If you have not already done so, please take some time to email or write the Canadian Finance Department with your comments regarding the signed Information Exchange Agreement between Canada and the United States. (Due date now past: thanks to all who participated).
http://www.fin.gc.ca/treaties-conventions/notices/fatca-eng.asp
I sent mine in the other day.
It’s on my calendar for tomorrow – same day as my dentist appointment. How appropriate.
I just sent the following by email:
I am now getting a complete run around from Joe Preston’s office in St Thomas Ont. It seems they do not want ANY comments on the IGA and they will likely just pass it.
@Only A Canadian and Wren, Excellent.
@Osgood, Great submission!
@NativeCanadian, Grrrrrrrrr!
They certainly didn’t take any of our comments during the negotiations. They brought the bankers to the party and left the citizens in the dust.
@Atticus, All the more reason to bombard them with even more comments this time around. They need to know in no uncertain terms that WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN EVER!
I just noticed a little sleeper provision in the implementing act. Now Finance can demand you supply a US taxpayer identification number and, get this – if you don’t have one, they can put you in jail IN CANADA unless you apply for one IN THE US???!!!! I can’t believe they slipped that little gem in the back door.
Anne Frank. Nonsense.
@Ann Frank,
Could you give us the link, or copy/paste the text that you are referring to please?
@All, Please don’t let Ann Frank’s comment scare you off of getting your submissions in by March 10!
@Anne Frank
Could you provide the location of that information?
This is what Anne Frank is talking about;
Amendments to the Income Tax Act
2. (1) The portion of subsection 162(6) of the Income Tax Act before paragraph (b) is replaced by the following:
Failure to provide identification number
(6) Every person or partnership who fails to provide on request their Social Insurance Number, their business number or their U.S. federal taxpayer identifying number to a person required under this Act or a regulation to make an information return requiring the number is liable to a penalty of $100 for each such failure, unless
(a) an application for the assignment of the number is made within 15 days (or, in the case of a U.S. federal taxpayer identifying number, 90 days) after the request was received; and
(2) Subsection (1) comes into force on the day on which the agreement set out in the schedule to the Canada–United States Enhanced Tax Information Exchange Agreement Implementation Act enters into force.
3. The portion of subsection 238(1) of the Act before paragraph (a) is replaced by the following:
Offences and punishment
238. (1) Every person who has failed to file or make a return as and when required by or under this Act or a regulation or who has failed to comply with subsection 116(3), 127(3.1) or 127(3.2), 147.1(7) or 153(1), any of sections 230 to 232, section 267 or a regulation made under subsection 147.1(18) or with an order made under subsection 238(2) is guilty of an offence and, in addition to any penalty otherwise provided, is liable on summary conviction to
I got my letter off today.
I was in touch with the office of my MP, Paul Dewar, who understands and supports our concerns.
Addendum to the previous:
I expect letters will have .001 percent effect on Department of Finance. However, it needs to be done.
@ Anne Frank, @ George……thanks so much for finding and publicising this subtlety………. “at bonum in malum, et non agens, sicut sunt triumphat” …I hope someone at just over 2 weeks left on C3 F deadline of 21st March, tell us how much has been raised so we could “stir our stumps” and make d*** sure the total is raised……..wish too we had more like you-all and petros, atticus, GwEvil, calgary 411, shadowraider, swisspinoy, irscompliantforever, northernshrike, whitekat. Em etc etc etc[too many to name any more ] …. HERE IN UK….. to leverage EU privacy legislation into a challenge in the ECHR!! I close with …..’Noli me tangere, for ….. I am…. wild for to hold, though I seem tame.” USG has let loose a firestorm,. Brockers rock …around the clock!!!!!!!!!!!
George reference is the correct one and yes, jail was over the top (it is a $100 fine PER OCCURRENCE and they can keep asking until they get tired and fining you $100 each time and put you in jail if you don`t pay, but I admit jail is a bit of hyperbole).
Point as noted stands – the proposed legislation is going to amend the Income Tax Act to permit CRA to demand TIN from Canadian taxpayers and imposes sanctions on those who fail to produce one or apply for one when requested by CRA to do so. This is a really huge thing if you think about it. Bad enough to require the banks to ask the discriminatory questions (what is your national origin – see s. 15(1) of the Charter and Peter Hogg`s letter for more), worse still to engage in unreasonable search and seizure (demanding banks send them private information and then sending it on to the US (c.f. s. 8 of the Charter). Now they are seeking to slip in a back door requirement that Canadians comply with US law by applying for a TIN (by reason of which you will be submitting to US jurisdiction even if that is contested). I was gobsmacked when I read that – apologize for alarming anyone, but I think my comment was quite fair.
@Ann Frank, and all,
They will never throw thousands of Canadian in jail who refuse to get a TIN. If this stupidity ever gets to that point, there will be one hell of a riot. Even today, most ‘US slaves’ (i.e. mean US persons) living in Canada, still have not noticed the tattoo on their butts. Wait until they do. If our government is not prepared to turn the other cheek when we avoid showing them our butts, then they will have a hard time explaining why the jails are full of blue haired grannies.
