Live webcast available.
http://new.livestream.com/pepperdinesol/lawreviewsymposium
Familar names attending:
Business/International Tax #2
Moderator: Khrista McCarden (Pepperdine)
Papers: Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan), Corporate and International Tax Reform: Proposals for the Second Obama Administration
Allison Christians (McGill), Putting the Reign Back in Sovereign: Advice for the Second Obama Administration
Susan Morse (UC-Hastings), The Transfer Pricing Regs Need a Good Edit
Commentary: Robert Goulder (Tax Analysts)
I am not sure what time they will get to this last segment. Probably in the afternoon for those of you in the Eastern Time Zone
It is nice to see Prof. Christians name on the list. She is starting to make the rounds and get some notoriety on FATCA.
It just started…
And follow live tweets using the #ObamaTaxAdvice hashtag via @SoCalTaxProf, @PeppLawReview, and @TaxAnalysts. Questions for speakers can be tweeted to @PeppLawReview.
Tweeters, start tweeting questions? Please.
Here is my first.
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/292326114016243712
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/292327966858420226
https://twitter.com/PeppLawReview/status/292334063992311809
Stay tuned for our afternoon panels: “Business/International Tax #1-2” @ 1:45-4:30pm
@Just Me
I have a twitter account, but i’ve never really used it- 🙂 How do I twitter a question? I’m on the site with the live stream, bur I don’t see questions form other viewers.
There is a break now. Hope more tweeters can join the 1:45p segment. This should be interesting.
If you put up measured and reasonable questions, they may get asked of the panelist. Mine did in the first group.
@ Just Me
The estate tax discussion was very boring. Do you know when the good stuff happens, like citizenship-based taxation? Has Prof. Christians already spoken or is she coming up later? They are all out to lunch right now. 🙂
@Uncletell,
The international session starts at 1:45pm Pacific time
You construct a tweet during that time to see if it gets their attention. Not many are being asked with the hashtag #ObamaTaxAdvice , so yours might get asked. Follow that stream by searching for it in the find function, and you will see all comments/questions that appear.
Your question, if reasonable and answerable, maybe asked and answered during the end of session questions. One of mine was at the first session.
Your question or comment could start with @PeppLawReview and end with #ObamaTaxAdvice to be sure it is seen.
Something like this.
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/292330660444643328
or this
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/292340737989816320
Hope that helps.
@Em…
Christians is coming up at 1:45p. You have to bear with it! LOL That is the problem with all of us Americans. Tax policy is toooo boring, and so they do what they will !
Oops… double comment, deleted.
@ Just Me
Well I’m Canadian and just as guilty in that respect as Americans. (I am getting better though.) FATCA awareness plus the US personhood shock was like a bucket of ice water in my face.
Just Started.
Pepperdine Law Rev. @PeppLawReview
This is the first of two Business and International Tax panels.#ObamaTaxAdvice
Followed by Tax Analysts
I think that Christians is in the second panel
Panel with Christians is starting now.
http://new.livestream.com/pepperdinesol/lawreviewsymposium
RE: Prof. Christians
Oh dear, I knew from the first 5 minutes she was going to run out of time when it got to FATCA and she did. Oh well, it was worth listening to anyway. Just Me’s tweets were excellent! I hope he got some response.
@Em
Yes, so many instances of folks getting cut off when they begin to bring our case forward. Is the universe conspiring against us??? She actually may have drawn more attention to herself and her topic by getting thrown off the podium. She’ll be referred to as that fired up Canadian, what was she talking about again, FATCAT’s?
I think it was telling when she asked for a show of hand about who had heard of FATCA. So, here is a group who you would expect to know about it, but less than 50% did.
Notice she got the most questions, and certainly elevated the subject from way below the radar.
Disappointing that there were not more tweets from other sources that I saw. I got a couple retweets but didn’t feel encouraged by the lack of activity. Oh well. It was an interesting exercise, and maybe someone has looked at FATCA in a different way.
FATCA here to stay, was the message of the final speaker.@RobertGoulder and can you believe the times we heard encouragement to young Tax students about getting billable hours from FATCA ?
No wonder there is such a FATCA Compliance Complex!
*I wonder why high priced law schools can’t organize microphones for those asking questions? And insist they use them? And stop questioners from giving a lecture. It makes the feed almost unbearable to watch.
@Duke of Devon
That was frustrating. I tweeted the suggestion of microphones for the questioners, but didn’t happen.
