” I AM CANADIAN. I THINK (Slide 8) Thousands of Canadian residents who were born in the U.S. were taken by surprise this summer when the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced it would be taking serious action against non-resident U.S. citizens who haven’t filed their American tax returns. U.S. income taxes are based on citizenship so thousands of Canadians with dual citizenship have to file several years worth of back returns, even when they haven’t lived or worked in the U.S. for decades. “
I found the headline “I am Canadian, I think” really offensive.
Most of us in this situation KNOW we are in fact Canadians. We have citizenship certificates and passports to prove this. Legally, we are as much Canadian as anyone born in Canada including the author of the Globe and Mail article and the editor who wrote that headline. That headline in demeaning and insulting.
The issue isn’t “I am Canadian.” For many people like me and my wife, who have NEVER considered ourselves dual citizens, this issue is “I am NOT American no matter what the bloody IRS might say or think, with their ex post facto “for tax purposes” declaration that our expatriation dates from when we officially tell the State Department about it, not when we actually expatriated (without at the time having any idea of any need to inform State formally, and in fact the law at that time did NOT say we needed to do that if we relinquished rather than renounced).