Cross posted from RenounceUScitizenship
Here is a comment on an earlier post I wrote:
#americansabroad For our company we are sending all the ex-pat Americans home to the US. For one reason only. #FATCA renounceuscitizenship.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/sto…
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) June 9, 2012
The IRS should be made to answer certain questions before FATCA can be enacted. Here are just a few. Other readers please add more.
1) How many Americans are affected by FATCA?
2) How many of them do the IRS consider to be criminals?
3) If there is no change in the behavior of American citizens how much extra tax will FATCA generate?
4) What percentage of Americans change their behavior if FATCA is enacted to reduce their taxes?
5) How many FFI are there in the world?
6) What is the total cost born by the FFIs to become compliant, and the annual cost thereafter?
7) How many FFIs will choose not to do business with Americans living abroad, just terminate their accounts?In business we have failure criteria. The IRS must make a statement in advance that FATCA will be considered a failure if it fails to raise a defined amount of new taxes. Considered a failure if a certain percentage of FFIs withdraw funds from the US rather than bear the cost of compliance. Etc. etc.
For our company we are sending all the ex-pat Americans home to the US. For one reason only. FATCA.
The final sentence says it all… Roger has been telling us, and now someone else makes it obvious.
“For our company we are sending all the ex-pat Americans home to the US. For one reason only. FATCA.”
I like the button you put on your website: The IRS! We’re not happy, Until you’re not happy!
Let me suggest one more: The IRS! We’re not happy, until all ex-pats return to the USA and join un-employment lines or collect food stamps and use US’s free Medicare/Medicaid
@khan, the prevailing attitude from many homelanders is that an American life is best lived on US soil (said on this very site) and thus the US person who dares to pursue a life outside its borders deserves any calamity that befalls him or her as a result of that decision, including ambush by the government they ‘betrayed’.
@bubblebustin: Things look pretty grim in Detroit; I wonder if ex-NBAer Mayor Dave Bing can still say that America is the best place.
@petros, that’s chilling (not in the good sense of the word).
*
@bubblebustin: It means dual citizens who born in foreign
nations, grown up abroad and freely educated in government funded universities
to obtain advanced degrees or PhD, enjoyed free healthcare must betray their other
homeland to become indebted servants to the USA alone, even if they never lived
in the USA.
The rich dual-citizens mostly renounce their US citizenship
or can afford a lawyer to use loop holes to avoid taxes. If the middle class
dual-citizens forced to return to the USA,
they would have hard time finding a decent job in this poor state of economy and
become a drain on the US
economy in the long-term. I believe over 90% of the dual-citizens are middle class
and only small percent can find better job and be more productive in the USA. Nearly
50% of the taxpayers and their children in the mainland pay no taxes but use
the government services.
@Khan, that is the absurdity of it all. The US is going to lose, but as Phil Hodgen said: the floggings will continue until morale improves.
The USA quickly forgets about the lessons learned from the collateral damage their indiscriminate use of power causes to innocent people. This week is the 30th anniversary of the infamous incidence captured in famous photo of Kim Phuc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc.
Any one who possesses super power must use it carefully. Just one compelling example can expose the cruelty of indiscriminate use of power to rest of the world and make them distrustful and question their true intentions. This indiscriminate use of FBAR/OVDI against innocent dual-citizens, who don’t owe any taxes will expose the greed of mainland US citizens, who think ex-pats are traitors and must be penalized to unfairly extract money to fund budget deficit caused by the people living in the USA.
The US should learn that in this modern ages terrorizing law fearing citizens to submission to unfair extraction would not work and will have opposite effect in the long-term. That tactics might have worked in the dark ages, but in the modern information age, any unfair terror tactics of governments will be magnified in educating people and look like working for short span before people find alternative law abiding lifestyle to eliminate the damage. This creates long-term distrust by educating 100s of times more people than the sufferers and causes permanent damage to the perpetuator employing such tactics.
My friend, dual citizen living and working in the USA, had a good offer to work in a foreign country. He refused in order not to become an American Abroad and be considered a criminal. Another friend who lives in the USA and has a Green Card gave up his dream to become an USA citizen. Why? He is afraid to become a criminal American Abroad if he ever decide to go back to his country of origin. It seems to me that Americans are becoming prisoners in their country.
It just occurred to me that Americans no longer have the freedom to work abroad. The consequences are such that if they do life will become hell for them. Dual citizens can´t move back to their countries of origin. The same for Green Carders. They are now prisoners and must live their lives in the USA if they want to have peace. Or…renounce their US citizenship.
