This article may be worth commenting on:
@demsabroad @aaforobama A comment explaining why many @americansabroad will not be voting for @barackobama sitelife.theglobeandmail.com/ver1.0/gocomm?… #FATCA #FBAR
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) July 13, 2012
*There is an interesting article in today’s issue of Accounting Today which describes Canada as a tax haven for US citizens. Canada has the advantage over tax haven islands as being a place to which you can easily drive in your automobile. You don’t have to fly or take a ship to get there.
http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/canada-tax-havens-keatsconnelly-healthcare-63283-1.html
Very articulate and persuasive comments you made at Acct. Today puncturing the fiction that Canada was a tax haven @Roger. Thank you for posting the article link, and for making your comment!
re article quote:”But the number one reason for the U.S. as a tax haven for Canadians, and vice versa, is the U.S.-Canada tax treaty.” Which doesn’t even allow for many Canadian registered and government blessed savings to be recognized as tax deferred or tax exempt by the US – and in some cases (ex. TFSA) the reporting is so complex, and punished by penalties for inadvertent errors, that it is toxic for anyone with US deemed taxable status to hold. Not to mention problems with the treaty caused by the ‘last in time rule’ ex. http://opiniojuris.org/2008/05/08/how-do-you-interpret-the-last-in-time-rule/ http://taxblog.com/ainfanti/domestic-law-and-tax-treaties-the-united-states/
@Roger Conklin:
This highlights one point about those whose argument is that “citizenship based taxation” is the primary problem. Even without citizenship based taxation often the expat is caught in the middle between two countries claiming taxslave-ownership status.
I see this often with British IT contractors in Zürich. Often they have a 6 month renewable contracts or leave a wife or other family members back in England. They work for a couple of years before the British inland revenue catch up with them and then claim that the contractors never really left England and demand back taxes.
The problem here is that income taxes are a violation of basic human rights. They are a blatant theft of the fruits of people’s labor. As long as there are these types of taxes humankind will never have the fundamental right of being able to pack up and leave any country at any time they choose. They will never have financial privacy and financial freedom either. Where is the UN on this? Why the UN is run by the same type of people who in Canada continue to support Obama and enjoy punishing “the rich” with these taxes. They think that anyone who has wealth or income must have stolen it unless they are on welfare or work for the government.
@Roger Conklin:
I threw up a comment also, as a “buyer beware” warning for Canadians that think of the US as a tax haven! Might has well mix up the message… 🙂
*Just a comment on posts that reproduce what I’d guess are tweets? I don’t tweet, so it is hard to translate one.
Of all the symbols in this tweet:
@DemsAbroad @aaforobama A comment explaining why many @americansabroad will not be voting for @BarackObama http://t.co/g5z0bZ8a #FATCA #FBAR
It is just this bit that is the point of the post:
http://t.co/g5z0bZ8a
It took me several tries to find the actual link to the article.
Could you maybe just put the link you refer to in your post? Thanks. No offense intended, I just find tweets unnecessarily confusing.
@Foxyladyhawk…
Tweets are really pretty simple once you get used to them, and I encourage you to create an account and try. I am of the opinion that they have the potential to spread a message farther and wider than just comments here, or on media stories. Also, they allow you to put immediate and direct information in front of a lot of journalist, and possibly influence their narratives…
As a quick primer. Anything with a # in front of it is called a Hash Tag. That is just a way of grouping information and searching for a topic you are interested. So, in the tweet above #FATCA, means that you can search the term FATCA and see what others are commenting about and sending to the same hashtag as you. It is how the Arab Spring was spread! #Arabspring got tweeters lots of immediate information and attention. Reporters for news organizations were checking all the time. Someday, maybe Reporters will be checking the hashtag #FATCA, and so we put information there for them to find!
Links in a Tweet are often shortened, either by use of an external process like https://bitly.com/, or http://tinyurl.com/ or by shortening done by Twitter itself. So, links are pretty easy to pick out from hash tags.
The @ symbol is a way to send a message directly to someone else’s twitter account. It remains public so others can see it too. So, in the tweet above, a message was sent directly to Obama as @BarackObama as well as to Demcrats abroad @DemsAbroad and Americas Abroad for Obama @aaforobama who he is trying to. reach out to
Again, it is just a matter of familiarity, and they become very easy to read.
Try it. You might be surprised who you can influence, or who might follow you, and you don’t need a FACEBOOK account or wall! 🙂
We need millions of Expats tweeting, in my opinion…