Politico’s Rachel Bade reports on the renewed efforts by Carl Levin and John McCain to pressure Senator Rand Paul into ratifying a long-delayed 2009 Swiss-U.S. Protocol that would allow the release of even more names of U.S. account holders at Swiss banks. As Bade reports in this excerpt,
Paul, a libertarian Republican widely believed to be eyeing a 2016 presidential run, says his hold stems from concerns about Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable search and seizure.”
“These are people that are alleged, not convicted of doing anything wrong,” Paul said a few weeks ago. “I don’t think you should have everybody’s information from their bank. There should be some process: accusations and proof that you’ve committed a crime.”
Paul’s protest is also linked to his abhorrence of the soon-to-take-effect Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which will force foreign banks to disclose U.S. account information to the IRS, and domestic banks to reciprocate to other nations’ revenue departments.
A Treasury official recently told Paul’s staff that FATCA “doesn’t work” without the treaties — though there seems to be disagreement on that point, even in the executive branch.
That sent up red flags anew to Paul because the senator has legislation to repeal FATCA and hesitates to support a treaty that enables a law he views as U.S. government overreach.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/rand-paul-tax-swiss-banks-104148.html#ixzz2usQjnrMo
This article could really use some commentary from Brockers – I encourage everyone to get over there. This is Politico, and it’s a great chance to educate some more of those “rich tax cheats sitting on the beach” Kool-Aid drinkers.
hurry, hurry,
the supporters of fatca seem to be outnumbering the opponents in the comment section.
@ billy
Exactly. I’ve done my bit for tonight. Time for some others to take over, please. This article really needs us over there!
I’m tired and going to bed now. Good night.
The supporters are uneducated high school drop out Homelanders who have probably never left their home State much less the US.
@ Don
Some, no doubt, but others are simply mis-informed. That is the problem we’re trying to deal with. We fight propaganda with truth, one little skirmish at a time, and we don’t leave until we’re convinced at least one person’s opinion has changed because of something we’ve said that’s finally broken through. We have few weapons at our disposal in this war except words which, even today, can be mightier than the sword. It is always worth the time and effort.
I am getting eaten up over there. Can someone else please help me. They think I am being silly and ridiculous.
@ WhiteKat
I wasn’t kidding about this article or this site. It’s a tough room. It’s Politico, and it’s a giant nursery school for the Democratic faithful. Just like over at Fox News, they don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear whatever party line they’re supposed to be spouting this week. Nevertheless, there are enough reasonable people over there to make the effort worthwhile.
Get over there, Brockers! This is exactly what we’re here to do.
We cannot create a capitalist world if we insist on draining all the capital from the world for the use of government. capital would always find its best use if the owner of that capital could guide it without political intervention. As a formerly capitalist nation, the U.S. is a good example of economic decline when they try to over tax and look under everyone’s bed to try and find more money.
if we are to regain the world spot for capital to come to, we need to enact the FairTax, an idea and a bill that politicians hate because it stops them from tinkering with the tax code every year to extract the maximum in campaign contributions, from those wanting tax breaks the rest of us don’t get.
In 1986 they reformed the tax code and since then there have been 20,000 amendments, each for a favorite contributor. In the private sector we’d call it extortion and bribery, but in politics we call it representation. It isn’t working any more, let’s overhaul government and the FairTax would be the first step.
@Wilton Tidwell – I agree the US tax code needs an overhaul, however, the issue here is if a US citizen lives abroad, pays ‘local’ taxes, we don’t want to be under the IRS’ thumb.
It’s none of their business how much money I make or have.
So in some respects, I don’t really care about US Tax Reform, because we want an official ‘opt out’ of the entire IRS system rather than being one of the over 6M ‘non-filers’ that live abroad.
People will renounce rather than put up with IRS abuse in the long run.
@Don
Renounce in the long run?
People are renouncing now and its exactly the right thing to do. Americans abroad are being asked to comply with a tax system that they couldn’t comply with even if they wanted to.
You have two choices:
Renounce or repatriate!
@USCitizenAbroad – I agree, it’s just how you want to play it individually.
