From Financial News, a DowJones news website:
October 26, 2012
Sophie Baker, “Fatca faces delay after bilateral disagreements”
The Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, was due to be introduced from next year but, according to a notice published on the IRS website on Wednesday, the deadlines have been pushed back. The original 2013 deadline for financial institutions to put compliance procedures in place has been delayed until January 2014.
More:
*The schedule for foreign banks to provide detailed reports to the IRS on all their accounts with US persons has indeed been delayed from 2013 to 2014. But there is no delay for US persons living abroad in filing FATCA reports on their overseas assets, including local banks where they live abroad.. These reports were requried for tax year 2011 as reported via tax returns filed in 2012. No delay in implementing this part of the FATCA legislation.
The US Ambassador to Switzerland has reported numbers which indicate that renunciations of US citizenship in that country is so far this year about triple what they were last year. Does anybody have any idea what is happening, volume wise, with respect to US citizens in Canada renouncing US citizenship?
Roger,
A comment by Arrow at http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/03/24/consulate-visit-report-directory/:
We need to determine the method for getting such information and see if that information can be obtained for all US Consulates in Canada / the world?.
Statistics on renunciation by US consulate ought to be available through the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For someone wanting to pursue this, a starting point might be the Wikipedia article, which includes a link to the legislation. I have not read the Act recently, but as I recall it can be used by non-US citizens. (I stand to be corrected.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(United_States)
*@411, this is precisely the path that Andy Sundburg was pursuing to obtain this information, but his repeated requests and follow-ups, quoting “book, chapter and verse” of this legislation, up until just a few days before his fatal heart attack, produced no response. He had sent out a message to Fellow ACA members to join him in applying pressure for this information to be released.
@Roger: The “Name and Shame” list should be out any day now and I’m expecting to be on it! It will be interesting to see the numbers if indeed everyone is listed.
@Rodger
I agree that, although this FATCA delay does not include any delay in filing form 8938 (i think that is what you are getting at with “But there is no delay for US persons living abroad in filing FATCA reports on their overseas assets”)
This delay is welcome news to someone like myself who is a Canadian/US citizen with a saving and chequing account 5 minutes from where i live. It gives all a moment of pause before this draconian FATCA legislation comes into effect.
It is obvious to me now that Governmental pressure has succeeded…for the time being.
yep. Governmental pressure by organized business lobby shows to be very successful. Governmental pressure by normal average schmucks yields forms 8938 and its siblings.
It all confirms their most important tactic which is just to scare the bajeebers out of any and all of us average schmucks so as to get free OVDI’s and 6 backyears of FBARS.
This latest announcement however does serve to increase the life expectancy of an ostrich.
@Roger Conklin: “But there is no delay for US persons living abroad in filing FATCA reports on their overseas assets, including local banks where they live abroad.. These reports were requried for tax year 2011 as reported via tax returns filed in 2012. No delay in implementing this part of the FATCA legislation.”
The IRS has already accomplished many of their goals, the primary one being capital controls. It has cowed the vast majority of private banks, lawyers and wealth advisers world wide by getting CS and other banks to provide the names of wealth advisers who might have aided in tax “evasion”. The computer and reporting infrastructure is being tuned and built out to complete the corralito. The US middle class is going to be stripped of whatever remaining wealth can be stolen.
*Interestingly, Effective in January Cuba will have extended more freedom to its citizens to live and work abroad than is available to US citizens. Cubans, with passport, ticked and an entry visa issued by another country, will be able to go to Jose Marti Airporort and leave the country. The will no longer be requried to obtain a Cuban exit visia to travel abroad. They will not be subject to Cuban income taxes on their foreign income once the leave the country.
Not true of US citizens who decide to relocate abroad. They continue to be subject to US tax laws no matter where they live, work or retire, either in the US or anywhere else in the world. And any taxes they owe to the IRS must be paid in US dollars, even if you have to resort to the illegal black market in some countries to convert your local currency to US dollars. The fact that such conversions may be illegal where you reside is of no concern to the IRS. That’s strictly your problem.
I request asylum
Does anybody know if one can hold a non-Cuban currency in a Cuban bank?
*I don’t think you can. When you enter Cuba you can exchange your foreign currency for Cuban Convertible Pesos. US dollars, which were for a while accepted in many places, are supposedly no longer accepted. Cubans are paid and use non-convertible pesos for local purchases. There are certain imported products that are priced in and only sold for convertible pesos. This is a remainingt irrating issue for Cuban residents. Those who have relatives outside of Cuba who send them money from abroad clearly have a more comfortable life than those who do not.
If you are a visitor and have Convertible pesos left over when you are ready to return back home, you can exchange them for US dollars, Euros, Canadian dollars or other commonly used convertible currencies after you have checked in for your flight at the airport as you prepare to leave Cuba. Been there; done that.
Here is a dark perspective on the delay. I think it may have been Roger who said that the delay is not good news. It gives FATCA’s zealous advocates time to take shelter and reload.
http://www.risk.net/asia-risk/news/2220117/fatca-delay-simply-smoke-and-mirrors
Hopefully, DATCA will be given more time to progress as well, so that there is reciprocity. This will expose the madness of it all. In the mean time – I read that the Bahamas are buckling to the pressure.
*@Zuludogm, The Bahamas, just off the Florida coast, lives in the shadow of Uncle Sam. FATCA really puts them in a bind that would probably result in their collapse of they tried to make it on their own. Reciprocity is totally worthless to the Bahamas because it does not have an income tax. Government revenue there is generated through other kinds of taxes.
US citizens who have money deposited in Bahamas pay no tax there and consequenly have zero foreign tax credits to offset the US tax on Bahamian income.
NZ To Negotiate FATCA Agreement With US
“Without an inter-governmental agreement, financial institutions would have to enter into separate agreements……………and risk being in conflict with New Zealand’s privacy and human rights laws”.
http://www.tax-news.com/news/NZ_To_Negotiate_FATCA_Agreement_With_US____58009.html
*That’s the same problem faced by all, or practically all foreign banks. The information the IRS requires the banks are prohibited by national privacy laws from divulging to any third party; let alone to the tax authorities of a foreign government under very severe penalties.
That’s why the “solution” some are trying to find is to divulge this information to their own government, if local laws even permits that, for that government to divulge to the IRS in the US.
The concept of the foreign bank serving as a collector of taxes for a foreign government is, in countries such as Brazil, a violation of its constitution. And any idea that a nation would amend its constitution to allow its banks to become agents of a foreign country to collect taxes from its account holders on behalf of of a foreign government is beyond comprehension and therefore nobody would ever consider it as justification for amending the constitution. Such action would be a violation of the sovereignty of that country.
FATCA – Ireland expected to sign an intergovernmental agreement shortly
“On 12 September 2012 the UK became the first country to sign an IGA with the US to implement FATCA. This is significant in an Irish context as it is expected that Ireland will enter into a similar agreement shortly.”
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5d35331d-2376-4fb5-b152-35d039340c9e