WITNESS SEARCH UPDATE FOR CANADIAN FATCA IGA LAWSUIT:
WE STILL SEEK MORE CANADIAN WITNESSES:
Have you experienced marital stress or breakup, or medical or psychiatric illness because Canada turned you and your family over to a foreign country — or because you were afraid and entered into IRS compliance and suffered harm, or because you are in “hiding” and can’t afford to be IRS compliant or to renounce? Be a witness.
No single witness will be “perfect” from a litigation point of view. We will be seeking more witnesses (almost) right up to the time of submission of court documents. Your specific situation, that we cannot predict, might have unique characteristics that would be helpful in the lawsuit.
If you cannot be a witness, please tell a friend who you think might be interested.
— If you are interested in becoming a witness You will describe your harm in a written affidavit which will be made public and you can contact me at stephen.kish.chair@adcs-adsc.ca See our website at www.adcs-adsc-ca
FOR THOSE CANADIANS WHO ALREADY VOLUNTEERED: Unless you have already been informed by me or by our legal team that you will not be a witness, there is still the possibility — or (for some) likelihood — that you will be asked to be a witness. I’m sorry but I cannot estimate the time it will take for our legal team to get back to you with their decision. This is because they need to “mesh” the characteristics of all of the necessary witnesses and testimonies with the actual detailed submission that contains the entirety of their evidence, which are all still evolving. Please be patient in our getting back to you with a decision. Thank you for your help.
Yes, Canada’s relationship with the US is not all it’s “dressed” up to be.
@ Home
I don’t think I have ever seen you posting before, but even if I am wrong, welcome.
I think though it is accurate to say OAS is not income based as CPP is. It is based on qualifying years of residency in Canada and not contribution based. And once you qualify for it, you will continue to receive it, no matter where you live which has been controversial. In other words it is country portable. Anyway the max monthly payment is no more than approximately $560? Indexed? I will do some more research or no doubt our better researchers like Badger will beat me to it.
But to the point of whether there will be intergovernmental sharing under new legislation, who knows. I see the distinct possibility of that as it is included and therefor reported income. I have bigger fish to fry. It’s the ongoing and incremental privacy loss that concerns me. Even though we know there is no longer any privacy.
This was never about taxes.
There is intergovernmental sharing Embee can attest to it. The question I have is
1) What prevent SSA from informing IRS of a person.
2) Is there a no harm no foul rule regarding OAS
Does a person who does not stay long event to obtain SS, face a penalty from Canadian government for not telling the government.
There is no economic gain but protection of privacy from a foreign power.
OAS is fixed. There is some changes for how long you are Canadian and what else you collect. I compared USA SS to Canadian CPP. CPP is in much better shape. I imagine that in the future OAS clawback will increase, lower threshold and increase % of clawback. As baby boomer retire this will be a bigger strain on deficit. OAS is more of a welfare program no money set aside for it. Clawback effect the higher earner so it may not be politically unpopular for the Liberal base. Do you think an old ager making 20 k a year is going to give a damm that they will clawback OAS from someone making 72 k
‘“it is easy to get suckered”
I apologize for that choice of words.’
No apology is necessary. Here’s why:
‘Those of us who are abused, placed into a disadvantaged position, threatened and frightened, it is all too tempting to take an offer of freedom or leniency from the abuser.
There is no shame for your decisions when you are victimized, the abuser is usually very good at collecting victims, otherwise they would not exist for very long.’
So true.
If I were tortured, I would confess to 3.11.
Here’s an explanation for non-residents of Japan.
Two American lawyers happened to meet while both were on vacation in the Bahamas. One says to the other: “My law practice was going terribly. I was losing case after case after case. And then a fire burned down the building where my office was. In fact it’s only because of the insurance payment that I can be here today.”
The second one says: “My law practice was going terribly. I was losing case after case after case. And then an earthquake knocked down the building where my office was. In fact it’s only because of the insurance payment that I can be here today.”
