I found this Financial Times article about the Swiss parliamentary vote, you will have to register for free at Financial Times to retreive it (8 articles per day for free or something like that [Editor’s Note: Try this link instead, routed through Google news]). Financial Times : Swiss parliament backs tax amendment The article seems to twist the whole affair around and as far as I am concerned it is negative press for us.
Here is a link to my original rant on the parliamentary vote
Reblogged this on Stop Unconstitutional Double Taxation.
I don’t see this as being bad press for us. If you view it that way then I think that your are making the same mistake as the U.S. is making when it lumps legitimate overseas residents in with U.S. resident tax evaders. It is U.S. failure or unwillingness to see us as two distinct groups that is causing the problems for overseas residents.
No U.S. citizen who resides abroad should owe any kind of bank reporting requirement to the IRS. Switzerland’s bread and butter has been bank secrecy. But so has the U.S. made its money on banking secrecy. So really when the U.S. goes after coutries that offer banking secrecy it is kine of like the pot calling the kettle black.
Maybe not as much bad press as just another sign that the press doesn’t think of minnows abroad when they write about these issues.
What makes me angry isn’t that all of these countries in Europe are giving in as fast as they can. What annoys me is that not only are they selling out US citizens and permanent residents, but also their own citizens who happen to have a US connection as well!
All EU/EEA citizens, regardless of whatever connections they may or may not have to the US or other foreign countries, should be considered exclusively citizens of the EEA and treated and protected as such. The US wouldn’t lift a finger to help me if I were arrested in my home country due to the doctrine of dominant nationality, yet they can claim me as tax cattle and say that their tax system takes priority over my home country’s? Anyone else in the EU/EEA or elsewhere in this situation and equally outraged?