Before I would go down the renouncing route, I want to see how the Charter plays out.
Once 1 July comes, the awareness of this issue will increase as people get letters from FFIs and the public awareness increases.
Will the ‘man on the street,’ care anymore post 1st July, only time will tell.
Obviously the US is banking the initial backlash will disappear and then all Canadian will go back soundly asleep allowing it to prosecute its war on a individual basis.
That’s my greatest fear in the long run – public apathy, lambs to the IRS slaughterhouse.
The IGA has to be struck down and allow opposition groups to raise real money for a proper negative campaign.
They are making the usual mistake of conflating what happened with UBS as equal to what FATCA is doing around the world. They are doing this because they don’t get it and because they hate Rand Paul. Theirs is a knee jerk reaction. I don’t like Rand Paul either in many ways. Frankly, his politics on most issues and mine are not the same. So the readers see his face, see the word “Swiss” or “Switzerland” and dump in any other information into that category. Frankly, they don’t care either.
I myself am extremely irritated over UBS. If not for those people we wouldn’t be in this mess! However, it is rather hilarious for any American pol to be championing themselves as tax evader heros given that most of those involved in the UBS scandal live in the U.S. and the United States is a huge tax haven.
July 1, 2014 will also mark exactly 150 years since CBT was created in the Revenue Act of June 30, 1864.
They’re not going to make any moves to RBT unless and until CBT becomes unworkable for them. FATCA might eventually bring that about but, it will be years before there’s any action to correct these issues or amend them. My family couldn’t wait on their laborious and lengthy system. There was the question as to whether or not they would ever change any part of their system no matter how unworkable it was. I think FATCA will bring out the problems with CBT with lots of collateral damage yet unseen. However, I can’t count on that to bring them their senses.
Will GATCA do it? Or the OECD proposals? Who knows. Which family can wait that long? I don’t know. All this back and forth on articles such as the one at Politico? In three years they’ll be writing articles decrying the fall out and finger pointing as to whose fault it all was. In three years they’ll write articles including our stories as if they discovered these facts and it was all their idea to expose what was happening to people. They’re not going to change their stance on Politico because there will be an election coming up. They need to finger point to make the other side bad no matter the facts of an issue. There’s no investigation done. Just propaganda to support an agenda.
Been commenting over at Politico….I think my head is going to fall off! We have to keep posting as there are 700 comments at the moment and the counter arguments are getting lost way down deep in the postings. I have to quit as I feel my blood pressure becoming immeasurable.
I give up commenting over there too. The IQ level has dropped to such a poiny that it’s just not worth it any more. (I have to go clear some phlegm from my throat). Glad I didn’t stay in that country.
It is beyond logic trying to educate the “homelanders” here:
phlegm
And why do you want me as a Canadian to pay YOUR taxes? I only expect of your country what I paid into it….ZERO ZILCH NADA….
PirateWoman
You’re fos.
RichardOwens
They’re hiding something- 3 of them all pushing bogus “Citizenship Taxes” a concept made for the Tea tax-dodging crooks.
nervousinvestor
It was introduced in the US after the Civil War. Go check it out.
RichardOwens
The Civil War!
wow.
Sadly, I’m done over there at Politico too, at least for now. It really is another astonishing insight into how fully indoctrinated most Democrats have become. They have transformed into some weird anti-matter version of the neocons they once derided. It’s truly frightening. I’m not entirely sure that American democracy can stand much more of this dangerous polarization. How can the centre possibly hold when so little of it remains?
I agree, PierreD.
Every round of trying to educate the “homelanders” convinces me that having become a Canadian citizen in 1975 was the best / luckiest thing I ever did. Now, if only I could get my son from their clutches.
It is apparent that they too never learned anything about U.S. CITIZENSHIP-BASED TAXATION in whatever education they got in the U.S.
I agree completely with you too, calgary411. Especially the part about “whatever education” most Americans seem to have, or not have. While there are a few genuinely stupid people over there at Politico, most others clearly are not, and should know better, but they are simply blinded by partisan ideology. It is clear that even the most educated people in America have become lazy about educating themselves. Far easier to follow the leader than ever question the system.
