Not to steal these gals thunder, but wanted to post this as soon as I saw it this morning.
From Accounting Today…
I would only add one thing to this excellent piece. When they write about complexity, this new release from Treasury had not yet come out…
Correcting Amendments to the FATCA Regulations will be Released Today
I almost feel sorry for the FATCA administrators in the Compliance Complex trying to keep up with the layering of complexity. I have a feeling this will not be the only amendment that will be issued. What will happen when the OECD global GATCA is added to this and the natural conflicts that will occur? I doubt they will just take FATCA and all its regulations as the sole model for what they want. The complexity has just begun.
As Roger says, weighed down with all these regs, “Is FATCA really ever going to be able to lift its wings and fly?”
Congratulations on both fronts Victoria! I hope the jet lag passes quickly because the world isn’t giving you much down time after returning home, is it?
Wow!
Some of you may wish to take a look at this. Nothing new really but just the latest boilerplate coming out of the banks.
http://www.clhia.ca/domino/html/clhia/CLHIA_LP4W_LND_Webstation.nsf/page/AA9AAA94554C6C1C85257BE20067E722/$file/CLHIA%20Customer%20FATCA%20Q&A%20-%20July%2012.pdf
ok. 10 submissions to go.
@Tim,
In other words, an IGA is imminent. All the financial institution know this.
@All,
It is time for a large protest. I would suggest a separate post here at IBS to gather list of people who will participate. Lets do it now BEFORE the IGA is announced,
Way to go all – Blaze and Victoria!
and still in a daze from the very courageous Atticus and WhiteKat!
Hard to keep up with all the developments and news at IBS. Never dared to imagine this in the very darkest days.
@Tim,
Thank you. Everyone should read that and send to the CCLA, the Green Party, CARP and their MPs. That document, plus this sample section provides the smoking gun to illustrate how FATCA affects ALL Canadian citizens and residents :
http://www.clhia.ca/domino/html/clhia/CLHIA_LP4W_LND_Webstation.nsf/page/AA9AAA94554C6C1C85257BE20067E722/$file/CLHIA%20Customer%20FATCA%20Q&A%20-%20July%2012.pdf
CLHIA Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association
‘Information for Clients on the Canada-U.S. Information
Exchange Agreement to Improve Cross-Border Tax
Compliance’
Draft July 12
The following information is for clients of Canadian life insurance companies to help you
understand how the Canada-U.S. Information Exchange Agreement (the “Agreement”) to improve cross-
border tax compliance, which is expected to be signed before July 1, 2014, could affect you. If you have
further questions, please contact your financial institution or tax advisor………..
Q.12 “I am purchasing a joint policy. Are
both joint owners required to
provide additional documentation?
Yes, both owners must provide required information. (Joint
accounts with at least one U.S. Person as an owner are treated
as a U.S. account and the entire account is treated as held by
the U.S. Person and subject to the reporting requirements for
accounts owned by U.S. Persons.)
Q13 If a joint policy is held by a U.S.
Person and a non-U.S. Person, is
the policy considered 50% U.S. or
100% U.S.?
Joint accounts with at least one U.S. Person as an owner are
treated as a U.S. account and the entire account is treated as
held by the U.S. Person and subject to the reporting
requirements for accounts owned by U.S. Persons…”
Not only isn’t FATCA about …”… foreign 1099’s on American offshore accounts of a “small number of individuals and companies” ….,
Right, if only FATCA was just about simple interest generated on traditional bank accounts. Which for the most part would already have been mostly from post-tax wages, with any interest reported automatically to our home resident country tax agency, and taxed accordingly where we actually live.
FATCA extends to many kinds of institutions and assets that aren’t even banks, accounts that aren’t even currently accessible, or earnings and payouts that are prospective and contingent on future events – like insurance and RESP plans.
@badger, yes a “small” number. Here in Canada with one million U.S. persons and all our family this likely is three to four million people and upwards of that. This is not even including the rest of the entire world.
“small number”
@White Kat, you know my name can go on the list of any protest. You know these talks have gone on behind closed doors and an “announcement” is to be made to us. To me this means you are not part of the process much. Yes, we sent letters, yes they read them but, the big players at the table were banks, the U.S.G. and other governments. We were swept away.
If Canada is going to have to change it’s laws to go along with this I just cannot believe our government would fold on that. I really cannot.
@Tim,
Is this enough to start a class action lawsuit?
@WhiteKat: No.