The first one asks: “How do you arrange an earthquake?”
If I were tortured, I would confess to arranging the biggest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history, the one that we still suffer from.
“You have to work 10 years in USA to receive SS.”
No you don’t. If you have social insurance benefits from a country that the US has a totalization treaty with (for example Canada or Japan), you can have 1 month in the US and 9 years 11 months in the other country, and receive SS from the US.
I estimate I’ll be eligible for monthly cheques which will be uncashable because bank fees would exceed the amounts of the cheques.
“Can they demand that information on SS benefit be confidential and not supplied to IRS?”
I think SS always reports to IRS. Hmm, I wonder if I’ll have to pay tax on uncashable SS cheques.
From the top of today’s Witness post:
WE STILL SEEK MORE WITNESSES:
We seek more CANADIAN citizen witnesses who entered into IRS compliance, suffered SIGNIFICANT harm (medical, psychiatric, financial), and now regret very much their decision to obey a foreign “law”
No single witness will be “perfect” from a litigation point of view. We will be seeking more witnesses (almost) right up to the time of submission of court documents. Your specific situation, that we cannot predict, might have unique characteristics that would be helpful in the lawsuit. If you cannot be a witness, please encourage others on this “witness” post to volunteer.
— If you are interested in becoming a witness You will describe your harm in a written affidavit which will be made public and you can contact me at stephen.kish.chair@adcs-adsc.ca See our website at http://www.adcs-adsc-ca
FOR THOSE CANADIANS WHO ALREADY VOLUNTEERED: Unless you have already been informed by me or by our legal team that you will not be a witness, there is still the possibility — or (for some) likelihood — that you will be asked to be a witness. I’m sorry but I cannot estimate the time it will take for our legal team to get back to you with their decision. This is because they need to “mesh” the characteristics of all of the necessary witnesses and testimonies with the actual detailed submission that contains the entirety of their evidence, which are all still evolving. Please be patient in our getting back to you with a decision.
Thank you for your help.
@Norman Diamond – “If you have social insurance benefits from a country that the US has a totalization treaty with (for example Canada or Japan), you can have 1 month in the US and 9 years 11 months in the other country, and receive SS from the US.”
You need a minimum of six quarters (1.5 years) SS coverage to be eligible for a totalization benefit.
“I estimate I’ll be eligible for monthly cheques which will be uncashable because bank fees would exceed the amounts of the cheques.”
I don’t know what the situation is in other countries, but here in the UK my totalization benefit gets paid in sterling into my bank account. No idea what the exchange rate / bank charges might be, but there’s enough left over that the US has by now more than repaid the $2350 it charged me to renounce. Very satisfying. 🙂
“I wonder if I’ll have to pay tax on uncashable SS cheques.”
It’s exempt from US tax for residents of Canada, Egypt, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Romania, and the UK.
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p915/ar02.html#en_US_2015_publink100097883
RE getting stories from along the Cdn-US Border. MuzzledNoMore, PastBeyond and I have a list of all the bordertowns, the contact information for their Mayor (as of last summer) and information on the newspapers or internet news for these areas. With this in mind, I wonder if you could email out a request for such stories as you suggest – – what it’s like now compared with what it used to be before everything went crazy. This would be an interesting outreach project…..
Update: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_DEFENSE_BUDGET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
LM,
I have recently been spending much of my time corresponding with different people in the Stanstead Quebec area — with the hope that these discussions might prove useful.
Stanstead straddles the U.S. border with Newport Vermont U.S.A., and for years many expectant mothers made the decision to give birth at the tiny Newport hospital 8 miles from Stanstead rather than at the hospital 38 or so miles away in Sherbrooke Quebec (Canada). Apparently also, the road between Stanstead and Sherbrooke was not in the best of shape (especially in winter) at that time.
Mother and child spend a few days at the Newport hospital (Broadview) and then return to spend the rest of their lives in Canada — not aware that United States Congress considers their children, as adults, to be criminals if they know and understand their “obligations” to a foreign country and do not act per U.S. law on these obligations.
