We’ve recently been presented with another opportunity to be in touch with another branch of the UN as well as the OECD, the World Bank and the IMF. Please check out the submission to these organizations that has just been made by the Alliance for the Defeat of Citizenship Taxation (ADCT). http://maplesandbox.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/You-Pay-for-What-You-Dont-Get.pdf
I should also mention that the ADCT submission mentions the UN Complaint and lists all the Articles of the Declaration of Human Rights that have been violated by CBT/FATCA/FBAR.
Cross-posting from Maple Sandbox and its original post at http://www.citizenshiptaxation.ca:
“You Pay For What You Don’t Get” Submission to Global Forum
The Alliance for the Defeat of Citizenship Taxation (ADCT) has made an excellent submission to the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax.
Written by “Mary Blackhill” and edited by Stuart and Laura Mestleman, You Pay For What You Don’t Get reports on CBT’s “extensive mismatch with the tax regimes practiced in the rest of the world, the impact on “Tax Cheats by Birth” and how CBT drains money from other economies throughout the world.
The paper shows how CBT is inconsistent with global norms, is inconsistent with human rights (and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights) and why other countries should not be expected to assist the United States enforce U.S. tax demands.
This submission was sent to the Forum by ADCT with the following e-mail from John Richardson:
To Whom This May Concern:
The last five years have seen significant interest in taxation in general, international taxation, offshore accounts and the identification of all income that is properly subject to taxation.This interest has resulted in voluntary disclosure programs throughout the world, FATCA and the OECD Common Report Standard. The recent disclosure of the “Panama Papers” appears to have reinforced interest in collaboration in the fight against tax evasion.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-tax-idUSKCN0XG1WM
All of this has resulted in a world that is working together, promoting automatic information exchange and a worldwide standard for what is “fair taxation”. A common goal presupposes agreement on the fundamentals of what is fair and just taxation.
Fair and just taxation requires that people pay taxes to the countries where they reside. This principle is reflected in the OECD common reporting standard. Fair and just taxation is undermined when the residents of a country are also required to pay taxes to other countries for reasons that are unrelated to the source of the income.
There are few countries that confer citizenship based on place of birth in that country. There are only two countries that impose taxation based on citizenship. The United States of America is the only country that does both. This means that the the United States, imposes taxation on individuals based on the immutable characteristic of a U.S. “place of birth”.
What this means is that the United States expects that every person in the world who was born in the United States (the primary way of obtaining U.S. citizenship”), is required to pay taxes to the United States on their worldwide income. The requirement to pay taxes includes the requirement to file massive information returns on their activities and income in their one’s country of residence. Furthermore, the complexity of the U.S. anti-deferral regime results in the imposition of punitive taxation and reporting on the pensions and retirement planning vehicles of other nations.
Many people who were born in the United States are citizens and residents of other nations (in many cases having no connection to the United States and not even speaking English). This is an incredibly unfair and unjust situation. Furthermore, while the United States has not signed the OECD Common Reporting Standard (which has a definition of residence for tax purposes) it is attempting to impose FATCA on the world (which allows the United States in its sole discretion to define who is a U.S. citizen).
To be clear, U.S. “place of birth taxation” impacts both individuals and the economies of sovereign nations (resulting in the extraction of capital from those nations).
Attached for your perusal is a research paper. I invite you to read this research paper which is an attempt to explain some of these issues.
We strongly urge you to consider the adoption of a standard of fairness in worldwide taxation. We urge you to clarify that this standard should be in opposition to taxation based on solely on having having U.S. citizenship conferred on somebody at birth. In other words: fairness in worldwide taxation means that individuals should be subject to taxation based on where they live and NOT where they were born.
I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with you further.
John Richardson
Toronto, Canada
The Alliance For The Defeat Of Citizenship Taxation
Thank you for doing this post, Calgary! 🙂
Outstanding! Very well written.
It may be a little too academic for the general audience. However, it will hopefully be read and digested by the tax policy makers, which are the people who are actually in the best position to make a difference.
Once again, outstanding! Thank you!
“Outstanding! Very well written.”
I agree with Bob’s praise of this ADCT submission. However, I also think it’s very readable. It hits just the right note to resonate with those who will be reviewing this paper, those who are adversely affected by CBT and those who have enough curiosity and concern to seek information about this issue. I also thank the prime writer of this paper and her collaborators for putting the arguments against CBT into this well-crafted package. Well done!
Excellent. Would this be a good summary to send to our MP’s, Minuster of Justice etc? It says it all very well. Thanks for this.
Excellent paper. In the “Additional Resources” at the very end, after the 2013 submissions to the House Ways and Means Committee, the author might wish to include the 2015 submissions to the Senate Finance Committee (also all ignored):
http://fatca.eu.pn/
I put a lot of work into compiling these in one place where it would not disappear. I truly hope it might be used in order to do some good.
This must be a central reason why the US may never sign up for CRS, as the US likes to control the definitions part of tax and compliance “agreements.”
Sounds very reasonable to request and would put the US as “the odd man out.”
Thank you to the authors and editors of the paper, and to those who posted it here. I know it must have represented hours and hours of work and discussion.
Am grateful for all you do every day, and have done for all these years – since 2011 and before.
Thank you to “Mary Blackhill” and the editors for an amazing piece of work on your great submission to another branch of the UN, the OECD, the World Bank and the IMF. Hopefully someone will get finally get this and realize the good old USA has turned into the world’s largest bully.
What an incredible piece of work. So clearly written, persuasively argued, logical, etc. If the intended audience is not moved and their consciences are not pricked, they are stones without an ethical or moral compass.
Thank you Mary Blackhill et al.
Grateful to you for this effort and all your other work.
Great work. A big thanks to everyone who participated in this.
While the greatest credit should be given to Mary Blackhill (and kudos to the editing team), I’d like to add a big thank you to John Richardson for his never-ending support and willingness to publicly champion and take forward this international campaign. Hopefully the international organizations being approached, and in a position to do so, will recognize the need to take action against the US and will move to bring the pressure of the international community to the front door of the recalcitrant US so stuck in it’s narcissistic view of the world.