JACKIE BUGNION RECEIVES AWARD FOR EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE TO AMERICANS ABROAD

29 thoughts on “JACKIE BUGNION RECEIVES AWARD FOR EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE TO AMERICANS ABROAD”

1. Is this some sort of a joke? I feel Keith has done more than ACA!

2. Jackie Bugnion may be a tireless and dedicated worker for ACA. She is up against such a large and unscrupulous bureaucracy in dealing with US political system, I doubt her efforts will be successful. Sad to say.

3. @fatcalicious

   I assure you it is no joke. Did you watch any of the videos, listen to the radio interview and/or read any of the writings? Or did you just make an assumption based upon recent linkings of ACA with DA etc? Do you have any sense of what ACA has done since 1978?

   I am a very close friend of Keith. And I have great respect and admiration for him, just as I have for many of the people who are actually doing something about the mess we find ourselves in. That said, what Keith and many of us are doing, have many, many more years of hard work and dedication before we even come close to what Jackie Bugnion has done.

4. @PatCanadian

   Jackie is actually retired from ACA.

   I think this work has been going on for a long time and if there’s one thing we’ve seen in our 5 years of it, is that nothing comes quickly. Everyone has thought tax reform was just around the corner. They said it in 2013. We thought so when the Senate Finance Committee solicited submissions in 2015. And now everyone thinks it’s possible – and there are clear movements in the direction – but who knows? It’s not just Jackie’s fight, but all of ours and I am sure glad that she has done all that she has. Nobody in Congress would be listening about RBT if it were not for her.

5. @Patricia Moon

   Thank you for writing this tribute to Jackie Bugnion. In her many years with ACA she worked tirelessly and effectively in identifying the problems of CBT and making the case of for RBT. I note that your post specifically links to her 2015 article in Tax Notes (which is an incredibly piece of work).

   I would like to also reference a one of your posts from 2016 (and the comments) written after Jackie’s retirement from ACA titled:

   “Even in retirement, Jackie Bugion writes the best arguments against citizenship taxation ever”.

   https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2016/02/25/even-in-retirement-jackie-bugnion-writes-the-best-arguments-against-citizenship-taxation-ever/comment-page-1/#comments

   The body of that post includes the following written by Jackie Bugnion (part of her 2013 submission to the House Committee):

   In 1776, the United States declared independence because the mother country on the other side of the ocean was imposing taxes on the colonies for the benefit of England. Resentment started when Britain tried to enforce the Navigation Act after 1763. Resentment increased with the Stamp Act in 1765, a way for Britain to tax the colonies. The British Tea Act of 1773 led to the Tea Party and we all know the outcome – the American Revolution and independence crying out “no taxation without representation”.

   Today, the estimated 7 million Americans resident abroad, of whom the majority are long-term overseas residents in high tax OECD countries, face a comparable situation. Their representation in Congress is non-existent in reality. Americans abroad amount to only 1 to 2% of the votes in any particular state; Congressmen and Senators have ignored their tax issues. The unjustified myth that Americans abroad are wealthy and disloyal restricts a rational approach to the problems because of political image issues.

   Citizenship-based taxation (CBT) has existed ever since the federal income tax was adopted. Despite CBT being an anomaly involving double taxation, taxation of phantom gains and explicit tax code discrimination, it was grudgingly tolerated by Americans abroad because it was essentially voluntary, most often involved little tax or no U.S. tax liability and basically was not enforced. In particular, the FBAR filing requirement was so obscure that even the big four accounting firms were not aware of the filing obligation dating from 1970 and failed to inform Americans abroad of the need to file the FBAR.

   Since 2001, a series of legislative events have radically changed the situation:

    In 2001, the Patriot Act made anything foreign suspect, including Americans residing overseas.

    In 2004, Congress, under the Jobs Act, drastically increased the FBAR civil and criminal penalties to confiscatory levels, creating a disguised form of taxation on assets held overseas.

    In 2006 administration of the FBAR reports was transferred to the IRS for enforcement.

    In 2006 the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act (TIPRA) extended the Bush tax cuts and included a compensatory revenue raising provision that reduced the benefit of the foreign earned income exclusion, limited the foreign housing allowance and pushed Americans overseas into higher tax brackets, thereby increasing U.S. tax liabilities for many Americans abroad.