I don’t have the time to do this myself, but if anyone discovers a mayor of a Canadian “border town” like Stanstead, whose border baby residents were afflicted with the same imposition of US citizenship without consent, and who importantly wants to help protect his/her residents, please let me know.
I can’t use more border baby stories and do not need to speak to more border babies. I already know the stories. But I would like to know the names of mayors of affected border towns who are interested in helping out their residents harmed by this foreign country.
@ Stephen
Great idea.
I often vacillate between whose stories are the worst. Green card holders and their compatriots who were not born in the USA or those have never been there and live in other countries? Border babies? People like Gwen and me who spent a few years? Baby Ellie? Compliants? The list goes on. All are heartbreaking and incomprehensible to me.
I had to stop doing that. I conclude it is like a communicable disease. You come to realize you have been contaminated, don’t know the source, and then the OMG moment occurs and you do.
I can only do so much so I have to concentrate on the Canadian Government and how they have treated us. I support the rest of you taking on the USG, but that is not my issue.
I have often been asked my view on the latter and just want to state for the last time, no dog in that fight, not my focus. I hope our case will eventually set a legal precedent that will be useful and applicable in other countries. I believe that will be happen. I believe that is also why we had so many financial contributors from outside Canada.
What I will never state for the last time is how grateful I am to you for your support and wisdom, research skills etc. This ongoing data base is one of a kind.
Not news any more, and not what Dr. Kish is looking for, but still…
http://www.wptz.com/Local-Man-Jailed-For-Crossing-Street/5756044
@Calgary411
Thanks for this update. Things keep getting more and more outrageous south of the border.
“The legislation mandates for the first time in history that young women sign up for a potential military draft.” Unbelievable! And $602 billion authorized for US military spending.
I’ll be reading the update that you posted later this evening:
Update: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_DEFENSE_BUDGET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
I wonder if Obama will veto the new defense policy bill or sign into law like FATCA? Here’s more on this atrocity:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/us/politics/congress-women-military-draft.html?_r=0
How about waging war only when the country is under attack instead of the continuing never-ending wars and manufacture of arms in other lands as a means of jobs / the economy /the military industrial complex we were warned about so long ago? How about NO draft for our sons or our daughters — instead a purely volunteer military? We know from experience who generally goes if the draft is reinstated.
A news reporter interviewed a soldier of the US_____ in Afghanistan. The soldier said “I don’t even know why we’re helping these people.” The soldiers actually believed the US_____ government when it said they were in Afghanistan to help people.
Thus proving that SR = A.
@calgary411
“How about waging war only when the country is under attack …”
All wars throughout history have been fought for only one solitary purpose, that is to steal something of value from someone else. All of the other reasons you may hear about are creatively made up so as get a desired level of support from the population. Wars cost a lot of money and require plenty of human fodder willing to die, and wars require enough anger or fear to get otherwise normal people to consider and follow through with committing mass murder.
The USA is a war nation, it continuously fights wars on multiple fronts for economic reasons, and it will only stop when it can no longer fight the wars and/or until there’s not enough profits to be made to offset the costs.
My hope is that the USA has finally reached a tipping point where continued warring is simply not profitable enough to be sustained.
@Middle Finger, re;
“..The place of birth thing is a real problem because it subjects you to discrimination no matter what you do. Imagine that you have to carry along with you official paperwork proving to a potential abuser that, despite what your passport or birth certificate indicates, or some other criteria indicates, or that your name appears on an unaccountable secret list, that you are no longer a US citizen. It’s a rather bleak outlook to be burdened with for the rest of your life. You had better not forget to take along those papers, who knows when you’ll need them. Even if you have the papers, well, they must be looked at with a critical eye, examined very carefully, because those papers could be forgeries….”
