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Tag Archives: FATCA

In a time of crisis, Ukraine’s bankers focus on what REALLY matters

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A stop to the violence and hatred? A stable coalition government? A resolution to the crisis in Crimea? Nah, none of that stuff really matters compared to the business of privatising the profits and socialising the costs. And with Ukraine’s U.S. “allies” pushing FATCA down their throats, the banks have some big costs they need to foist on the Ukrainian taxpayer, to make sure the banks don’t have to pay all of it themselves.

So Ukraine’s banks have taken a cue from Carl Levin’s strategy of sneaking FATCA itself through as a midnight amendment to a bill that was too long for anyone to read — they only conduct their anti-democratic IGA advocacy when no one is looking. And what better time than when the rest of the public is busy paying attention to some minor political kerfluffle like the fate of their country?

НАБУ обеспокоена отсутствием реальной имплементации Закона FATCA в Украине

NABU concerned about lack of real implementation of FATCA law in Ukraine
http://news.kompass.ua/news/2014-03-07-34186
Независимая ассоциация банков Украины (НАБУ) обеспокоена отсутствием официальной информации о подготовке проекта Соглашения между правительством Украины и правительством Соединенных Штатов Америки относительно имплементации Закона «О налоговых требованиях к иностранным счетам» (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, FATCA). Об этом Ассоциация сообщила в своем письме в адрес премьер-министра Украины Арсения Яценюка. The Independent Association of Ukrainian Banks (NABU) is concerned by the lack of official information on the preparation of the draft Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of the United States of America concerning the implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the association stated in its letter to Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

 

“We must save our country immediately so we can surrender it to the IRS in one piece!”

Google Translate handles the article surprisingly well, so I’ll let you read the rest there. Apparently the greed and chutzpah of bankers is a universal language.

A Letter from John Weston Regarding the IGA – We Need to Educate the MP’s

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A Brocker recently received this letter from her MP with regard to the IGA.

Dear xoxo

I shared your concerns about the U.S. Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act
(FATCA). I am thrilled to report that on February 5, 2014, Canada and the
United States signed an inter-governmental agreement under the longstanding
Canada-U.S. Tax Convention. This agreement brings a series of lengthy
negotiations to a conclusion which, I believe, will be of great benefit to
dual citizens and Americans living in Canada.

Continue reading →

@NPR gets the #FATCA impact story right. Why Overseas Americans are giving up U.S. Citizenship

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Why More Americans Are Renouncing U.S. Citizenship

They all generally agree on the facts of the situation. Even so, there is very little pressure to change it. As one Senate staffer pointed out, nobody in Congress represents overseas Americans. And government officials think this law is succeeding at catching the tax cheats.

That may be worth the side effect of losing a few thousand American citizens every year.

Via Ari Shapiro, International Correspondent, London

Revealing and informative post about America today from @Mopsicktaxlaw – Confirms one world #FATCA

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I am a fan of Mr. Mospick and his blog. Mr. Mopsick has done much to reveal the injustice of citizenship-based taxation. He has publicly stated his opposition to “citizenship-based taxation”. For this he deserves credit. His latest post, although ostensibly about FATCA, reveals much more. He confirms the erosion of privacy and the “one world” agenda of FATCA.

Continue reading →

FATCA and China: still no news, just opinions, fantasies, and bad analogies

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Seeing as it’s been nearly eight months since I last wrote about this topic, I figured there’d be something new to say. But there really isn’t. The “best effort” negotiations conducted “as early as practicable” last summer with the aim of reaching a FATCA IGA “in advance of the January 2014 deadline in the legislation” have clearly produced no results, as law firm Dezan Shira’s China Briefing noted last week. Interestingly, mainland financial magazine Caijing reported on Dezan Shira’s article just yesterday — but only in English, not in Chinese. Other Compliance-Industrial Complex members are less honest about the lack of FATCA progress in China, and have taken to calling a pedestrian set of updated Chinese asset self-declaration regulations by the misleading name of “China FATCA” in an effort to generate hype.

The biggest genuine FATCA news I have to report is that finally, for the first time in nearly a year, a Hong Kong newspaper decided to let someone besides Patrick Yip at Deloitte and Jennifer Wong at KPMG say something about FATCA. Du Jinsong — apparently an MD in equity derivatives trading at Bank of China (International) Hong Kong — wrote a short opinion column in Wen Wei Po, one of Hong Kong’s “traditional left” pro-Beijing newspapers, telling us something we already know: Hong Kong’s finance industry would really like a FATCA IGA. What’s interesting about this column is the way in which he says it: he presents FATCA as a grand opportunity for Hong Kong to gain valuable “experience” with automatic information exchange and to help China to expand the previously-mentioned pedestrian set of updated asset self-declaration regulations into genuine control of the international financial system.

Continue reading →

IRS Would Like Citizens to Spy on Retailers Too

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Interesting article in Bloomberg Businessweek detailing a program in Brazil that encouraged customers to essentially become arms of their governments tax authority.

This is how it works:

In the State of Sao Paulo in Brazil, customers who ask for a receipt can give their social security number to the cashier. Businesses have to submit their copy of those receipts—with or without social security numbers—to the tax authority. The authority creates an account for every social security number entered into the system and reports to customers which receipts have been entered with their social security number and how much they are for. Customers receive a rebate worth about 30 percent of their share of sales taxes paid through the business each month, and for every $50 of receipts they are entered into a lottery with a maximum payout of $500,000. They can complain online if they think receipts are missing or have the wrong price.