    In 2008 the law relating to renunciation of U.S. citizenship was revised under Section 877A and introduced an Exit Tax on wealthy individuals (defined as “covered”). The law also provided that Americans who inherit from estates of former “covered” U.S. citizens are subject to U.S.
   inheritance tax with no exclusion. This outrageous discriminatory provision aims to discourage renunciation of citizenship, but in fact penalizes children of former U.S. citizens for an act they did not commit. In practice, it encourages the children to also renounce their U.S. citizenship.

    In 2009 the IRS launched its initiative against tax evasion linked to foreign assets through the Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Programs and a threatening public relations campaign. While it justifiably targeted U.S. resident tax evaders, it simultaneously trapped Americans abroad who necessarily have foreign assets. The IRS’s one size fits all policy and bait and switch tactics led to abuses of Americans abroad which inspired sharp criticism from the National Taxpayer Advocate.

    In 2010 FATCA was slipped into the HIRE bill with no debate in Congress and no cost/benefit
   analysis. FATCA aims to provide the door that closes the fiscal trap by requiring foreign financial institutions to report to the IRS on assets held overseas by U.S. persons. It effectively cuts off many Americans from foreign financial institutions which find it too onerous to maintain American clients. FATCA creates a barrier to free movement of capital and people.

    In 2012 S.3457 proposed to grant the IRS the authority to have a U.S. passport cancelled or not issued if the IRS determined that the individual owed $50,000 or more U.S. tax.

    In 2012 the Ex-patriot Act, S.3205, proposed to deny any “covered” expatriate re-entry into the United States, with retroactive effect for ten years prior to enactment of the law. The Reed
   Amendment of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act already
   allows the United States to deny entry of former citizens into the United States.

    In 2013, S.268 was introduced; it compounds difficulties created by FATCA.

    In 2013 the Senate Finance Committee included in its tax reform recommendations a provision which would grant the IRS authority to cancel a U.S. passport for tax collection purposes.

   This stream of legislation and proposals categorizes Americans abroad as suspected criminals seeking to escape U.S. taxes. Congress has outdone George III and has turned the United States into a fiscal prison, including legislation which is deemed anti-constitutional under the Fifth Amendment1 and is contrary to Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.2
   The foundation of the U.S. fiscal prison is citizenship-based taxation. Americans working and living abroad carry a ball and chain of dual taxation throughout their entire lives up to and including death.

   Americans abroad already pay taxes in the country where they reside and receive governmental services.

   The additional U.S. tax obligation creates inevitable incompatibilities and discrimination and even requires Americans abroad to break foreign exchange control laws to pay U.S. taxes.

   A revolution among long-term overseas residents is now underway. Five years ago, Americans abroad never talked about renunciation of citizenship. Today, it is a common topic in the press and among the community abroad. For more and more individuals, renunciation is the only solution to an intolerable situation created by the U.S. imposing its laws beyond its borders. The United States is literally destroying the community of Americans abroad, which plays an essential role in representing U.S. interests and goodwill overseas. The United States is shooting itself in the foot.

   While the absolute number of renunciations, currently around 2,000 a year, is insignificant compared to the average annual U.S. citizenship naturalizations of 680,000, renunciations have multiplied seven times over the last four years. So far we have seen only the tip of the iceberg if CBT remains in force.

   Today’s situation leads to serious hidden prejudice for the United States. U.S. exports are far below where they should to be because citizenship-based discourages U.S. companies from deploying U.S. citizens overseas to sell U.S. products; the law makes them too expensive. U.S. tax law and FATCA create insurmountable barriers for small and medium-sized companies to establish beachheads abroad to develop exports. The loss represents millions of U.S. jobs, hundreds of billions of dollars of exports, billions of dollars of U.S. tax revenue, and an unsustainable trade and budget deficit. Americans married to a foreign spouse, who represent about a third of the Americans resident abroad, now hesitate to register their children born abroad with the U.S. Embassy. The hot thing among young adults in their twenties is to renounce U.S. citizenship; they are aware of the impossible web of U.S. regulations that restrict job opportunities and personal freedom. Pushing away the young generation of Americans abroad is an immense loss to the United States. In prior generations, many highly educated multi-lingual American children returned to the United States, founded companies and created jobs in the U.S.