MarkpineTree…
That is exactly what Roger has been saying for a long long time… 🙂
*@Markpinetree, I think renouncing is the way to go..RENOUNCE AND BE FREE!!!
Maybe easier said than done, the way things are going! Who knows what is on the horizon???
Two weeks until I have my second appointment at the Consulate. Can’t wait to be free 🙂
I’m probably the only one on here who fears that renouncing could increase one’s chances of being made a target, especially with the recent vindictive proposals due to the FB guy… I’m surprised no one else thinks this way, especially if anyone still has family they’d need to be able to visit.
I think it would only be safe if one’s situation was very simple and/or they had hardly any assets.
My take on the matter is that the IRS will be OK with my amended returns and delinquent FBARs if I keep my head down… but if I did anything too politically outspoken like renounce, I wouldn’t put it past them to harass me over my pension plan and start claiming I should have been filing all sorts of foreign grantor trust forms and thus hitting me with huge penalties, just to be awkward and vindictive. I’m convinced that there is something in their national psyche that equates renunciation with treason.
I realize I tend to be paranoid but this is how I perceive the risks…on the other hand, don’t blame someone young like Don Pomodoro for wanting to make a clean break as he’s young with nothing to lose, plus no family ties to USA.
Good luck with your second appointment, Don Pomodoro. I (we!) want to hear of another set free!
@monalisa, one really does need to weigh the pro’s against the con’s regarding renouncing citizenship especially when it comes to the capriciousness of some border agents. The fact is, they don’t have to let anyone without a US passport in that they don’t want to let in. How important is one’s access to the US?
@Bubblebustin, unfortunately, it’s essential for me to have continued access. My family would be outraged if I couldn’t visit them anymore. They are sympathetic but take the view that as I chose to move abroad that I need to deal with it accordingly. Plus the truth is, I would hate being permanently exiled.
@monalisa, that being said, I imagine that with all the renunciations, CLN’s will become more common for border agents.
@monalisa,
I don’t think you would be permanently exiled. You’ve done nothing criminal. Anyone of us who renounces or has a successful relinquishment should then have the same rights of entry to the US as any other citizen of their country of residence/citizenship, the UK or Canada or elsewhere. Some lawyer would likely love to take on such a blatant case of injustice. It is further abuse (terrorization) by the US to make you (us) think this way.
Another asset to Canadian society, being claimed by the IRS:
http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/stories/2012/June/traister_finds_lessons_for_university_union_and_self_during_term.html
………….”Minutes
later, his phone rang again. This time, it is the U.S. Internal Revenue Service
(IRS). Traister, an American citizen, had been attempting to figure out what an
IRS crackdown on Americans living in Canada would mean to him.
Again, he
answered, only this time telling the Tax Man he would get back to him.
“Few
Americans tell the IRS, ‘I’ll get back to you on that,’” Traister laughed.
“That was sort of a window into the type of year I was going to have.”…………
@badger, there’s the old joke “you know you’re having a bad day when you get to your office and the film crew from 60 Minutes is there to greet you.” Having the IRS ring me up would be similar.
I’m probably the only one on here who fears that renouncing could increase one’s chances of being made a target, especially with the recent vindictive proposals due to the FB guy… I’m surprised no one else thinks this way, especially if anyone still has family they’d need to be able to visit.
I AGREE!
**Lay low, live your life in Canada or elsewhere, avoid the USA and AVOID TELLING THEM WHO AND WHERE YOU ARE.
They cannot touch you unless you make yourself a target!
Do you think a CLN will let you pass to and fro from the USA easily? Get ready for repeated and ongoing strip searches!
And what assures you that they won’t change the regulations and laws retroactively and apply them to you once they know where you are?
@joe smith, that’s one way of dealing with the problem, but there are many who never have been nor want to be branded tax evaders. With FATCA the noose will tighten and perhaps one day it will be impossible to remain undetected. Who knows, but it could make it more difficult to make a case for ‘reasonable cause’ going that route.
I like Phil Hodgen’s attitude in dealing problems ““Run straight into your shitstorm” is basically my motto for how I prefer to run my life. If there is a problem, don’t avoid it. Wade in. Deal with it. I am sometimes good at this, sometimes not so good.”
From: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/05/08/phil-hodgen-meets-with-irs-to-solve-rrsp-problems-thank-you-phil/