Monthly Archives: December 2013

garbo999 suggests this as a separate post. Good idea!!

Sorry for this thread hijack but I have a comment about a Bloomberg article from yesterday. Perhaps this might be worth a separate thread? Accidental Tax Break Saves Wealthiest Americans $100 Billion

The article describes how Congress created a complex law targeting a certain class of the population to make them pay more tax. However, the rich folks who were targeted simply hired expensive lawyers to get around the law. Realizing that the same rich folks take frequent advantage of their 1st Amendment-mandated right to bribe Congress as they see fit, Congress refuses to modify the law.

garbo999 asks:

Anyone see the same future for FATCA? The rich tax dodgers will find myriad ways to escape FATCA while of course all the massive negative effects of FATCA for the little guy will remain in place (not to mention the billions that non-US financial institutions must spend to implement this lunacy as well as the loss of respect that goes with shoving a law down the throat of every other country in the world with an obviously false promise of reciprocity).

A related link at bloomberg: Wealthy N.Y. Residents Escape Tax With Trusts in Nevada

The United States federal officials demonstrate their lack of respect for the rest of the world:

India Is Furious Over US Strip Search Of Diplomat Facing Fraud Charges

The “fraud charges” consist of this:

US authorities say she not only paid a domestic servant a fraction of the minimum wage but also lied in a visa application for the employee, an Indian national who has since absconded.

Blaze has written a FATCA Christmas letter and Wish List to Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who is actively “negotiating” an IGA with the U.S. This was originally posted on Maple Sandbox http://maplesandbox.ca/2013/fatca-christmas-letter-to-jim-flaherty/#comments and is now posted here on Brock:

Dear Minister Flaherty:

You and your Conservative colleagues have again confirmed Santa’s Canadian citizenship. But, do you know the United States is also claiming Santa as theirs?!? They insist he lives in Alaska—despite his red and white suit and his HOH OHO postal code in Canada’s North Pole.

This is typical of the Americans. They are determined to turn as many people in the world as they can into “US persons.” So they snoop around like kids before Christmas, trying to find loot for U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service.

Don’t let the Americans claim Santa. Don’t let them claim up to one million other Canadians and their families either.

We are as Canadian as Santa. Perhaps even more so because many of us swore an Oath of Allegiance to Canada.

So, I’m sending you this holiday letter to tell you what is on our Christmas wish list (see attached).

We hope you will give us a joyous Christmas by granting our holiday wishes.  If you do, we wish you and your colleagues a very Merry Christmas.

If you don’t, you will subject us to a third Christmas with the IRS Grinch and FATCA Monster threatening to run away with our private financial information on our Canadian earned, saved, invested and taxed money. In that case, we can only wish you a lump of coal in your stocking.

We have been very, very good Canadians. Please don’t be naughty and give away our rights to a foreign government.

Lynne Swanson
 Maple Sandbox
 (e-mail address was provided)

HERE IS THE WISH LIST THAT WAS ATTACHED:

1.  Protection from the IRS Grinch who is threatening our honest lives in Canada with his partner the FATCA Monster.

2.  An assurance from you that all Canadian citizens have the same rights regardless of where they were born.

3.  A statement from you that Canadian banks must follow Canadian laws.

4.  A promise from you that Canadian banking, privacy and human rights laws will not be changed for a foreign government.

5.  Respect from you and the Conservative government for Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

6.  A reply to the Open Letter that Maple Sandbox and Isaac Brock Society sent to you exactly one month before Christmas asking a simple question: Do all Canadians have the same rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

7.  A reply to Order Paper Questions from Liberal MPs Ted Hsu and Scott Brison.

8.  Assertion of Canadian sovereignty over Canadian laws and Santa’s home in the Arctic.

9.  An announcement that Canada says “NO” to a FATCA IGA that compromises our rights.

10.  A Happy 2014 free of demands from a foreign government.

http://maplesandbox.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/FATCA-Christmas-Letter-and-Wish-List.pdf

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20131211/lead/lead71.html

The Canadian government surely is not going to sit by and see its neighbour collect billions from its citizens living abroad and do nothing. So while Canada doesn’t have its own FATCA yet, it does have a FATCA-like system that went into high gear earlier this year after the budget was read.

The country is trying to collect money from the many Canadians living abroad and Canadian residents.

In the 2013 budget, the Canadian government instituted a new requirement for certain financial intermediaries to report to the Canadian Revenue Agency – the Canadian equivalent of the American IRS – all electronic funds transfers of $10,000 or more, and instituted a new whistle-blowing programme to stop international tax evasion.

As part of the new initiative, Canada has foreign-income verification reporting for 2013. If a Canadian who is resident in Canada owns the cumulative property, in excess of $100,000, at any time during the year, they must declare it. Failure to do so will result in a fine of $25 per day.

The properties that the Canadian government is interested in are: bank accounts, shares in foreign corporations, shares of Canadian corporation on deposits with foreign brokers, debts owed by non-residents, interest in partnership that hold specified foreign property, interest in foreign mutual fund, foreign lands and building and tangible and intangible properties located outside Canada.

FATCA is one of the most far-reaching tax laws that was ever envisioned by any government. Its effects are deadly and will surely reduce tax evasions, by not just Americans, but citizens of other nations, as we can see many countries, such as the UK and Canada, are adopting some FATCA-like model to improve their budgets, from money that may be offshore.

While some people in the United States Congress believe FATCA should be repealed, that is unlikely to happen, given the amount of money that the IRS has collected since FATCA became law in 2010.

The following are ramblings as I wonder the group most represented here, those who are so ‘gobsmacked’ and talk about their similar reactions after their OMG moments and the reality of what the U.S. requires of them.

This largest group of us seems to be:

– 50 years and up,
– generally financially responsible, and
– ALL here, completely tax compliant where we live.

This experience for us has dispelled ALL our beliefs and assumptions, ALL of them. What an awakening, our OMG moments.

This experience is so hard for this group of people to deal with. As people who have tried to follow the rules, we don’t comprehend how we are being most hurt. We see our lives being destroyed at the hand of the country we once believed in. We are at the end of the building of our lives and planning for leaving something to our offspring. We also have the burden of realizing (as most of us didn’t know) we have passed onto our children a U.S. citizenship — an automatic gift, rather than a claim to a U.S. citizenship from their birth to parent(s) who had been born in and lived in the U.S. for a requisite number of years. We feel a whole lot of guilt about that — and our children are actually the other group most affected by the realization of U.S. tax and reporting responsibilities. For them (and for us, their parents), it is almost incomprehensible. Continue reading →