   Adopting RBT will stop this revolution immediately. RBT law needs to be drafted in the spirit to allow free movement of individuals to leave and return to the United States, to reinforce the competitiveness of Americans and the United States overseas, to provide a simple, non-penalizing transition to RBT for the community of Americans already overseas, to ensure that Americans abroad are not subject to FATCA and FBAR, to adapt existing bilateral tax treaties and enter into new tax treaties so that withholding tax rates on U.S. source income are reasonable and to ensure that Americans abroad who have the majority of their assets in the United States (retirement funds, pension funds, real estate) are not disadvantaged under RBT with regard to either income or estate taxes.

   I thank you for the opportunity to comment and hold high hopes that your bi-partisan efforts will lead to the constructive tax reform so necessary for Americans residing abroad.

   Sincerely yours,
   Jacqueline Bugnion

   Nobody has ever better expressed, the problems that CBT have inflicted on Americans abroad.

6. @USCitizenAbroad

   Thanks for pointing out section I missed. The beginning of her submission rather reminds me of a sort of reversed- Ride of Paul Revere. It is interesting to note she is discussing renunciation in April 2013. (Brock wasn’t even 2 years old yet). There certainly wasn’t anything she missed and she wasn’t afraid to “tell it like it is.”

7. “It is interesting to note she is discussing renunciation in April 2013. (Brock wasn’t even 2 years old yet).”

   Someone else was already discussing it in June 2012. “Get out while the getting is semi-good.”
   https://hodgen.com/why-people-expatriate/

   Some of us already knew earlier. Some knew way earlier.

8. @Norman

   Yes, some of us knew earlier.She knew too, the date only refers to the paper.

   But what is more important, one knowing about it or the one who is actually taking that information and doing something with it for the betterment of all?

9. Jackie Bugnion is great. But it is like somebody is giving an award to themselves. I would like to see her get an award from somebody ELSE- somebody in the homeland who recognises her work and the problems abroad.
   She has gotten an award from her own. Let American citizens in the homeland recognise her efforts!

10. @Norman

    This post is about Jackie Bugnion not about somebody else.

    @fatcalicious

    This post is about Jackie Bugnion and not about somebody else.

    @Polly

    The award (regardless of who honours her) is evidence of the work she has done for Americans abroad. As an earlier comment above implies:

    “Even in retirement, Jackie Bugnion writes the best arguments against citizenship taxation ever”.

    For years, year in and year out, day in and day out, Ms. Bugnion has worked hard for Americans abroad. She continued this work after having left ACA. She continues this work to this very day.

    Why is it so difficult for commenters on this site to recognize that basic fact and appreciate her entirely volunteer efforts?

11. Great tribute to someone who deserves all the recognition given to her. Congratulations Jackie.

12. @ Patricia Moon and all

    Jackie’s effort’s are certainly appreciated. I hope she enjoys her award and retirement.

    However, I recently returned from a trip south of the border. It happened that I spoke with some of the homelanders about FATCA and CBT. Most are totally unaware of these issues. I spoke with one person only who was knowledgeable about FATCA. This person was a Canadian working in the US. Even though I’d like to see FATCA and CBT disappear, it looks like a long shot. There are so many other problems in the US that FATCA hardly seems to be on the radar.

13. I add my congratulations and thanks to Jackie as well. I learned about FATCA/CBT several months before the Isaac Brock Society came into being and I was spending six hours a day scouring the internet for anything that would help me. Just a few days into my search I found an article by Jackie in Tax Notes International and my blood pressure began to return to normal. Just knowing that someone like her was out there fighting so knowledgeably and eloquently on my behalf gave me some degree of hope. She kept me going. Thanks, Jackie!

14. @PatCanadian

    Judging by the response we most often get from homelanders, the less they know the better. They would only act as an obstruction to our cause if allowed an opinion on the matter, just as we would have been had we been consulted before FATCA was made law.

15. Great tribute and timeline of Jackie’s work, Patricia.

    I view the organization, American Citizens Abroad, as representing *US homelanders abroad*, though I’d prefer that advocacy were for all US-deemed Americans Abroad, including every one *accidentally so*. I support getting rid of CBT without any watering down as I’ve seen in ACA’s more exceptional proposals to the US government.

    That aside, I salute Jackie Bugnion’s years of selfless efforts, inside and outside ACA, for what she believes in and on behalf of so many living outside US borders. Respect to Jackie — and as always to Roger Conklin and to Andy Sundberg, also part of ACA’s history.