Exactly my situation now. Despite having jumped through a sequence of fiery hoops of US compliance (and very expensive – even though a minnow without any US tax owed), and attempted to parse/guess the correct answers to IRS questions about how many angels balanced on the thinnest side of their incomprehensible (and endless) forms in order to substantiate that zero US tax owed was still zero US tax owed, and to prove that I had reasonable cause and was also not a willful terrorfundingmoneylaunderingdruglordtaxevader.
Yet, thanks to the collusion of my home government (both Cons and now – the Sunnily FibbinLibs) my local FIs can demand that I produce proof of something that I am not. They can demand that I prove a negative – for the foreseeable future. And potentially, if I understand the implications correctly – after I die they can demand that proof from my estate if it requires an estate account to be opened?
Wonder if those of us who are now solely Canadian citizens but have obtained a CLN can be witnesses due to the fact that the IGA would require that FIs can demand that people who are NOT any longer US citizens despite our US birthplace?
Do any other class of Canadian citizens have to prove that they are NOT something any longer – potentially for a lifetime? There is discrimination by the Canadian government against those who currently are still claimed by the US government as ‘UStaxablepersons’, and then they created another category of discrimination – against those who were FORMERLY but no longer (even in the eyes of the USG) ‘UStaxablepersons’.
Interesting that one can be discriminated against not only because of something one is, but now, because of something one is no longer.
@LM, that is an interesting idea – about mayors of border towns. Some of them might even be ‘UStaxablepersons’.
@badger @MF
How do the banks know you haven’t become a US citizen or green card holder again? Another negative to prove to the bank.
Maybe CLN’s should have expiry dates and need renewal every several years – like driver’s licenses.
@bubblebustin;
laughed at the way you coined your remark that the Canada/US relationship not all it’s “dressed up to be” – was thinking of the Emperor with no clothes….
and,
Please don’t give the US, the FATCAnatics, or the CRA any ideas re; “Maybe CLN’s should have expiry dates and need renewal every several years – like driver’s licenses.”
@badger
That buck-thirsty emperor is buck-naked for sure!
I doubt the powers that be would take my suggestion to give CLN’s expiry dates – they’d have to admit that FATCA and its IGAs leak like a sieve.
‘My understanding is that “U.S.-non-meaningful” Canadian citizen residents (having only birth-imposed U.S. citizenship) receive “IRS collection/pay more than what you calculated” letters ONLY if they entered into IRS compliance. No IRS compliance — no IRS/FBAR collection letters.’
I do not know if your understanding in this paragraph is correct or not, but please notice that the kind of letters you refer to are usually matters of civil law not criminal law.
‘Find me a non-meaningful living outside the U.S. at the time of the “criminal act” (see IRS approved definition of “criminal law” and description of 26 USC §7203) who NEVER entered IRS compliance but received an IRS collection letter.’
By definition[*], US District Court for the District of Columbia has jurisdiction over US-non-meaningful-citizens. So if the US wants to prosecute someone criminally, the US has to extradite the person, transport them to the District of Columbia, give them room and board and medical care and a court-appointed lawyer, etc.
Or if the non-meaningful enters the US at a land border for any reason, the US doesn’t have to extradite the person at that time, but still has to provide the other benefits.
So I have a feeling you won’t find criminal prosecutions.
Abuses of civil procedures remain likely. But unless some party like TD Bank or the Canadian government decides to assist in collection, the IRS’s abuse of civil procedure won’t accomplish much.
[* Don’t ask me what I mean by definition, because I’m not the one who means it. Ask Congress.]
“All wars throughout history have been fought for only one solitary purpose, that is to steal something of value from someone else.”
Not true actually. A lot of wars are fought to eliminate people who are wrong on the internet, oops I mean people who are wrong about God.
“Interesting that one can be discriminated against not only because of something one is, but now, because of something one is no longer.”
The famous question “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the USPersons Party” isn’t even enough. It has to be “Are you now, or have you ever been, or in the future will you ever be a member of the USPersons Party” and you have to prove in advance that you’ll never spend 183 days there or marry someone from there.