In my post, Our Sociopathic Society III: A cure or a coping mechanism?, I argued as follows:
Thus, complaining to a sociopath, throwing oneself at their mercy hoping for compassion, rationality or justice is a very bad idea. You cannot reform a sociopath with wise and reasonable arguments.
I then linked to a Sopranos video in which Pauli and Christopher murder a waiter who appealed to their sense of justice, comparing that to the amnesty program of the IRS, OVDP. I concluded that the best way to deal with a sociopath is to steer clear. This is particularly true if these same sociopaths control the law enforcement and justice departments of your country.
But in steering clear of the sociopaths, there are multiple strategies. What works for me may not work for someone else. I grant that. So I am going to list below, with some comments, strategies which may help and which I personally endorse:
- Do nothing. The most successful strategy that I’ve seen thus far is from my friends who weighed all their options and decided not to do anything about the IRS’s importunate demands. People who decided to do nothing in 2011 have stayed safely out of the cross-hairs of IRS–at least some in Canada have been able to lay low with no consequences. The same is not true of people in countries where their US status causes the bank to eliminate their accounts. I would point out that I was tax compliant but not FBAR compliant. So far nothing bad has happened to me.
- Renounce/Relinquish United States Citizenship or Personhood: This strategy is becoming rarer. The sociopathic fee of $2350 precludes some people from exercising their universal human right to change their nationality and the tax filing requirements to get the IRS off your back can be daunting and expensive. Furthermore, some people just can’t do it because it would frankly bankrupt them–they may have had PFICs in their retirement portfolios or took advantage of various Canadian or other foreign corporations for the purpose of tax deferment. If so, actually “coming clean”, as the sociopaths like to call IRS compliance, is just simply not a workable option.
- Strategic Lying or Omission of Truth: I have argued that it is not wrong to lie in order to prevent a crime from being committed. If a bank asks if you are a US person, why not just simply lie? The consequences of telling the truth will be that a human-rights crime will take place, as your bank will submit your account information to the CRA who will then commit extraordinary rendition in giving your private information to the IRS. There are other ways to use omission of the truth: If you are doing a US tax return, does the IRS really need to know about that spousal RRSP or TFSA or that PFIC or that personal corporation? In many cases, what the IRS doesn’t know may not hurt you unless you inform them.
- Die happy: The story of Mark Pinetree broke my heart. He really became anxious when he learnt of the requirements of the IRS and I think it shortened his life and made his final years miserable. However, my US-based lawyer sister said to me one bit of information that has always helped me in coping with the IRS sociopaths: everything in the DC system is slow–the government cogs turn very slowly. Chances are that you will die and your estate will pass to your heirs long before the understaffed IRS ever gets around to looking at your bank information, if indeed the CRA (et al.) ever does submit it to DC. I would wager that the sociopaths in the IRS will not want to work that hard–that means they will destroy the volunteers first (e.g., OVDP), and after that the wealthy whales, and only when they wrung these people dry, will they even consider going after the small fry. So die happy and do not allow the sociopaths to fill your life with fear.
- Keep yourself and your money out of the United States: The IRS has very limited powers of extradition and even less ability to collect taxes in foreign countries, and in keeping with the view that they will go after the easy money first, it is extremely unlikely that they will go after, e.g., a grandmother’s savings account in Canada. If you are worried that the US authorities are going to nab you at the border, you can avoid going there. But many of us (not me until 2018) continue to travel regularly to the USA for various reasons. Even I myself traveled to the USA to take part in the search of my father in the Alaska wilderness in summer of 2013. I was not arrested. But if you want to be sure never to fall into the hands of the IRS, then staying outside the US is a good strategy. My reason for not returning to the US is due to my fairly prominent civil disobedience.
- Civil Disobedience: I decided after Minister Flaherty’s announcement not to collect FBAR fines that I was going to stop hiding behind an alias and that I would fight the USA as Peter W. Dunn. I also declared that I would never file an FBAR. This places me into civil disobedience–I refuse to do what that the government of the USA requires and that the Trudeau government assumes I must do. I have done this openly to encourage to defy the US government; I would like to think also that my public stance also encouraged some others in Canada to take a public stance. Later of course, others have come out, such as Ginny Hillis and Gwen Deegan, with their public defiance of the IRS and the Canadian government.
- Sue the Bastards: Sociopaths sometimes find that society constrains their criminal behaviour. The ADCS lawsuit is an excellent strategy and our best hope of righting this injustice. I am however a little concerned that we are now up against a Liberal government. While it was the Tories in power, I figured the lawsuit would be an easy victory in the Canadian Supreme Court. However, now that the court has a nicer government, more aligned with the justices’ own political views, I fear that there will no longer be hostility between the government and the court. On the other hand, there is a slight chance that the Trudeau government will recognize that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian–even if some Canadians happen to be tainted with US personhood.
In recent comment streams, some have called my posts paranoid rants, while others have expressed appreciation. I hope the above strategies show that I am not a paranoid ranter at all, just very realistic. If you want paranoid, go to one of our friendly compliance sociopaths that work in cross-border tax accounting or law firms, and they will urgently press you to come into compliance lest something really bad will happen to you. So far, in following this issue since 2010, I have observed that the really bad stuff happens only to those who have heeded the warnings of the sociopaths.
“The sociopaths have a way of injecting themselves into positions of power.”
