone reading it, though, would think they could just mail a request. The CLN process takes much too long already, so don’t like people to lose time by starting down a false trail.

17. @JoeBlow,

    I think PatCanadian did a great job, but NOT the writer. He did not seem to get that USA is the only country that taxes based on citizenship – citizenship that is FORCED on someone whether they wanted it or not, or knew they had it or not. This is evident in his statement: “Instead of each year hiring an accountant to fill out confusing U.S. tax forms simply to declare she has no investments or income south of the border, Pat has quietly sent off a request by mail to “relinquish” her American citizenship.”

    We all know that USA does not care if we earn no money south of the border. It is the money NORTH OF THE BORDER that it thinks it has a right to. This point was NOT in anyway made clear in this article.

18. @pacifica777, yes you are all right in that the writer appears misinformed by the “mail in.”

    But having said that it may in theory be possible to pound a square peg into a round hole.

    Lets assume we have someone with a clear relinquishment who was born in the USA and has had no connections to the US since date of relinquishment.

    They apply for a passport outside the US and explicitly state on the application that they committed a relinquishing act with the intent of losing US nationality.

    On the application they either cross out or add a statement to negate the line that you swear you are a US Citizen.

    So the form gets mailed in with photo and money order….

    What will the consulate do?

    The manual says send out the questionaire…..

    So you get that and mail it back, again making it very clear you relinquished your US nationality.

    What will the consulate do next?

    If forces them to do something.

    I doubt they will still go ahead and issue a passport. to someone who says they are not a national.

    I am guessing some sort of denial letter will be issued.

    Could that denial letter for a passport be useful to someone post-FATCA? I would think yes.

19. With all due respect to Mr Todd, his article creates more confusion for the uninformed, perhaps because he himself’s confused. I suspect he’ll be getting his facts straight soon 🙂

20. @Bubblebustin, I am shaking my head wondering how he could have missed such a basic point. The whole nuance of the article is changed, and meaningless without that understanding. No one who reads it will care because they will think it is only affects Americans with US ties, not Canadians who may have no US ties.

21. I am so grateful to PatCanadian and EVERYONE who has been brave enough to do these interviews. I know there are errors in how the Van Sun reporter presented some things but overall it was a good piece. I hope that anyone who is interviewed in the future will make it a condition that ADCS, Brock and Sandbox must get a mention as this article did. That way anyone who gets a big whopping OMG moment from reading any future article can go to where more accurate and detailed information is available PLUS a great deal of empathy.

22. @EmBee

    Yes, kudos to our many front line soldiers. I like your suggestion that they endorse Brock and Sandbox, which has the added benefit for new readers to read some of our corrections to the coverage that brought them here!

23. @bubble and whitekat

    Re. Vancouver Sun article

    Granted the author may have gotten a few technical details wrong and covered the story from the POV of only some of the people being affected by CBT and FATCA. But the overall tone of the article was very good — Americans abroad are getting royally screwed and there is a growing “movement to drop US citizenship.”

    I also like the fact that the author mentioned the discrepancies among US agencies regarding the actual number of people dropping US citizenship.

    But most important, the author mentioned IBS, MS and ADSC-ADCS.

    So from my POV, it was an excellent article.

24. @JoeBlow,

    CBT is the crux of all the problems we are having. And the other problem is that we are viewed as ‘Americans abroad’ by our fellow Canadians.

    Canadians generally speaking, do not give a $H!t about Americans abroad having problems with the IRS on their income south of the border, or even north of the border for that matter, if we are perceived as Americans. It is imperative that any articles on this issue make clear that the problem is that, first, Canadians (not Americans) are being treated as US taxpayers, and second, that Canadians are being treated as US taxpayers on their Canadian (not American) income.

    There was no way that a Canadian, unfamiliar with CBT, would be able to glean this from reading that article. YOU already understand CBT, so maybe from your perspective you can gloss over the errors, and see the good points which were there, BUT what is the point of the article if it fails to educate those who know nothing of CBT, and cannot read between the lines?

25. @all, just to make this point clear, neither I nor bubble were criticizing PatCanadian. I commend her on her participation and volunteer efforts to speak with Mr. Todd. It is not her fault he did not pick up on CBT.

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