I admire your efforts to inform and convince the US public about the subject, but I honestly don’t think this is necessary. The vast majority of US residents have no idea that CBT exists and are not aware of FATCA or the Swiss bank cases. The people who comment in Politico are not representative of the general population. I don’t think most Americans even know who Rand Paul is. And in any case, convincing these people will not have any effect on the law. Even if they understand the problem and agree that CBT should be abolished, they are not going to write to their congressmen to complain about it, and it won’t influence their votes. That’s why I concentrate my effort almost exclusively in talking to Congress, because they are the ones who created the problem and the only ones who can actually fix it.
@atticusincanada, CBT is already unworkable, and it has always been. Same thing for FBAR. Here are some statistics:
1. According to the IRS, 1.1 million US citizens abroad file or are listed as spouses or dependents in US tax returns. According to the Department of State, there are 7.6 million US citizens living abroad. Both numbers already exclude residents of US territories, US military and government employees. So the compliance rate with CBT is 15%.
2. The following groups are likely to have bank accounts outside the US (with more than $10,000):
a. Of the 10.5 million people who got green cards in the last 10 years, I estimate, very conservatively, that 10% (1 million) keep bank accounts in their countries of origin, either because they are still living there or because they are named on their parents’ accounts; I’m not even counting the 30 million immigrants who came more than 10 years ago;
b. Of the 7.6 million Americans abroad, I estimate, again very conservatively, that half have bank accounts where they live (to exclude children and those temporarily abroad), so 3.8 million;
c. Of the “wealthy 1%” of US residents born in the US (2.8 million), I estimate 10% have foreign bank accounts (0.3 million); I estimate that no other US persons have bank accounts outside the US.
Total: At least 5 million people should be filing FBARs. About 0.8 million were actually filed recently, so a compliance rate of 16%.
If that’s not unworkable, I don’t know what is.
@shadow raider
I will admit I am hopelessly naive but I post, not to try and change the minds of the others posting on the site but in the hope that just maybe some in the congress/senate might read the comments. It is so hard to contact the government without a US address. Their email forms require US local information that I can not provide. Any way around that?
According to these estimates, 94% of people who should file FBARs (immigrants and emigrants) are not the ones who most people think of in the subject of foreign bank accounts, and for which FATCA was intended (the “rich 1% offshore tax evaders”). At the same time, the National Taxpayer Advocate already said several times that the main component of tax evasion is simply self-employed people who report in their tax returns less than what they earn. And other jurisdictions, even tax havens, do inform each other when they notice suspicious bank activity. So in other words, yes, foreign bank accounts can be used for tax evasion, but the correlation between the two is very small.
FATCA is a lot worse than ratifying that treaty. Rand Paul should ask for the necessary changes to FATCA that ACA have been asking for (same country exemption) in exchange for agreeing to that treaty.
Maybe that’s what he’ll try to do. But the article mentioned he was planning to meet to discuss changes to the treaty itself – not to FATCA.
Also, the damage to US emigrants to Switzerland has already been done. I don’t think signing that treaty would make things worse. They’re already at the bottom. He should use that chip to change FATCA or suggest the US they should adopt the OECD platform instead.
@Charl, I didn’t think about that. If those in Congress really read these comments, then I agree it’s useful to post them. To contact Congress directly, I suggest two ways:
1. Use the address where you last resided in the US. If that’s what determines the district where you can vote in the US, I suppose you can use it to contact Congress too.
2. Send an email to your congressman’s assistants. Here is a “trick” to find out the email address:
a. Do an online search for your congressman’s name, followed by “capwiz”. Click on any of the first few links, which will go to a page showing some information about the congressman. There should be a tab called “staff”. Click on that tab, which will show the names of the assistants responsible for each area.
b. For the House, the email address is usually A.B@mail.house.gov, where A and B are the assistant’s first and last names, respectively. For the Senate, it’s usually A_B@C.senate.gov, where A and B are the assistant’s first and last names, respectively, and C is the Senator’s last name.