That was rather depressing, actually. A bunch of fatcat lawyers just salivating at the prospect of how much money they’ll all make over FATCA without spending even a microsecond contemplating its essential immorality and destructive effect on the global economy, let alone the human consequences for those six or seven million expats who most clearly will be thrown under the bus with nary a shrug. For all the academic bafflegab flying around in the room today, there was an underlying arrogance and self-delusion that makes me despair for the future and hate what the United States has become – a tyrant among nations.
@Deckard1138
Well, hard to argue with you, but “so it goes” That represents the reality of what you are up against with the FATCA Compliance Complex. They suckle off the complexity of tax law. Billable hours will definitely go up!
Very worth reading the newest, post-conference post by Allison Christians here:
http://taxpol.blogspot.ca/2013/01/why-fatca-is-tax-treaty-override.html
Sunday, January 20, 2013
“Why FATCA is a Tax Treaty Override”
“I’ve been asked to explain comments I made in a recent talk about FATCA,
when I said that this regime constitutes a tax treaty override, and
that I don’t think that IGAs are a valid fix as a matter of law. Here is
my reasoning. I will use the US-Canada tax treaty as an example, but
the override applies to all US tax treaties currently in force. “………
As an aside, IBS Administrators, please remove the duplicate post at https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/blog-archive/comment-page-1/#comment-151218 put there in error!
Just me has had some numerous statements that IGA over-rides Everything. It could be Worth a post in itself.
Here are the three most recent from Allison…
Putting the Reign Back in Sovereign: Advice for the Second Obama Administration
Why FATCA is a Tax Treaty Override
Note on Enforcing the Long Arm of the Tax Law
See this summary of the meeting:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/files/tax-analysts.pdf
Citizenship taxation is not mentioned at all so I guess the organisers don’t consider it an important issue. But it does have this interesting quote regarding the effect of FATCA on the poorest countries:
@ Johnson, that is an interesting and very evident contradiction in US posturing re the saintly casting of FATCA as about ‘fairness’, and about catching criminals. If it was about ‘fairness’, then why a unilateral approach? Why all the threats and disproportionate punishment to make all other countries and institutions and people conform? All stick, no carrot. And if it was about ‘fairness’, then why not true US reciprocity? Because anything, anything at all that allows the US to corral all the chips in the game is good. Any chips that others retain is bad. Since the US is the only one to assert the right to tax anyone, anywhere, on any pretext, and extends that ‘right’ further than any other country, (even to those who have yet to be born to US citizens ‘abroad’) naturally, FATCA is meant to serve only US interests. As you say – if the poor countries are leaking taxable assets, and it is about fairness, then why is there nothing in FATCA for them?
To the US, the only ‘good’ secret bank accounts are US domestic ones – in Florida, Texas, Nevada, etc. Where US non-residents hide their money. The only good tax haven country is the US. The only good banks who money launder are US banks – ‘too big to fail’, and too big to prosecute.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/24/2816082/new-irs-rule-scares-foreign-depositors.html#storylink=cpy http://ctj.org/ctjinthenews/2012/11/pittsburghtribune-review_us_ranks_among_top_financial_secrecy_havens.php http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/frontline-the-untouchables-martin-smith-pbs_n_2529656.html http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/07/mexican-drug-cartels-and-the-us-banking-industry.html http://letstalkbooksandpolitics.blogspot.ca/2012/07/hsbc-too-big-to-fail-too-big-to.html
Likewise with all the US corporations incorporated in VP Biden’s
homestate of Delaware
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-corporate-tax-haven.html?pagewanted=all http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2011/02/18/exploring-the-role-delaware-plays-as-a-domestic-tax-haven/ A US corporation can keep its assets abroad, and not be taxed on them, but not an ordinary US person abroad. A US corporation can pay to lobby Washington and get heard, but not ordinary US person abroad. A US corporation can evade state taxes by incorporating in Delaware, but not ordinary people.
Not surprised that there was no mention of US citizenship-based taxation. It is the elephant in the room, and an official US religion – not ever to be challenged, and to be preserved at all cost against non-believers – and those non-believers are forced to obey the tenets despite the punitive effects. The punishment can obliterate all your post-tax legal savings – earned and held where you live – ‘abroad’ and already pay taxes in full to your non-US government.
Funny that the most fervent proponents of taxing all those outside the US borders, are the stateside citizens who aren’t abroad. As evinced everytime anyone from the US is challenged to justify it and its effects and conflicts as played out continually via the untenable situation of those defined as US ‘taxable persons’ living outside the US. It is a matter of faith, not reason. Unless the reason is simply US arrogance and ability to use power to do whatever it chooses.