Monthly Archives: September 2012

US Senator Bill Nelson and his Senate colleagues are back up to their old tricks of trying to get a Passport revocation rule instated for back/unpaid taxes. This time they are trying to do it through enacting an amendment to the “Veteran Jobs Corps Act of 2012” which who could be against such a piece of legislation until of course you look at fine print and notice the provisions of the act that have nothing to do with veterans or jobs. The following Senators are Senator Nelson’s partners in crime so to speak on this issue:

Sen Blumenthal, Richard [CT] – 9/10/2012

Sen Franken, Al [MN] – 9/11/2012

Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [NY] – 8/2/2012

Sen Merkley, Jeff [OR] – 9/10/2012

Sen Murray, Patty [WA] – 7/30/2012

Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] – 9/10/2012

Sen Stabenow, Debbie [MI] – 9/10/2012

Sen Wyden, Ron [OR] – 8/2/2012

Link to legislation

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:S.3457:

I found this article on the Moodys Tax Weekly:

Life Expectancy, Retirement Planning?

It seems to me that any effective, responsible retirement / estate planning, leaving something behind for our families, can drastically change when taking into account US citizenship-based taxation, excessive penalties (vs actual taxes owed to the US).  If we have been able to do any careful planning with our countries’ savings incentives (such as Canada’s RRSPs, RRIFs, TFSAs, RDSPs), certain mutual fund investments, etc. it all now has a different face.  Some are already there, into retirement, out of the work force and with limited choices to change course.

http://www.rts.ch/info/economie/4265768-l-allemagne-autorise-les-mecanismes-de-sauvetage-de-l-euro.html

Some countries are threatening to leave the Euro because of austerity measures that their people won’t accept.  Others want Germany to prop the Euro up or leave the zone.

What do all of you make of this mess?

I was reading an older article (“Getting Ahead of Privacy Risk” by Matt Kelly) in Compliance Week today and it led me to wonder what FFI’s and the IRS will do with FATCA data once our privacy laws as well as our personal data, have been breached. The article is more about how to handle issues within a corporation but it seemed some of the ideas in the summary would transfer easily to concerns we should have once this data is collected. Given IRS’ notorious lack of ability to deal with identity theft, I wonder what nightmares will appear once the process begins. The bulleted items are from the article with possible concerns underneath in italics.

• Do you have a means to know when your business is creating a new pile of data?

Will there be a time lapse between collection of the data by the FFI and the transmission of it to the IRS? Will the data “sit”, waiting to be evaluated in the inevitable backlog of files to be examined at IRS? Will hackers be able to gain access and befoul the process further? Continue reading →

Cross-posted from the Flophouse.  Probably the closest I’ve come to losing my temper over this whole business. And thank you for the comments and the encouragement you left chez moi – as always it’s wonderful to see familiar names and to read your words.  

U.S. citizens and Green Card holders living abroad are waking up to the fact that their status and connections to the “Land of the Free” brings with it certain obligations.  If you’ve ever read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of the great science-fiction classics by Robert Heinlein, you’ll be familiar with the acronym “TANSTAAFL” which stands for “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

Continue reading →

“saddened123” has provided a link to this story.  I’m posting it on her behalf.

Overseas Americans Band Together to Demand Rights – Geneva, Switzerland

Update: The report is available online on the web site of The Americans in Switzerland Working Group

Update 11:50  GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A new report by several American citizen organizations outside the US is being used to give overseas citizens a voice in the upcoming presidential election. The report shows “how US Government policies and actions are negatively affecting the millions of US citizens who live abroad,” say the authors. “The report is based on a series of well-attended Town Hall Meetings, held in 2012 in five different Swiss cities, which brought together hundreds of Americans living in all parts of Switzerland.”

The group behind the report includes Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad as well as American Citizens Abroad (ACA), the Overseas American Academy and the Swiss branches of both the Democratic and Republican parties of the US. Personnel from the US Embassy in Bern were invited and attended each of the meetings.

“The most urgent motivation for the Town Hall Meetings was the unintended consequences and deplorable collateral damage caused to Americans living abroad by the pending implementation of the Fatca (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) legislation,” the group notes in a press release.

…

Posted by Ellen Wallace on 7 September 2012 at 10:10, genevalunch.com

For those waiting for further analysis on the new IRS Instructions [Published on Friday, 07 September 2012 15:59 Written by Roy A. Berg  JD, LL.M. (US Tax)]

If you are a US person residing in Canada and are one of the unfortunate few who does not have a graduate degree in US tax and who is not related to a cross-border US tax professional you may have missed filing one of the myriad of tax forms that are required every year (the failure to file of which can carry dire penalties). If this is the case, the IRS may have a new streamlined procedure just for you. The bad news is that few will likely qualify and those who do not qualify face serious consequences just for applying.

The new streamlined procedure went into effect on September 1, 2012. Click here to see the full text of the streamlined procedure. The program is designed for expats with simple returns and little or no tax due. But whether by design or defect, it threatens to entrap most of its likely applicants. For those who qualify, the new program may be a breeze. But for those who do not, and we suspect most expats will not, the streamlined procedure is a lot like a lobster pot – easy to get into, hard to live in, and harder to escape

Moodys Further Analysis: Completing the Questionnaire, or Entering the Lobster Pot.

Unfortunately the IRS has not given guidance as to which of the above-listed risk factors or combination thereof, will increase the taxpayer’s compliance risk, and therefore disqualify him from the streamlined procedure. Further, the questionnaire raises a number of extremely serious issues of which every taxpayer considering this procedure should be aware.