Nordic banking associations open Fatca reciprocity talks
The push for reciprocity under the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) is gaining pace, with banks in four Nordic countries now also urging their national governments to facilitate bilateral agreements with the US.
http://www.risk.net/operational-risk-and-regulation/news/2170830/nordic-banks-push-fatca-deal
Thought you Canadians would be interested in this little Jello shot from Phil Hodgens…
He is off on a mission, to The Center of the Universe @ 1111 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington DC 20224.
Here it is:
http://bsmlegal.com/PDFs/NZ.pdf
They don’t know quite what they want other than they want KiwiSaver plans exempted. JustMe and Moby might want to call their NZ MPs and have a word with them. They also claim to have extensive information sharing between NZ IRD and US IRS.
Perhaps you might want to have a word with Danie Beukman, Second Secretary at the New Zealand Embassy in Washington.
Another group I suspect might be interested in this letter I suspect would be the NZ Greens and NZ Labour.
Update: Call Danie Beukman on Monday. Really he works pretty closely with the US House Ways and Means committee. He is pretty active on Twitter also.
Mr Lewis’s assertion that all American’s who renounce are rich fatca-ts has got me wondering just how many non-resident US persons who neglect file do so because they can’t afford to pay an accountant to do it. Those of us required to file include seniors on fixed incomes, young people just starting out in life, the disabled, single parents, etc. I would think that the numbers could be as high as the hundreds of thousands if you consider everyone who should be filing. There was a time in my life as a single parent even if I had known about my obligation to file US income tax I would have been hard pressed to spend my Canadian child tax credit on filing US taxes.
This is the complete list of all the types of information the Canada Revenue Agency automatically sends to the IRS for US Residents receiving Canadian income. I would say we are hardly a tax haven. Additionally payors of these types of income are required by Canadian law to get a TIN from whoever the US resident recepient is.
Snowbirds may become an extinct species, at least within the borders of the United States. Few outsiders know this but Canadians live in igloos year round. Snowbirds are Canadians who seek warmer climate, especially during their retirement years. They have been a significant boon to the real estate markets in Southern states, especially Florida, but one should not forget places like my Dad’s trailer park in San Benito where numerous Winter Texans can play year-round golf and outdoor tennis. Mostly, they spend their enormous retirement wealth that it took many years working in Canada to earn. Expect the snowbirds to start flying further south, to places like Cayman Islands, Mexico, or Costa Rica, anywhere outside the reach of the IRS taxman.
Editors Note: Al Lewis has now written an excellent article telling the our side of the story. Thanks, Al (and welcome to the Isaac Brock Hall of Fame!).
Al Lewis tries to shame former Americans in this hit piece at marketwatch.com a subsidiary of the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps you should have spoke with at least one person who ever renounced his or her citizenship. Shame on YOU, Mr. Lewis and shame on your editor for allowing you to publish. That just makes you a bigot with a platform. It is to the shame of the brain-dead media that such pieces of journalistic refuse can even see the light of day. Please, next time you want to write a screed that punishes a class of people for their actions, do your homework, like the young, promising Reuter’s journalist, Atossa Abrahamian, who actually spoke with numerous people who had renounced or were planning to renounce their citizenship.
For those of you who are not members of ACA, and not on their email list, I wanted to alert you to the April edition of the ACA News Update for some interesting new information. The top item on the list is this:
Especially since my attention unnecessarily spiralled into the vortex of the latter stages of 2011 OVDI, I have been wanting to read The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Even without the IRS theme, I would have gravitated in that direction because (1) the book is a sizeable unfinished novel (2) the author committed suicide.
Good comments:
Violation of NZ Human Rights Law
Violation of NZ Privacy Law
No Ability under NZ law to withold tax
Cannot comply with FATCA under NZ law
Suggest “Intergovernmental Agreement” (I am getting tired of this)
http://bsmlegal.com/PDFs/NZBA.pdf
There is an insert in the middle from the Australian Bankers Association
