Monthly Archives: October 2013

A reader of Isaac Brock sent me the following letter:

Dear CBA:

It’s time for your organization to start standing up for your customers on this issue. You can do much more than encourage the Government to sign onto an egregious foreign governments demand (IGA) to throw Canadian sovereignty out the window to simply protect your members bottom lines.

There comes a time when every person and or organization has to take a principled stand and now is that time for your organization. When the government of Canada says no to signing onto an IGA, which would be tantamount to political suicide, it’s going to land squarely in your court. Are you going to compromise the rights of your loyal customers to respond to what amounts to IRS extortion? Do you think your members and shareholders would support a strong, principled, well funded resistance? Absolutely, once they know the facts. Get the facts out there. Spend some of our money edifying people on this issue. Use the press, use your members resources like the annual rational for increasing fee structures.

It is what it is: The school yard bully wants your lunch money. How do we instruct our kids to handle bully’s? Bully’s don’t expect a fight. It’s time you guys gave them one. It’s time you guys gave something meaningful back to your loyal customers and helped the government of Canada on this issue. Stand up and show some courage and initiative.

I’ll be the first one in line to sign onto a class action if any of my banks ask me where I was born. I’m a Canadian ….end of story.

Sincerely,

[Name withheld by request]

I am delighted to report that Jim Jatras has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all US documentation of negotiations between the governments of Canada, Switzerland and the UK and the US for a FATCA IGA.

We can’t get information like this in Canada from an Access to Information request, because more than 30 years ago Parliament, in the enabling legislation, excluded from access all intergovernmental correspondence and related files. Not necessarily so in the US, it seems. And if we can get our hands on this information, no matter how long it takes, we can and will distribute this to the opposition parties and our media.

So, Jim Flaherty and the CBA, if you’re watching — if you aren’t playing fair ball and protecting Canada’s sovereignty, banking and privacy laws and the Charter rights of ALL Canadian citizens and legal residents, we will find out. And if you weren’t playing fair, you will pay the price and it will be your legacy.

Think about that very carefully. Be careful what you wish for and what you sign.

You’ve been warned.

Thank you Jim Jatras!  We owe you, at least a great Canadian brew, if you’re ever in town!

Continue reading →

Please click on the link for the press release.  This is a separate post in order to make it accessible outside of the long thread.

Protest News Release

The October 12 print edition of the prestigious international and widely-read weekly UK journal, The Economist, has this article about FATCA, also on this web link

The Economist: Expats and tax — Loopy Tax Rules Spur Expats to Renounce their American Citizenship: Overtaxed and over there

Good and balanced article. So much for the Treasury’s Stack of Lies. It will be impossible for the US to ignore this one.

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving, everyone! (Not you, Stack and Obama …)

I don’t see anything yet posted here on Lynne and Victoria’s latest published works so I’ll take the opportunity to pass it along so it can be quoted elsewhere, From Tax-News, Global Tax News: Lynne Swanson and Victoria Ferauge and their “FATCA Reality Check”.

Thanks once again, Victoria and Lynne.

I sent this to Contact Tax-News.com ( enquiries@tax-news.com ):

I cannot find any way to add comments, but I can’t let go by my responsibility to thank you for publishing: FATCA Reality Check, contributed by Lynne Swanson and Victoria Ferauge, October 09, 2013.

This is such an important issue. There needs to be a voice for the approximately 7 million US Persons Abroad as they do not have the numbers, the organization or the money behind them that the FATCA compliance industry does, ramped up to help steamroll people who are absolutely not criminals in its quest to find US tax evaders.

None of us (most of whom are regular middle-class residents and citizens of other countries and who pay our full taxes to the countries that give us our benefits – with Residence-Based Taxation) are against the purpose of FATCA. We are appalled that the US hangs onto Citizenship-Based Taxation, their cash cow reaping reward with outrageous penalties, not actual taxes owed to the US. That the US will not change to Residence-Based Taxation as that of the rest of the world (save Eritrea and the US) tells the US immoral story of FATCA. The tax evaders the US is looking for actually reside within the borders of the US and send their untaxed funds offshore. It is not rocket science to understand this.

Thank you for publishing “FATCA Reality Check” by Lynne Swanson and Victoria Ferauge and providing their voice for US Persons Abroad, many of whom do not yet know how they will be affected; i.e. “It can’t possibly affect me; I am not a tax evader.” Education and advocacy for these people is so needed. Thank you for doing your part.

Regards,
“calgary411″
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2013/10/08/FATCA-seminar-hears-of-stiff-penalties/

Acknowledging the welter of detail and difficulties in the law, part of 2010’s Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, Mr. Cantor said the only people that like FATCA are lawyers and accountants.

“From the perspective of a U.S. international tax attorney, we love FATCA for four reasons: complexity; uncertainty, with all the changes since 2010; change, with all the amendments and reforms to the law; and fear-mongering,” Mr. Cantor said.

“One man told me it was the end of Western civilization as we know it,” Mr. Cantor said, explaining that “No, FATCA is aimed at foreign financial institutions and other financial intermediaries to prevent tax evasion by U.S. citizens and residents through use of offshore accounts.”

Audible despair gripped the hundreds of audience members when Mr. Cantor described eight IRS and Treasury Department forms required by the agency, followed by another five that might be needed.

Penalties are stiff for not filing, he said. For example, falsifying or failing to submit Treasury Department Form 90-22.1 could draw a $500,000 fine and up to 10 years for in prison. Tax evasion, he said, is liable to a $250,000 fine and up to five years. Failing to file a tax return attracted a $100,000 fine and up to one year imprisonment.

Following the presentation, Mr. Cantor, alongside Mr. McTaggart and KPMG partner and “head of tax” Doug Harrell, heard an hour of eager audience questions, most related to complex personal circumstances.

Mr. Cantor told one interlocutor that renouncing U.S. citizenship is unlikely to be effective: “First, you have to have another passport before you can do that. You cannot be stateless.”

An “exit tax” would also apply, he said, describing a law that “started when a certain resident here [Cayman] came from Belize.” Someone seeking to expatriate themselves, he said, could be forced to sell their assets, relinquish any trusts and pay state taxes.

“Until the State Department gives you a certificate [of expatriation], you cannot relinquish your passport, not until all your taxes are paid.”