16. I thank you, ‘fatcalicious’, for the kind words but I must agree with Patricia MOON. Jackie has done so much over many years for Americans overseas. It is important to note not to confuse the ACA of today with the ACA of yesterday when Jackie was involved. She well deserves this award and I say BRAVA to her!

    Keith REDMOND

17. @USCitizenabroad
    Oh I absolutely acknowledge her achievements and have been a fan for years. What I am saying is that it would be nice if somebody OVER THERE acknowledged her work.

18. A tribute to tireless and friendly Jackie, who I met at the 2014 CBT vs. RBT conference in Toronto, is well-deserved.

    I like Jackie, in part, because she is an honest straight-shooter, as Tricia points out. At the time when some organizations did not give the ok to mention the obvious — that renunciation of U.S. citizenship is a logical response to citizenship-based taxation — she explicitly acknowledged this fact:

    “For more and more individuals, renunciation is the only solution to an intolerable situation created by the U.S. imposing its laws beyond its borders.”

19. “Why is it so difficult for commenters on this site to recognize that basic fact and appreciate her entirely volunteer efforts?”

    The effort is appreciated, along with the efforts of Roger Conklin and Eric and a professor and some plaintiffs and others. I was just pointing out that 2013 was hardly a pioneering year for the issue.

    Too bad the only people doing the appreciating are us victims and around 190 countries of the world. 2 countries won’t learn from it.

20. “CBT vs. RBT conference”

    That sounds like nuclear weapons vs. http://www.dummies.com/education/philosophy/ethics-for-dummies/

    But then I found this: http://www.dummies.com/education/philosophy/ethics-for-dummies-cheat-sheet/

21. What I am amazed at, admire and am thankful for is the length of time that Ms. Buignon has been involved in these issues but that she has persisted – and managed to continue to meet with and speak truth to the opposition and yet remain calm and unflappable in her presentations. After >5 years, I myself sometimes feel weary and I’m not even doing any of the heavy lifting – such as that being done so ably, steadily and consistently by dedicated unpaid volunteers here at IBS, at Maple Sandbox, ADCS, Keith Redmond’s site, etc. It has been such a relief to be able to have had outlets for forthrightly telling it like it is.

    I don’t know what I would have done if like Jackie I had had to repeatedly be in the same room with the FATCAnatics and US extraterritorial CBT crusaders over the years and decades. I don’t think I could do that over the marathon she has run (difficult for me to remain calm about even in the short term, and even now after I relinquished).

    Just what I’ve seen and read and experienced since 2011 has been enough to feel so tired at the continued and escalating recalcitrance and arrogant threatening and bullying by the US. It is clearly so deeply willful and without any reasonable cause – practically a cult in the baselessness of the conviction and willingness to make others sacrifice and suffer for a belief system like FATCA, that appears to be based on somebody’s back of the cocktail napkin numbers and a navel gazing worldview.

    I appreciate that Jackie stayed the course for so long and so ably, and was also willing to acknowledge (unlike some other expats) that the US has pushed people into a corner such that renunciation ( though difficult to achieve and often only very reluctantly) was the only way for many to survive the onslaught. I appreciated that initial impulse of the ACA Foundation to hold that debate in Canada and engage Canadian duals, ex-Green card holders, their families – bringing the debaters outside of their comfy US ‘homeland’ context and into the reality of the rest of the world. It probably had no lasting impact on the prophets of US extraterritorial CBT and FATCAfanatics, but I do hope we relayed the strength and depth of opposition on our home turf – Canada (still unfortunate though that the ACA chose not to release any of the Q and A and the audience remarks portion – no matter the length).

22. While Ms. Bugnion is admirable some of the defiance manifested here towards the ACA comes from their RBT proposals that include a departure tax and same country exemption.
    Their current philosophy is on their website: “ACA believes that it is best to present Congress with a measured proposal than to ask for the impossible and work backwards towards a compromise.”
    I fantasize that Republicans will somehow succeed in obliterating FATCA in 2017 and all will be well. But this probably won’t happen, and if it does it will probably not bring simple RBT. Therefore there is a point to ACA being so reasonable – to obtain at least some progress. Another point is that when Schumer and friends regain power they could reinstate FATCA. Whereas bringing them on board with a reasonable compromise is safer in the long run.

