This is a very good interview which covers a wide range of relevant issues.
Monthly Archives: January 2014
US Tax by default: Matt Galloway, CBC Radio Toronto
US Tax By Default
Galloway interviews a certain Gwen (no last name to protect the innocent).
When it rains it pours.
#FATCA facts: @cbcamber What Canadians need to know about new U.S. tax law – affects unsuspecting CANADIANS
Two very good articles from Amber Hildebrandt of CBC.
Article 1 – Introducing FATCA
#FATCA facts: What Canadians need to know about new U.S. tax law http://t.co/fOP2hnCPo5 – Decent article from CBC that conveys the danger!
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 13, 2014
The article referenced in the above tweet, by Amber Hildebrandt, is good because it IS NOT focused on U.S. citizens in Canada. The focus is more on Canada and Canadians! This is a welcome relief and an indication that, slowly the media is beginning to realize what FATCA really is.
Excerpts include:
Who is affected by this law?
The short answer is almost every Canadian. It is expected to cost banks substantial amounts of money to implement the systems required to find residents with U.S. connections, costs the banks may well pass along to all their clients.
Some estimate it could cost $100 million for each financial institution.
Those directly affected by the law include dual citizens, Canadians with Green Cards and some snowbirds who spend considerable time in the U.S.
Article 2 – The Absurdity of Citizenship-based taxation
CBC News re FATCA and Unsuspecting Canadians, “calgary411” interviewed
CBC News: US FATCA Law Catches Unsuspecting Canadians in Its Crosshairs
Update January 16, 2014: Comments to this CBC News article are now closed.
I have sent a thank you to CBC reporters who interviewed me.
From: caroltapanila
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2014 9:03 AM
To: Amber Hildebrandt, CBC ; James Fitz-Morris
Cc: Prime Minister Stephen Harper ; Kevin.Shoom@fin.gc.ca ; Michelle.Rempel@parl.gc.ca ; Kevin.Shoom@fin.gc.ca
Subject: Another thank you for the awareness you’ve provided the Canadian public…
Amber and James,
I see that comments are closed for the CBC News article with so many comments. I thank the commenters who supported me and the persons who tried to answer questions and educate on what is happening with US FATCA law coming across our border. I hope that many now realize it is the US’s citizenship-based taxation that makes it possible for the US to leech funds from US Persons in Canada, their Canadian government and each Canadian taxpayer.
More and more will be underlined the absurdity and the unfairness of all of this but that will not be resolution. Some (like my for my son and others whose “foreign” identification will not show a US place of birth, MAY HE FORGIVE ME FOR HAVING SOLD HIM OUT, although his “foreign financial accounts” are identified in the Foreign Bank Account Reports that I’ve “complied with” and sent to the US). It will be that some can be more easily nabbed and put through the wringer of the injustice of FATCA combined with US citizenship-taxation than others. None of this will be equitable and none of it should be as US Person “ignorance” allows criminalization by the US.
With the coverage you have interviewed us for and CBC has provided, I hope that more in Canada have learned of the powerful club the US has with its citizenship-based taxation – and, in my family’s case, that a smaller segment ARE ENTRAPPED, no two ways about that. The US could do something about this. It appears they will not. I’m not holding my breath. And, I am in despair that the other governments of the world can not show some strength and solidarity in saying NO to FATCA that reaps so much collateral damage for their own people.
As has been said by others, and I agree, in regard to the “streamlined compliance”:
But why the hell SHOULD anyone have to? And if they don’t for whatever reason – whether they don’t qualify, or they don’t hear about until its too late, or they don’t want to – then all bets are off, and IRS can penalize them to their hearts content. Finance Minister Flaherty has expressed approval (given blessing to?) the Streamlined program.; this presumes that Canadians with a US status SHOULD make all efforts to become compliant with USA’s immoral citizenship based taxation laws.
I will support all US Persons in whatever choices they have to make for themselves and their families. Yes, we all have to make our own choices. We still hold out some hope that our Canadian government will say no to FATCA. We still want to know from our government if ALL Canadians have the same rights, no matter where they were born, their discrimination by “nationality”.
Even the thought of the US being able to tax gains in our very Canadian personal residence sales that Canada does not makes me want to scream.
So, again, I want to thank Gwen for helping get the CBC coverage better rolling and you two for so respectfully interviewing me. Because of you, there are others in Canada now aware and starting their own research so they can eventually make decisions for themselves and their own families. US Persons in Canada and around the world are so scattered. It is unfortunate that we are not one big US Person group that could go out in solidarity to express the outrage we feel about yet more US collateral damage, this time us!
