Lynne has a superb and very timely article on Financial Post website today.
Dual Canadian-American citizens: We are not tax cheats
Check it out, and please contribute to the comments. You may recognize the sources of a couple of them.
I was born and educated in the US. After completing my post-graduate education, I entered Canada on a temporary work permit, moving to Canada because of the Vietnam war. Shortly after unpacking, I applied for landed immigrant status. A few months later I received in the mail an induction notice from the US Army; I drew a peace symbol on it in felt marker pen and mailed it back. As a result, I was indicted and a warrant was issued for my arrest (both were quashed in 1977 by the Carter amnesty).
I became a Canadian citizen in 1975. In 1976, for the US Bicentennial I wrote a political letter to Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State. In it I mentioned that I had "renounced" (I didn't then know of "relinquish") my US citizenship on becoming a Canadian, explaining in several pages my reasons for leaving the US. I also mentioned the fact that on my mother's side I am a descendant of a soldier who fought in Washington's army during the US rebellion, but now I was declaring my personal independence from the US and rejoining the British Commonwealth. Within six months, I received by mail a CLN recognizing my having expatriated myself from the US in 1975. I filed away my CLN and forgot I had it, until I found it after searching for it upon learning of FATCA and OVDI in August 2011. Since then, I proudly keep a photocopy of it with my passport (which is Canadian; I have never had a US passport in my life, nor will I ever).
As a Canadian who long since ceased being an American and who has a CLN, I am not directly affected by FATCA or other US taxation outrages. However, my wife and several of her friends are affected, until their relinquishment CLNs (dating from 30-40 years ago) are issued. Also I have several close friends who were born in Canada of US parents and are considered by the US to be US citizens, though they have never lived in the US, worked there, earned income there, held property there, held US passports, or in any other way excercised USC and are horrified they might be considered US. I am active on this website and in writing my elected Canadian politicians about these issues, on their behalf.
I am a retired former employee of the Government of Canada who faithfully and proudly served his adopted and adoptive country for many years.
Updated September 2, 2012: earlier this week, my wife finally received her relinquishment CLN, State Department formal recognition that (in their exact words on the CLN) she "ceased to be a US citizen on" the date she became a Canadian more than 35 years ago. Mission Accomplished, to borrow words from my least-favourite contemporary/contemptible American. I will continue to monitor this website from time to time to see if I contribute useful information or opinions, but my wife and I are determined to regain our lives after the past twelve months of angst. Best wishes to all of you on this website in your odyssey toward freedom from the US.
You may recognize the sources of a couple of them …
If I were David S Lesperance I would sue SeniorResearcher for copyright infringement 🙂
Very good Lynn! Thank you so much for continuing to write these wonderful articles.
@Watcher, Senior Researcher is off his rocker constantly making references to where people live etc and their personal info. I call that stalking and if I have to call it that again, I’ll be calling someone else.
I sent this out to my massive email lists!
If you are or know anyone who is a Canadian citizen who was:
* born in the USA
* born outside the USA with one or two American parent(s)
* lived in the USA for a number of years
* visited too long in the USA in any given year
* married to a US person
* share signing authority on an account with a US person
Please direct them to this:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/17/dual-canadian-american-citizens-we-are-not-tax-cheats/
Excellent article. I love how everyone in the comments section ignored SeniorResearcher, leaving his comments with no replies. Who IS he anyway?? He seems to be everywhere like a bad rash gone untreated.
Also sent to every MP.
Good idea Joe. Thank you.
Absolutely brilliant article. It’s being passed around on this side of the pond too because it applies to many many people outside of Canada as well.
Excellent. I guess the only information missing is the treatment of those people by the IRS to show the necessity of protecting them.
Yup. Excellent. Country name could be changed to anywhere. Catchy.
Hi Joe,
I hope you don’t mind, but I am borrowing your words to send the same message to all of my contacts, too.
@Marie
He is someone who seems extremely familiar with our blog and situations of particular commentors in particular. Seems to have an axe to grind. Maybe a previous, angry contributor here. May be impersonating Brockers on other forums. We started ignoring him after his vitriol on the Daily Caller article. If we’re so boring, one wonders why he is reading. Odd how he seems to know exactly where we are all posting, eh? 😉
@Marie, SeniorResearcher is an odious troll. Also inaccurately named — possibly ‘senior’ but no evidence whatsoever of ‘research’.
The reason SR know where we are all posting is because he spends as much time at IBS as we do. That is why all his writings are cuts and pastes from posts here from people such as David L. He cannot think of anything original to say other than to insult people.
I think we should all just keep ignoring him. His idiotic comments support our cause just fine as they are!
Sr comments: “I am still waiting for your call AtticusinJail .” Who do you call when your are in jail? . Perhaps our friend SR really is lawyer David L. Many of SR’s comments are David’s words copied and pasted from IBS.
@WhiteKat
In reference to the shots SR took at you and your physical appearance, for someone who likes to brag about himself, “handsome” wasn’t included in his list of attributes (speaks four languages, is uber intelligent and wealthy).
As far as suggesting you get reading glasses goes, looking at your picture it’s obvious he may also be a little challenged in the seeing department too.
