Yearly Archives: 2012

Please note that I’ve begun the process of moving this blog to isaacbrocksociety.ca.  Therefore, I have shut off comments on every post before 1 June 2012.  My goal is that by Tuesday evening, the blog will be completely moved to it’s new site.

Background

The Isaac Brock Society started as an informal group of Canadians who began meeting in person and through email to discuss their US tax and citizenship problems. Some of these people were taking part in a discussion at the Expat Forum in the Fall of 2011. I was in contact with one of them because she had commented on my blog, and when I saw what she was involved in a lively discussion at Expat Forum, I joined in there.

Then, we started to see censorship at the Expat Forum, followed by censorship of attempts to discuss openly the censorship. A whole new genre was born: the Expat Forum moderator joke, but I digress.  I was horrified by the Expat Forum’s censorship of our important discussion. So I reached out to some of the people affected by it, and suggested that we begin a new site where we were in control. Then, I was brought into an e-mail conversation of five other Brockers. We decided to start this site at WordPress.com because I offered to administrate it and (1) WordPress.com was what I knew how to do; (2) WordPress blogs are great a product; (3) I didn’t know how to do a forum or run forum software; (4) it was cheap (our current hosting costs have been $25 total).

The Issues

For awhile now, some people have urged me to leave WordPress.com.  Here are some of the issues, which have recently converged into a major headache for me and I’ve had to take some steps to address them this week:

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This thread seeks to assemble a list of our jargon words, with definitions, examples, and links where appropriate.  I don’t have much time to write all of the terms and definitions, so I propose we collaborate on it. Continue reading →

May we please continue with the work in the Press Release Thread?  I suggest we finalize, please vote.

As if it’s not enough to have Schulman, Schumer and many others  telling us how we should have life-long financial servitude to the United States, now Winnipeg Free Press headline demands: U.S. Citizens Living Here:  Do Your Tax Duty

The author even reminds Canadian snowbirds of their obligation to dear old Uncle Sam:

“Just to be clear, this applies to Canadian citizens who are winter vacationers in the United States, including the vast majority who have never worked in the U.S. and do not earn any money there.”

And, then he goes on to give some insightful advice to Canadians earning a living in U.S.

“Speaking of Canadians working in America, I think it will be the L.A. Kings in five or six games.”

Hockey?!?  Not one word about the massive penalties Canadians and other immigrants to U.S. can face if they don’t report on their retirement or other savings in their home countries.

The author is a fee-for service financial planner.  I don’t think I’ll hire him anytime soon.

Over on the International Tax Blog, it was reported that 1997 had more Americans renouncing their citizenship than in 2011 (1,812 versus 1,781). I was very skeptical of this number and it was Tim who finally gave me the information needed to solve this riddle. He linked to a GOA report that mentioned in passing what happened. First, the IRS keeps a CLN (Certificate of Loss of Nationality) database. (that would be an interesting FOI request). 1994 was the last year the IRS was tracking CLNs by year. By the time they were required to track this again (the 1996 HIPAA law), they couldn’t distinguish the data from 1995, 1996 and 1997. The GAO report states that they reported these renunciations in a group.

Thus, each of those three years had, on average, 604 renunciations, making 2011 the largest number of American renunciations in history. As you can see from the graph below, the numbers now look “correct” and there is, indeed, a sharp upswing in the number of Americans renouncing their citizenship.

I have expanded a bit on this explanation at the Overseas Exile blog.

Greetings to All from Julian (especially Just Me, FromtheWilderness, Blaze and Em after their recent speculation on whether or not Julian was a “Brocker” and their invitation for Julian to join Isaac Brock if not).

I have just noticed all the comments about me at Isaac Brock and want to thank all of you for your kind words. I can’t do so without giving up my identity, either under my Brock pseudonym or by opening another account under my real name, so I am asking calgary411 to be my go-between.

I (calgary411) have the pleasure of knowing Julian and count him as a special friend through all of this. I, too respect the many literate comments (virtually well thought-out essays) Julian has tirelessly posted on countless media news stories (and here), to the benefit of us all. I’m glad to do this for Julian.

I count myself amongst the number here – and am especially indebted to all of you for your insights, hard research and personal thoughts so willingly shared. We are all in this together, working for one goal! Isaac Brock has been one of the few bright spots in this whole mess.

I (calgary411) second that, Julian. Don’t we all know that!

The Daily Mail in the UK has published a list of words monitored by department of Homeland Security.  Many of them are used on this site quite regularly (and innocently). People have often wondered if the IRS is monitoring the site, perhaps it’s not just the IRS but the DHS, as well.

“The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.”

Words include Mexico, disaster, jihad, law enforcement, collapse, plot, closure.

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