@ brockers …………in awe of Victoria’s article.how fab
http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/FATCA-Losing-Way-68007-1.html
can only support the efforts all and everyway. waiting for the 250K USps in UK/London to “wake up, smell the coffee and RE-ACT to this gross invastion of their families’ financial privacy and human rights…………….
Bless
It some aspects FATCA reminds me of the nearly-extinct specie of birds: The condor. It is a massive bird with a wing-span of up to 12 feet that, like a vulture, only eats the flesh of dead animals. About 10 years ago together with my wife we went to Peru to see with our own eyes one of the last remaining colonies of Condors in the world. We flew to Arequipa, in southern Peru and then stared out on a day’s journey by jeep over dirt roads deep into the Andes, well above the tree line where there glaciers abound, the air is very thin and saw them with our own eyes looking down into a deep valley where they have their nests. The official estimate is that only about 80 of them remain. .They hardly move their wings but carried by the winds they come out flying with the rising sun to float back and forth, with eyes peeled for animals breathing their last breath so they can swoop down and devour their remains starting at the very moment they breath no more. In just minutes their bones are stripped clean as the condors tear away their flesh.
So it is with FATCA, hanging like a Condor over the American citizen abroad who has been mortally wounded by citizenship-based taxation by FBAR penalties, back taxes and interest charges, just waiting to swoop in and devour anything that remains.
Very vivid description Roger….
So it is with FATCA, hanging like a Condor over the American citizen abroad who has been mortally wounded by citizenship-based taxation, by FBAR penalties, back taxes and interest charges, just waiting to swoop in and devour anything that remains.
I bet Em can make a haiku out of that!
it is important to remind everyone regardless of citizenship that the US program of CBT is really
extra-territorial taxation. The US, by virtue of what it deems to be ”US persons” residing in our countries, claims a right to levy taxes on our gross domestic product. Money paid in taxes to the US, paid to US based tax preparers or invested in the US to simplify taxes and asset reporting is extracted from our local economies
never to return. It means less local investment, less domestic growth, less local spending and tax revenue from our consumption taxes. Loss tax revenues must be recouped by raising local taxes. Everybody pays for the US extra-territorial tax policy regardless of any US connection.
Highly propagandized tax evasion programs,FBAR and FATCA, are thinly veiled data gathering schemes.
The reporting indicia mean that many non-USP financial information will be sent to the US, subject to
to the widest possible circulation among various US agencies.
@Patricia, your points were made with those who approached us at the protest wanting to know more. All new comers who never really heard of this before. We stressed how this affects everyone, not just Canadians of U.S. birth.
@Patrica, Right you are….. and just to provide the link again (in case someone doesn’t have it) This is good ole Uncle Carl Levin making exactly that point. Pages 10 and 11, Item 7
https://bitly.com/a/search/CArl%20levin
I know what my placard will read:
FATCA: America’s Trojan Horse
@Just Me
Link isn’t working for me………
@Victoria and Lynne,
Am in awe of your writing and your trailblazing. Bravo!
For Roger and Just Me …
FATCA Condor swoops
To rip the rotting flesh off
The C.B.T. corpse.
I never thought I’d be writing a second haiku, let alone a first.
After reading the link http://www.clhia.ca/domino/html/clhia/CLHIA_LP4W_LND_Webstation.nsf/page/AA9AAA94554C6C1C85257BE20067E722/$file/CLHIA%20Customer%20FATCA%20Q&A%20-%20July%2012.pdf
notice how easily and off the tip of the tongue the word ‘renounce’ is used. Well, the solution is easy, just ‘renounce’. Those of us who follow this closely will also recall how the IRS and Treasury also now, and rather easily, offer renunciation as the final solution. If you don’t like it then renonuce is becoming the standard answer – not that the system does not make sense, causes huge hardships, and is unnecessarily complex so let’s change it.
Em….
I knew you were up for it…
@Tricia
I am not at my regular computer right now, I will check. It should open to a PDF file, but if not, I will reload later…
Fact is, Steve Klaus, we’re worth more to them that way. Am I too cynical to suggest that $450 a pop is pretty good considering that’s more than a lot of homelanders pay in tax?
@Steve Klaus
“The final solution” Was that choice of words intentional?
It seems to me that the basic question here is not whether or not people “renounce”–it is about the enforcement of US laws on Canadian soil. In my opinion Canada should take the risk of the US actually following through on the 30% penalty rather than force US law on Canadians resident in Canada. If Canada fails to stand up to this then there is nothing to stop the USG a couple years more down the road from imposing its laws AND the 30% penalty on Canada.