Yearly Archives: 2012

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.

Government is always the single greatest threat to society & the economy. It was the greed of the Democrats that caused them to raise taxes when there was a real estate boom in the late 1980s.They reduced the amortization benefits in real estate and caused investors to bail out. That resulted in a one-way market – no bid! All sellers! They had regulated the S&Ls directing them to lend in primarily the real estate market. They caused that financial crisis, locked up some high profile owners of S&Ls and blamed their “greed” for the whole crisis they instigated.

Then they created the 1987 Crash by forming the G5 in 1985 and publicly stated they wanted the dollar down by 40%. Foreigners panicked and began to sell everything from stocks to bonds and real estate.

This time it is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). If a foreign entity (bank) had an account from an American in Switzerland, they had to report whatever that American was doing there or else all their assets would be confiscated in America. Even if an American is just a major beneficial owner.

This one act is destroying the world the economy in a single bound. Americans can no longer have an account in Switzerland or anywhere else. That even includes a safe deposit box. A rare collection of ancient coins was held by an American for decades in a safe deposit box in Switzerland. The bank gave the American 3 days to get out. The American had no choice but to call a coin dealer and auction it off.

FATCA presumes any American having an account overseas is for illegal tax purposes…

Read more…

I came across this article because I was searching for an English variation of the following article, titled “The Mafia as the Crisis Winner”:

August 31, 2012
Die Mafia als Krisengewinner
Source

I found this article while looking for more recent information on”Organized crime is booming – Mafia is the largest bank in Italy”

January 11, 2012
Organisierte Kriminalität boomt
Mafia ist größte “Bank” Italiens
Source

Is FATCA promoting and strengthening the very thing that it was designed to oppose?  While FATCA is working hard to push innocent US persons out of Swiss banks, the Mafia bank is booming, bringing large sums of illegal money into the legal economy.

Die Einnahmen des organisierten Verbrechens würden somit immer häufiger nicht nur in Steueroasen in der Karibik, sondern auch in Banken in London und in New York gewaschen.
Source

Translation: The income of organized crime is being increasingly washed more often in banks in London and New York  as well as in the Caribbean.