We have all have a hurt of this betrayal that in no way will ever be erased. It is helping me to have spoken out.
Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity.
Carol Tapanila
PS: I would love the opportunity to reach the person who commented about her, in this instance profoundly disabled son, who will be affected. Above all, I am glad that I reached her in this story but I am unable to tell her that – unless she was able to sift through the many comments to see my tardy reply to her. Continue reading
Bank OVDP has expanded to Israel
According to the latest news, Americans with Israeli bank accounts could face troubling tax season, the Swiss “Program” is now being forced upon Israel. Citizens of Israel living in Israel are now being pressured or forced into OVDP so that their retirement savings can be cleaned up by attorneys and US money grabs.
Here are some interesting clippings from the article which ring a bell:
- The banks are revealing the data because they are participating in a special program with the U.S. Department of Justice in order to avoid criminal prosecution themselves
- Americans with Israeli bank accounts may be in for a financial nightmare in just several months if they haven’t filed their taxes properly.
- Americans are able to take advantage of the Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) for people who have violated the law.
- Americans with Israeli bank accounts really need to talk to an attorney
- OVDP is to give individuals who really did not know about the law a chance to make good, and to get people back into compliance and back into the system
National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson, is being ignored.
Updated Analysis and Comment on New Zealand’s Stealth #FATCA Enabling Legislation
We have been following the New Zealand FATCA IGA developments via several IBS threads. Many of these are listed here for your historical reference.
Much of the information has been provided to us by Kiwi Osgood who comments here on IBS from time to time. We are indebted to him for his dogged pursuit of this issue where FATCA is even less known than it is in America or Canada. Although some Americans must be getting the word, as Phil Hogden reports increased renunciation activity in Auckland.
Osgood has been diligently communicating with the IRD and NZ Revenue Minister, as their ‘FATCA working group’ is doing the negotiation with U.S. Treasury. He has now completed an analysis of the legislation over the Christmas holidays (rotten way to spend a vacation) which will follow after the jump.
In summary he says of the Stealth:
The conclusion is depressing. I think I now see why they are putting the legislation through before the IGA has been signed. The legislation is generic and simply compels NZFIs to comply with “foreign account information sharing agreements”. The contents of those agreements are not considered by the legislation. Essentially the IGAs can be signed by cabinet without further legislation. As the US IGA is still “under negotiation” a casual observer may assume that the contents are still being worked out, but as we know that is not the case. How many people will actually bother to go and look at the Model 1 IGA and look at the detail? It is all quite clever and deceitful.
Read the complete analysis below:
‘US persons’ living outside USA are ALL a bunch of Rich Tax Evaders, regardless what Nina says!
Remember all those infuriating comments to articles over the last couple years, where we tried to respond and explain to the ‘homelanders’ that ‘US slaves’ (err I mean ‘US persons’) living outside the USA, are not the tax evading, rich expats that the IRS, and the US media, often make make us out to be.
Well, here is another one, and judging by the misinformed comments, it desperately needs some Brockers to set the message straight, once again – yes I know it is getting very old! And just when we are getting a lot of positive media attention.
Thanks to JustMe for posting the link to this article. I thought it deserved a post of its own, and hope some articulate Brockers will respond to the dumba$$ comments (34 last time I checked).
IRS top cop says the agency is too hard on offshore tax dodgers
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/09/irs-offshore-accounts/?goback=%2Egmr_3694878#%21
US Recognition of FATCA Problems: from Nina Olson, US IRS Taxpayer Advocate, as well as the US Chamber of Commerce
Shadow Raider (and others like NotThatTara, badger, bubblebustin, Em, NotThatLisa) have referenced the US National Taxpayer Advocate Report to Congress, so here is my slow uptake to posting for IBS. IRSCompliant has posted at Maple Sandbox: Maple Sandbox re US Taxpayer Advocate Report to US Congress — with reference to NDP Murray Rankin Letter to Finance Minister James Flaherty
From Shadow Raider:
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson released her 2013 Report to Congress yesterday. As always, she included sections on international taxpayers and OVDP, and this time also one on FATCA.
As a bonus, Schubert posted there re US Chamber of Commerce, January 9, 2014: The Next Obamacare? FATCA Roll Out Flounders: US Chamber of Commerce Joins TAS in Dumping on FATCA
I quote from Schubert:
Unless our Finance Minister has taken leave of his senses, which I think extremely unlikely, I no longer think we’ll see a Canada-US IGA any time soon, if ever. With heavy-hitters like these in the US saying “wait a minute, what the hell are you doing and why?” why should Canada or any other country leap into an IGA with the US to sign onto something that seems to look like might actually get derailed or gutted PDQ.