23. ACA believes that it is best to present Congress with a measured proposal than to ask for the impossible and work backwards towards a compromise.

    In other words ACA (as it exists today) starts from the assumption that it’s impossible for the US to adopt RBT as practiced by the rest of the world.

    Mr Bruce’s various proposals don’t sound to me at all like RBT. They sound like they’ve been written by the IRS.

24. Although I have not had any contact with her in many years, I can say that Jackie has a strong understanding of the issues and has been dedicated and unrelenting in her support of our interests. She is a person who, in my opinion, truly believes in “the cause”.

    The ACA historically has fought for recognition of the descendants of Americans abroad and Americans resident abroad long-term who were deprived of nationality and/or voting rights. CBT and FBAR (and later, FATCA) have become more of an issue since about (2004?) when congress changed the way the FEIE affected the tax bracket for income remaining after the FEIE threshold amount and FBAR started to be more vigorously enforced after some brazen idiots at the UBS and other banks actively went trolling for homelander customers with unreasonable promises and got in the gunsights of the IRS circa 2008.

    I can understand that people are disillusioned with some of the ACA’s proposed solutions for the CBT/FBAR/FATCA issues. I for one was flabbergasted a few years ago when ACA gave some award to the US Ambassador in Bern who hadn’t done much, in my view, to help us.

    As I’ve said years ago, ACA is for negotiating some middle ground with congresscritters and folks in the executive branch of the US, but as for many of us at IBS/Maple (and also for many that I have read in several FB groups): we take the 1776 approach that the only solution is full and complete abolition of extraterritorial taxation—and I am personally of the opinion that we should not stop short of full abolition!

    We want and merit the self-determination that is one of the key ideas behind the American Revolution of 1776! Our means are not “negotiating” some unsatisfactory middle ground but *demanding* full repeal of FATCA and CBT as the Republican platform has affirmed and pushing Republican Congresspeople to follow through with their promises via folks willing to lobby for us (examples: Jim and Keith) and suing (examples: ADCS charter lawsuit, the anti-FATCA lawsuit in Ohio, and the future CBT lawsuit if current lobby efforts do not succeed).

    I believe that ACA officials were afraid that they would lose the Americans Abroad Caucus and Americans Abroad Week if they were seen as too “extreme” or observed actively to lobby foreign governments to refuse the FATCA IGA false-treaty scam. Perhaps there was also a remnant of the historical prohibition in Switzerland against foreigners participating in politics (I am speaking of lobbying; the vote by foreigners is still restricted to local elections, and such limited voting rights are only possible in certain Cantons at the date I am writing this post). Remember, the ACA was founded and based in Geneva, Switzerland, and its headquarters only moved to Washington (when it became a nonprofit US “INC.”) a couple of years ago.

    Historically, paying US Citizen members of the ACA were permitted to visit with the officials of ACA once a year in General Assembly held at Geneva (as ACA used to be a Swiss not-for-profit association of persons—similar legal status to a sporting or hobby club for example). The purpose of the General Assembly was to reelect directors and officers, approve the budget of the coming year as well as the audit of the last year’s accounts and most importantly to caucus on the matters that interested the association and its members while defining objectives for the upcoming year. Of course, physical presence was required as far as I know. I am not aware of how all of this works now with the “INC.” Does one have to attend a General Assembly in DC?

    What is clear is that ACA is required as a nonprofit association of people to uphold its objectives and the interests of its members as expressed through interaction with its governing body (-ies). This does not elect them as our sole representative. WE DID NOT ELECT THEM to replace congresscritters who mostly do not represent us.

    With and/or alongside and/or parallel to and/or despite the ACA: we are free to do what we want / need / must do. If you do not like what the ACA does and wish it were different, become a paying member and try to influence their objectives / political platform…. and/or fight through other non-ACA channels. (Note that I said “and/or”… so you can ignore them (ACA) in your personal contributions and efforts to the Cause if you so will).

    The bottom line is that this is a multipartisan / nonpartisan movement of people affected by specific issues that live in many different cultural environments and have varying levels of allegiance to the USG and/or the American culture and/or the American historical experience… etc.

    Yet, I am certain that if one searched the feelings of everybody affected by the issues, all would unequivocally prefer that FATCA/FBAR/CBT were abolished for bone fide persons resident abroad…

    Let us unite behind such objective, by whatever means necessary.

    BROCK ON !!!

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