4 thoughts on “Interesting CDN Govt Travel Expense Reports for visits to IRS and OECD”

1. *What concerns me a lot is nothing against them but the two McCauley’s are nobodies in Ottawa yet do all this travelling around the world to the OECD and IRS National Office. Never mind not being the Minister of National Revenue I don’t even know if these two(though I suspect one does) report to CRA Commissioner Linda Lizotte-McPherson. When I joke about how GREAT the politicization of the upper echelons of the civil service in Ottawa and I am not talking about these guys. They are basically more like the mid echelons of the civil service.

   As a somewhat odd coincidence Lizotte-McPherson comes the same type of “non tax” background as Shulman basically private sector IT lets automate the entire tax collection process.

    

   http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/gncy/cmmssnr/menu-eng.html

2. *I picked these travel expense reports out because none of these people’s superiors have appeared to meet with any US or OECD officials that often. Flaherty himself traveled to Washington in the spring for the IMF annual meeting but you don’t see Deputy Minister of Finance Michael Horgan, CRA Commissioner Linda Lizotte-McPherson, or Minister of Revenue Gail Shea travelling to Washington or the OECD that often. CRA Deputy Commissioner Bill Jones doesn’t appear to have made any official travel outside of Ottawa.

    

3. Tim, it would be comforting to know whether/if qualified individuals with a firm knowledge of the cross-border/extra-territorial issues were actively meeting and working on this.

   I note that this; http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/08/13/cibc-savings-poll.html demonstrates the importance of our federal government continuing to understand how the US/IRS claims on duals/Canadians/residents deemed ‘US taxable persons’ work against what is seen as a desirable result – sufficient household savings. The Feds (just as the US and other countries) offer tax deferred/tax exempt incentives to those in Canada to encourage them to save for emergencies, and reward this behaviour with tax friendly instruments (ex. TFSAs).

   Any letter and lobbying of Canadian officials, and any Canadian government meetings with the US/IRS needs to hammer home that duals and other US taxable ‘persons’ (green card holders, snowbirds, permanent residents) are prevented and actively penalized from doing any significant saving – by the FBAR’nFATCA fundraisers, the low reporting thresholds, punitive treatment of them as ‘trusts’, inflated price of producing US tax reports annually….

   Household saving is considered a social good, so the actions of the US to prevent and punish *us from saving (*>1 million individuals and households in Canada) defeats an important goal of our government.

   For any that want to add comments online to this article – to flag the barriers faced by Canadian duals/residents and raise awareness of FATCA, there is a pretty active comment stream going online.

4. Just to add to the CBC link above, here is a related one;

   http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/08/01/bmo-young-retirement.html

   …”Employers who offer defined-benefit pension plans — which guarantee a
   certain level of retirement pay out — are also more rare nowadays,
   forcing people to rely more on their individual investments in
   retirement.”..

   But, the new PRPPs in Canada are sure to be punished as ‘trusts’, just as TFSAs, RDSPs and RESPs, are by the IRS – even when we owe ZERO taxes to the US and pay all our Canadian taxes in full.

   PRPPs were introduced by the Conservatives, and Flaherty knows the well established and documented track record of the IRS recalcitrant treatment of our RRSPs. Thus he knows (and some of us have written him to point this out) that duals, green card holders, snowbirds, and other US deemed ‘taxable persons’ here in Canada will not be able to use the PRPPs to save for retirement like other Canadians will.

   This is an even bigger problem for younger Canadians who have inherited the US tax burden through parentage, because the chances that they will get a job with a workplace defined benefit plan. They will need all the tax-exempted or tax-deferred opportunities available to all others in Canada, but won’t be able to use them because the IRS will punish them if they do – through complex and punitive filing and penalty rules. Imagine – a young Canadian being prevented from saving and education inside a sovereign Canada – through the deliberate actions of a ‘foreign’ government – the US-IRS.