Power has a way of bringing out the inner sociopath that lives in each of us.
I agree that keeping away from a sociopath is best. You will never convince one that your point of view is the moral and correct one for the greater good. The scope of a sociopathic person is limited to their own interest and they are usually pathological liars, meaning they are unable to tell the difference between a story they have made up and the real truth.
My lifetime observation of human nature has convinced me that 20% of the population is afflicted with this condition genetically. They usually have quick minds, able to sustain a false narrative because they actually believe their lies. They have made them up to serve one need or another.
Here in the U.S. we have had at least three presidents in my 79 years who fits that description and in this election cycle the leading democrat candidate fits that narrative. I have a friend who is a physiatrist,
who said she was either that or a calculated liar, who knows she is lying, but lying for the promotion of her own ambition, to be able to continue the destruction of capitalism started by Marxists who have had the white house at least half the time since the 1930’s.
Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty and Marxism threatens to move them back in. The progressive income tax is the tool they use to redistribute the wealth accumulated by capitalists and they are not about to let 8 million expats off the hook.
One candidate has proposed the FairTax, but the national media, as a tool of both parties leadership, makes it sound like a bad idea, when it is the savior of the Republic and the level of social programs, already in existence.
We are in danger of the same fate that hit the richest country in the world, when they elected Juan Peron, with the promise to redistribute all the wealth of the country to the worker. Capital was either used up in social programs or fled to a safe haven elsewhere. If each of the expats would send a postcard to Speaker Ryan, demanding the FairTax, he’d respond.
You will never convince one that your point of view is the moral and correct one for the greater good.
Kind of like how people refuse to fill out the long census form cause they don’t care about the common good, just their personal right to privacy.
<<>
ooops….words between the went missing above were….”ducks and runs….”
grrrr….lets try this again
WJT writes: “You will never convince one that your point of view is the moral and correct one for the greater good.”
WK responds: “Kind of like how people refuse to fill out the long census form cause they don’t care about the common good, just their personal right to privacy. ”
Then WK high tails it out of here….ducking and running.
I believe I only have options 2 & 7 left.
@EmBee
Won’t the cat just eat the mouse then?
It sounds simple enough, but not so for all. Let’s say a person emigrates to Canada and tells U.S.A. to go fly a kite. If the Canadian bureaucrats will not return the victim into the hands of U.S.A. bureaucrats and the victim never enters U.S.A., what could happen? But for some victims, who have been robbed 15.3% of their income for many years under the Social Security tax, the U.S.A. can simply stop sending the payments, as they do when the person’s Social Security number matches up with a felony arrest warrant.
@Tom Alciere, I grant also that there are those who situations are so entangled with the US system that there seems no choice but to comply. I pity these, but not more than the Canadian grandmothers and grandfathers who have become the victims of the compliance industry.
@Bubbles….”@EmBee Won’t the cat just eat the mouse then?”
Thats what I thought too!!!!!!
We need to ask @WhiteKat about this.
@George, @Embee, @Bubbles
Not until its done playing with it.
@Tom Alciere: I know people who have retired abroad (EU), former Green Card holders. They get their US pension on their US account and leave it there, have filed a yearly tax return in the US forever, and have never filed an FBAR. The US knows nothing of their life abroad, and their home country knows nothing about the US. They are now in their late 70s and will, as per point 4 according to Petros’ classification of dealings with sociopaths (that post really is an instant classic), die happy. They have already informed me of a tendency to forget things (which I suspect is conveniently selective, and in any case brings to mind point 3). Good luck to the US in ever getting them to cough up any information about their life elsewhere. That said, they are happily planning a month in Florida soon, where they will spend their USD. They are lucky to have a non-US birthplace, of course.
@ Bubblebustin
“Won’t the cat just eat the mouse then?”
Maybe. But the mouse won’t be all cheesy flavoured by then and this is a cat who really covets the cheese (i.e. mousy assets) and enjoys exerting its power over the mouse. Eat the mouse and the “fun” of tormenting stops.
source: “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars”
Gulp!
Smart mice always hide from the cat, because they are never a match to the cats power.
Mouseland
@ Ginny Hillis
It’s been ages since I watched that. Thank you! I listened to Tommy Douglas as a child. I probably didn’t get what he was saying but he just sounded so kindly that I loved to listen to him.
This is why I want a National Sales Tax. I want to be left alone in every way. No official should even know I am alive. I have hated the forced payment of Social Security and income taxes since my first paycheck 62 years ago. The last 47 of which I have paid both employer and employee share. I have collected a check since I was 70 because they just send it to me. I asked If I stopped collecting and gave up all rights to ever collect, if I could then not pay any more. The answer was a resounding ”NO” you must pay and you must collect.
Te great depression from 1929 until 1941 would not have happened for so long had it not been for the ”progressive” movement. Just as the current malaise would have been over 6 years ago if it were not for the President and his policies.
I want a National sales tax collected by the sastes as the only tax collected by the Federal government. That way I don’t have to bare my soul to the company store.
For those of you who want to do something more productive than argue about sociopathy you might want to go on TWITTER and pound this asshole.
https://twitter.com/submergingmkt
“#TaxJustice Even while migrants die to get in, #Fatca blamed for >3k #US citizens abroad renouncing their citizenship in 2015. #SeeYuhBye