The IRS noted that “Overall, compliance is highest where there is third-party information reporting and/or withholding. …”

Not that anyone should be surprised by the existence of such a program, or the IRS’s admiration of coercing third parties to do some of their legwork. This is par for the course in the bankrupt era in which we find ourselves. People are no longer citizens but chattel who serve only two purposes – maintaining the status quo through blind, single-issue and/or reactionary voting and forking over the meager fruits of our labor into the money-pits that used to be our governments.
Don’t look for things to get less Orwellian any time soon. We have jumped the shark.

A Plea for Submission against #FATCA IGA Enabling Legislation in New Zealand.

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February 3, 2014 UPDATE: Urgent:


Public submissions can be made from anywhere in the world. All that is required is a name, email address and phone number. But you will have to be quick as the link will be closed at midnight on Wed 5th Feb New Zealand time.  (That is actually 3 AM the morning of Feb 5th on the West Coast of America.)

I hope you will find time to express your opinion to them. It is very much appreciated. The link is here:

http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/sc/make-submission/50SCFE_SCF_00DBHOH_BILL12926_1/taxation-annual-rates-employee-allowances-and-remedial (scroll down to “make an online submission”)

Plainly put, FATCA is more Stealth in New Zealand than in America.

Osgood has provided us good informational analysis of the pending Legislation for New Zealand to capitulate without a fight to the FATCA IGA.

This inspired a good article at The New American but nothing in New Zealand media.  The last article I have seen is this at Interest.co.nz from November.

The Ministery of Revenue has NO IDEA OF THE COST of what they are doing, or HOW MANY U.S. PERSONs  in New Zealand!  Nor, do they or the Ministry of  Justice seem to care.  All they care about is finding a way legislatively to comply. Banks want their bailout, and the government is determined to give it to them, it would seem. Let ALL Kiwi bank customers pay the cost.

Osgood has recently sent an email plea for submissions from over seas, as when it comes to media coverage in New Zealand, FATCA is operating like a Secret CIA covert operation that the citizenry is unaware of.

See below for his request for help.   Submissions are easy to do! They are due by February 4th, USA time.  Continue reading →

Could it be? Another #FATCA delay? Perhaps FATCA is nothing but a myth!

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Interesting “hot off  the press” post from Virginia La Torre Jeker, coming on the heels of this Eileen O’Connor Forbes article describing the difficulties of the FATCA rollout.

Continue reading →

New U.S. Tax Regime (#FATCA)Trampling Rights in New Zealand and Beyond

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February 3, 2014 UPDATE: Urgent:
Public submissions can be made from anywhere in the world. All that is required is a name, email address and phone number. But you will have to be quick as the link will be closed at midnight on Wed 5th Feb New Zealand time. I hope you will find time to express your opinion to them. The link is here:

http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/sc/make-submission/50SCFE_SCF_00DBHOH_BILL12926_1/taxation-annual-rates-employee-allowances-and-remedial (scroll down to “make an online submission”)

Osgood’s excellent recent analysis of FATCA IGA ‘enabling’ legislation in New Zealand has inspired another article at The New American.

Under the pretext of extracting more wealth and personal information from Americans living abroad by smashing all remaining vestiges of privacy, the Obama administration’s Treasury Department is bullying authorities around the world into signing unconstitutional pseudo-treaties with drastic implications for individual rights. Developments in New Zealand, where officials are already jumping onboard the deeply controversial U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) bandwagon, illustrate the problems well.

Alex hits a home run again. I understand that this plus other the articles on FATCA here, here and here will be in their print version too.  Every new article helps, so keep chipping away at it Brockers!  Reach out to every journalist you can!

#Americansabroad in Canada must warn @TOMayorFord of offer of U.S. citizenship – post warnings here!

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For those who don’t know Rob Ford is the Mayor of Toronto. Toronto is Canada’s largest city and (apparently the sixth largest city in North America). Some of you may know, that he has been having his problems with Toronto City Council. But, he has become an International Celebrity (giving him a priceless amount of free advertising in his bid for re-election). He is clearly a media sensation. He has been the subject of numerous articles including this interesting contribution by Conrad Black.

Whether he is loved or hated in Canada, Mayor Ford is loved in the U.S. In fact he is so loved that according to MSN Canadian News Quiz :

An online petition if acted upon by the U.S. Government would make Rob Ford an Honary Citizen of – you guessed it – The United States of America.

If I were Rob Ford, right now I might be thinking:

Well, there’s good news and bad news!

The good news is that I am so loved in the United States that they want to make me a citizen!

The bad news is that the U.S. government might deem me to be a United States citizen!

I thought it might be interesting for Brockers to comment on what it might mean for Mayor Ford to be a U.S. citizen living in Canada.

Let’s help the Mayor. He has helped many residents of Toronto.

Whether you support the Mayor or not, surely he deserves to know exactly how it might affect his life to be a U.S. citizen living outside the United States.

Please put aside your political differences, and offer Mayor Ford some advice …

(Oh, by the way, for the purposes of your comments, let’s make the reasonable assumption that Mayor Ford has a net worth that exceeds two million U.S. dollars.)