Remember that previous US ambassador to Canada who, back in the Fall of 2011, advised everyone to “sit tight?” That’s starting to look like supremely good advice for many so-called US persons, especially “accidental” (I prefer “inadvertent” or “unwilling”) so-called Americans living in Canada (the parallels to Ted Cruz aka “border babies”). Let’s just wait and see how this train wreck is going to unfold now.
If I were one of that handful of countries that leapt into bed with the IRS via an IGA, or an FFI that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on compliance mechanisms, I think I’d start to feel a bit foolish (and very hard-done-by) right about now. And if I were a compliance maven with visions of fat fees from terrified offshore alleged Americans dancing in his/her head, I think I’d see those visions turning to mush.
We don’t want to count our chickens before they’re hatched, but maybe it’s time to take a deep breath, ignore the Chicken Littles in the compliance industry, “sit tight” and watch with fascination what seems more and more like a FATCA train wreck.
Nice news for a wintery Friday, anyway. Happy New Year, everyone.
May it be a happier New Year as we see more awareness of the disaster that FATCA will be, combined with US citizenship-based taxation. Let’s hope for change of the false equation being used to apprehend real tax evaders on the backs of all those who will be collateral damage, ruining so many non-aware families and individuals, leeching money from other sovereign country economies and not at all conducive to paying down US debt or enhancing how the US is seen by the rest of the world.
More than 3,100 Americans renounced citizenship last year – FBI
Thanks to Badger for digging this up. She comments on a Must Read at Global News:
Global News, has an updated story on the rising US expatriation figures – and this is by the author Patrick Cain who compares the numbers in the Federal Register ‘name and shame’ list to the FBI numbers for those – (see specific category for ex-citizens) precluded from owning firearms.
http://globalnews.ca/news/1072303/over-3100-americans-renounced-citizenship-last-year-fbi/
January 10, 2014 9:30 am
More than 3,100 Americans renounced citizenship last year: FBI
By Patrick Cain
Cain references and links to the letter by constitutional lawyer Peter Hogg to the Finance Minister re his concerns about the serious issues with signing a FATCA IGA, and also notes yesterday’s release of Nina Olson IRS Taxpayer Advocate 2013 Report to Congress. The author provide a link to the report, and quotes the TAS: “……On Thursday, a report released by the U.S. National Taxpayer Advocate strongly criticized FATCA in a report to Congress, saying the costs exceed projected revenue, the law creates sovereigntyconflicts with other countries – using Canada as an example – and the IRS’s computer systems aren’t ready to handle such a complex project.
“[The] IRS has not acted upon advice it has received from some well-informed stakeholders,” Nina Olsen warned in the report. “FATCA carries with it the potential for substantial resource burdens and significant due process concerns.””
It’s Not Your Imagination. The US Really is Trying to Keep You Out.
A recent article in Bloomberg highlighted the reason behind the dwindling tourism in the United States from other countries – the horrendous application for travel visas.
And while it is an interesting read, I found myself far more interested in the email conversation that followed on The Daily Dish with readers sharing their take and experiences on applying for visas and re-entering the US.
A couple of comments stood out. The first from The Dish’s author, a UK citizen who lives in the US as a permanent resident:
Most Dishheads are American citizens, so they don’t fully see what it is like to enter the US as a non-citizen. It’s a grueling, off-putting, frightening, and often brutal process.
And another from a US citizen who lives overseas on what it is like to merely visit family:
I’m a US citizen who has lived outside of the US since 1998. My least favourite country to travel to is the US. While I’m sure that my experience is not as brutal as yours or as others who apply for visas, it can also be brutal for US citizens going home.
A year ago at Christmas my family (my wife and daughter are also American) was traveling home to be with our extended family. The border agent – I think this was at LAX – after asking us many questions about where we worked and what we did then asked us why we were coming to America. I wanted to tell him to fuck off as it was none of his business why I wanted to come home to my own country. Of course all I could do was smile and answer or else suffer the pain of being pulled into an interrogation room for hours. Previously to this he’d subtly changed our answers and repeated the same question back to us to try and catch us out as he appeared to assume we were lying.
Most of us have stories or know someone who has a story about the paranoid and sometimes semi-Gestapo attitudes of US Custom and Border officials, and yes, this is a bit off the FATCA wagon, but with about 81% of countries around the world required to have a visa before visiting the USA, how long can it be before no one does anymore? And when even being a citizen of the US isn’t enough to keep you from being a suspect simply because you chose to live elsewhere, tell me why again that the US is allowed to dictate the domestic policy of other sovereign nations? Nations that the US clearly thinks little of if they treatment of those nations citizens is any criteria by which to judge them.