Now imagine an ugly troll with really thick glasses 🙂 Have a nice day!
@All, I posted too many responses in the comments section of Andrew Quinlan’s article. That may not be good, but I think that the content of my posts are mostly civil, so I should probably be ok and the final result could be in our favor. My most controversial posts are probably the suggestion of terrorism being the motive for publishing personal information and that the hostility is the result of anti-Americanism.
If you point the mouse at a flame-bating post on Disqus, a flag will appear in the top right corner. The more that a personal attack is reported, the greater the probability will be that a moderator will take action, especially when nobody responded to the trolling.
The problem with responding to trolling is that one risks being accused of trolling. The whole purpose of trolling is to provoke a negative reaction that can be reported so that the opinion will be banned and thus censored.
Obviously, there are some interests who don’t want for us to be expressing our opinions, since they don’t help FATCA.
@Swisspinoy
SR’s behaviour as a cyber stalker and bully has not gone unnoticed on many forums.
I can’t see how someone can hope to vindicate themselves by condemning those who’ve been victimized in the same manner they have. Some people just take a while to get on the right side of an issue, but cause a lot of grief in the meantime.
@bubblebustin, with the mention of my name, the threats of getting me fired and all the insults and personal attacks, I was hoping that PRISM would pick up my mention of bombs and thereby get the attention of the FBI. But, so far nothing has happened, so either PRISM is collecting too much data, the FBI is to busy with crimes in America, the FBI is currently monitoring the situation, or nothing happens until we make the initiative.
However, I kind of like the status quo. If all the trolling, flame-bating, threats and harassments get deletedin response to reporting, then stateside Americans will have less evidence of FATCA becoming a fascist problem..
“Who do you call when your in jail” HILARIOUS! I didn’t even meet the requirement to have to file as told to me directly by the IRS so I highly doubt I’d be in any “jail” But let’s not get distracted by someone who isn’t interested in facts. SwissPinoy, frankly I think you were stalked.
Canadian business seems to be coming up with a story soon and the Wall St. Journal article should be out before too long.
Then there is the second Ottawa protest to focus on. Oh and you know regular daily life on top of it all. It’s a gorgeous day here. Going to gather tomatoes soon from the garden. Doing some volunteer work this evening with Autism society. Life goes on!
Speaking of Ottawa I hope everyone even remotely connected to Brock is okay today and all of your friends and family too. That train crash was certainly upsetting this morning. Take care all.
Since some are commenting about commenting, I’ll just mention that at least one (and probably all) of the senior FATCA researchers for the Canadian investment industry are frequently searching the web for stories about FATCA. Undoubtedly the intelligent comments and criticisms of FATCA are being noticed.
They realize that there will be resistance to FATCA implementation in Canada. Presumably the comments are being noticed by the responsible people at Finance and CRA as well.
So, you wonderful people who are putting a great deal of effort into your comments, congratulations.And, of course congratulations to Lynne and Victoria for writing and getting their items published..
Unless I’m blind, SR’s comments appear to have gone…
You’re not blind, bubblebustin. I missed the excitement until early this afternoon, when I visited the article and couldn’t see anything except two posts by him that were tagged “in moderation.” I opened them, and while they were clearly hostile they weren’t outright nasty or stupid the way the others sounded from various email threads I’ve seen. The moderators at FP have his number, anything he does goes into moderation now, and they’re obviously trying to figure out what to do with the ones still there or whether just to block him.
Best way to deal with trolls is to flag them for the moderators and then ignore them. Never respond to them, it’s a waste of time and energy even to bother. With luck they get frustrated and have a stroke. If you waste any more time than that on them, they’ve won, sort of. Like a spoiled child having a temper tantrum, only these folks haven’t grown past that stage emotionally. Or intellectually.
ding-dong the witch is dead!
Well done. Now if we could just get NYT to do the same: (Same troll’s there now, but pretending to be one of our dearest members: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/09/17/more-re-foreign-financial-institutions-how-the-banks-see-fatca/comment-page-1/#comment-542912 )
Joy and sorrow. My spouse just received the CLN (relinquishment) exactly 4 weeks after a consular visit in Calgary. So it is done. Many thanks to so many Brockers for advice and help, particularly Calgary 411, Petros and Just Me. Their advice led us in the right direction and gave us the right tools. Otherwise we would have followed US accounting, immigration and legal advice to ‘come clean’ which would have cost $40,000 in fees (their estimate) and the penalties associated with entering the OVDI which in our case would have ranged anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 not counting losses associated with cashing in taxable funds to get the cash. The impact on our modest nest egg would have been devastating. But Brockers saved the day and gave freely, unbiased and accurate advice which was confirmed very step of the way. So our sincere gratitude to all. We had originally thought of going the OVDI route in 2011. We were in a panic. But we waited, discovered IBS. Glad we did not ‘get on with it’ as we were advised to do. We found the legal and accounting advice we got to be shallow and biased. So there is some Joy but also sadness on the part of my spouse on losing US citizenship. There have been tears. Hopefully time will heal. It would be ironic if the whole FATCA effort collapsed. Doubt that it will. Again, thanks to all.