@ALL, think, ‘safety in numbers’. We have an advantage here in Canada, that no other country has, and we need to be the one country that takes FATCA down. Hear that Harper! We refuse to lose!
minor correction – s. 162 of the Income Tax Act would be amended to allow the BANK to demand your TIN and if you fail to give it to the Bank, CRA can then fine you $100 per occurence.
I repeat – this is direct Canadian enforcement of a foreign law which goes well beyond information sharing (if that were a legitimate objective or action for the government to take having regard to the Charter). I have never heard of such a thing before and, while I won`t claim encyclopedic knowledge, if there were any other instance of Canada enforcing a foreign legal requirement through its own laws, think I would know.
We DO have a provision in the Tax Treaty by which Canada will collect US taxes, but that provision specifically excludes Canadians (and thus dual citizens). The Treaty provision for collecting foreign taxes against residents who are not citizens is pretty anomalous as it is and I`m not sure what reception it has had in the courts. However, it ceases to apply once someone becomes a Canadian.
And no, I was definitely NOT trying to scare anyone off from getting comments in to Finance before the deadline. To the contrary, I think everyone SHOULD get comments in and am not anywhere near as pessimistic as some regarding impact of them. I would encourage all to copy their own MP`s with whatever submission they send to Finance.
MP`s and bureaucrats both need to understand how many people are impacted, how serious the impact can be and how serious a violation of Charter guarantees of equal treatment and freedom from search and seizure this is. Privacy is a protected right (s. 8 search and seizure among other places) as is freedom from discrimination (s. 15(1)). The number of one million affected Canadians is not an exaggeration – the number is potentially higher if you factor in spouses of US Persons whose data (via joint accounts) will find its way winging down to the IRS if FATCA is enforced. I know of several elderly pensioners who are losing quite a lot of sleep over this situation.
This is not a done deal. I believe Finance would probably be pretty happy to lose the Charter challenge which would enable them to have their IGA but simply not enforce it. Not much the US could do if Canadian courts told them that FATCA cannot under any circumstances be applied in Canada (and – by the way – the same constitutional principles would apply to block its application in the US were the US ever to get close to granting reciprocity which of course they will never do….). I also believe that there are a number of cosmetic fixes that can be applied to the Bill implementing the Finance agreement which would gut it and provide a face-saving way of appearing to comply with FATCA while giving IRS precisely nothing. It would have been nice if they had just said no, but we are past that at this stage.
They need to WANT to help and they need to see a way to help. Submissions from hundreds of people showing them how many are impacted will help in the first stage (making them want to help – I know they are pissed they were forced into this diktat and their national pride has been bruised so it shouldn`t be impossible to get them over the hump of being sympathetic). There are a bunch of technical fixes that are being wafted their way that will give them possible fig leaves to offer lip service to FATCA and retreat. A successful court challenge is among the best.
This is horrifically bad policy and they will want a way out of the room. Help them find it.
Last post for today: a question for our group:
Does anybody know where to find out:
1. How many US Persons there are (I can work it out pretty well through Canadian immigration data, but there are gaps requiring assumptions)?
2. How many active US passports have been issued out of Canada by US consulates/Embassy? Last I checked, the US had only something like 1 million passports issued outside of the US, and only a fraction of those would be from Canada. If there are 7 million expats and 1 million in Canada for example, one would expect the ratio of passports to be similar. is there any real data?
3. How many tax returns from US Persons who are residents of Canada does the IRS currently receive? Again, I have seen worldwide numbers which were similar to the number of outstanding passports.
The point of all of this is to demonstrate convincingly that a) there are a LOT of Canadians potentially swept into this mess; and b) almost NONE of them are “active” Americans who are carrying passports, voting, filing tax returns etc. This would lead to the inference that almost everyone impacted by FATCA is someone who is not only an “accidental” American, but an “involuntary” American, leading one to question why their Charter rights should be any more easily violated than an involuntary Cuban or Chinese or North Korean refugee, for example. At any rate, this could be useful fodder for the Court challenge, so if anyone has any leads, do post them.
Try census Canada. Not sure how to do that myself. I don’t know how accurate it would be either.
I handed my homework in last week. I have received a receipt from Finance that it has arrived and will be reviewed in time.
UNENFORCEABLE:
Violates the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms under section 2.(b) 3(a)
(2) Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right
(a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and
(b) to pursue the gaining of livelihood in any province.
(3) The rights specified in subsection (2) are subject to
(a) any laws or practices of general application in force in a province other than those that discriminate among persons primarily on the basis of present or previous residence; and…
@All. Everyone who can should make a submission to the Department of Finance opposing this legislation. We have Elizabeth May making noise, the 1st part of the Charter Challenge is funded and now the opportunity to bombard Finance with opposing comments (should be copied to key opposition MPs and party leaders). What I am suggesting is hitting them from as many fronts as possible.
I’m being picky, and I hate all of this FATCA and CBT business every bit as passionately as anybody here, but I don’t think this particular clause is as scary as it’s been made out to be. I have placed asterisks around a most important but very tiny word:
“Failure to provide identification number
(6) Every person or partnership who fails to provide on request their Social Insurance Number, their business number *or* their U.S. federal taxpayer identifying number to a person required under this Act or a regulation to make an information return requiring the number is liable to a penalty of $100 for each such failure,”
I do not read this clause to mean that any Canadian is going to be forced to go out and apply for a U.S. TIN.