Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

Monthly Archives: January 2012

The Long View

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On this last Sunday of January 2012, here at Isaac Brock Society, multiple threads seem to have converged on at least faint hopes that the US behemoth might turn to the sanity of residence-based taxation. Or not.

Some appear to hope that such a sea change might still solve problems they currently founder in, while others look toward (or have already realized) the certain freedom of consigning US citizenship to jettison. What is realistic?

Two academic articles offer a long view of where the United States has come from.

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Ways & Means considers territorial-based taxation for corporations

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Unfortunately, this only pertains to corporations and doesn’t help us one iota. However, Camp seems to understand the necessity and the logic of why the shift from international to territorial-based taxation is what the US needs in terms of business. Why not citizens as well?

My question is, what could we propose in order to be considered for the same system? What do we have to offer that they would consider seriously enough to switch? Are we of any value to the country or are we just something to tax and label as rich, lazy cheats?

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=266168

excerpts:

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Tax Treaty in conflict with Canada's Human Rights Act

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Petros provides a scenario which would suggest that the Human Rights Act does not protect U.S. Citizens living in Canada, as they do not have equal opportunity with other individuals, because under the Tax Treaty the CRA will collect taxes for the IRS.

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And the IRS was silent …

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A comment on Update on the IRS FS for U.S. and Dual Citizens Living Outside The United States

The Tax Advocate within the IRS has written a report critical of the IRS in its handling of OVDP and OVDI participants and US taxpayers abroad identifying it as a “Most Serious Problem”. For my own purposes I’ve distilled into a few critical paragraphs: Continue reading →

AllGov calls renunciants "tax cheats": My response

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In his article Tax Evaders Renounce U.S. Citizenship Noel Brinkhoff writes:

Rather than deal with the complexities of U.S. tax law, Americans living overseas are increasingly renouncing their citizenship in order to avoid paying their income taxes.

Fortunately, the rest of the short article is a little bit better, as he refers to the complexity of the tax filing requirements and the IRS’s bait and switch tactics.  Still, I am disgusted by the assumption of guilt that if you renounce you are a tax evader.

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Penalty for having any American Association – The Citizenship Discrimination

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It’s funny that you can be a foreigner like me (originally from India, now a Canadian citizen) and do most of your business in the US and not get taxed on it. I run an internet company incorporated in Canada and almost all my customers are American. I don’t file anything with the IRS because legally I don’t have to.

But if you happen to have been born in the US or have an American parent and don’t earn income from there they still want to tax you. It’s like a penalty for having any American association. On top of that no foreigners will want to form a partnership with you due to FATCA. Continue reading →

The tail wags the cow: Roger Conklin on past lobbying efforts

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Roger Conklin responds to markpinetree who laments that the impression that most Americans have of US citizens abroad is that they are rich tax cheats, and says, “Lets work to clarify the issues!”

Roger Conklin responded JANUARY 28, 2012 AT 9:57 PM:

Oh how I wish you were right. But the perception cards are so stacked against us that it a task of inconceivable magnitude.

Several years back one Congresman, I have forgotten his name [Bill Alexander, see below], who had always won reelection by wide margins, took up our cause. He introduced legislation to abolish citizenship based taxation and replace it with the residence based taxation of every other country. He had no support from his congressional colleagues. It became a major issue in the next election with his opponent majoring on the fact that this Congressman was wasting his time helping American tax evaders living abroad rather than working on the issues important to his constituents in the district he represented. He lost his re-election, going down in an flames. That bitter lesson did not go unnoticed by others when going to run for re-election. It is an issue that just does not resonate positively with he voting public.

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Internet Censorship on the Horizon: ACTA, Twitter and the FBI

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I started a forum post about this, but I feel that this is so important that it needs to be shared here to spread the word!

Everyone and their grandmother heard about SOPA and PIPA and the huge amount of publicity that was generated recently to kill the bills. But did you know that there is already a global agreement on the books called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)? No, this is not a US law – It’s worse: it is a multilateral treaty that has been negotiated over many years by the US, Canada, EU and others in almost absolute secrecy. One top EU official even resigned recently over how the negotiations were carried out.

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Phil Hodgen nods

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New website with offshore bank account, expatriation information

January 28, 2012 (used with permission)

There is a new website that launched several weeks ago that I highly recommend: isaacbrocksociety.com. The engines behind this site are people I know and it has good, first-hand information about

  • expatriation (as in giving up U.S. citizenship); and
  • cleaning up paperwork problems for undisclosed bank accounts.

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How Many Extraterritorial U.S. Citizens?

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Cross posted from USxCanada InfoShop

 
A search for the data that underlies “estimates” of the numbers of U.S. citizens resident outside the United States does not lead far. A total of 6.35 million, excluding military personnel, is one handy number.

A map [2] provided as part of the information on the web site of American Citizens Abroad (ACA) [1] appears to be as good a piece of information as any that can be obtained. And even that map data is contradictory (see note following citation).

ACA and Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) pass along figures said to be provided by the U.S. State Department. The only level of detail is for seven regions that cover the entire world. These organizations have been hacking away valiantly for years at this data situation. It seems peculiar that a direct State Department source for this same data cannot easily be found.

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