112 thoughts on “John Richardson Interviewed by IRS Medic”
As I’ve suggested before, even though a lot of you think it’s cruel, I think the best way for homelanders to finally wake up about the problems that CBT causes would be for another country to “reciprocate” and impose CBT and FBAR/FATCA-like reporting requirements on their citizens living in the USA (along with the fee if they want to renounce).
@Kelly
You are saying that (all) other countries should adopt CBT, thus giving in to the US system… If you can’t beat them, then join them…
All other (non-US) countries should have demanded that the US abandon CBT and use RBT like any other civil country before signing the FATCA treaty.
So few demonstrated above anecdotal evidence for homelanders not caring about expat issues. I don’t think that such evidence is enough to draw such a strong belief about “expat hostility”. Fact is, there was a congress hearing, and many layers/CPAs/people in the know-how do care.
And even is we assume it’s true, this makes it all the more important to address it. We should attack the hardest core of resistance, ie. the general public itself. Those who oppose CBT change are not inherently evil, but simply brainwashed/misinformed. A targeted campaign can change that.
@Bob. Target campaign eh? What were all those Jim Bopp cases and Senator Rand Paul trying to get FATCA repealed about? I suggest please read all the blogs here and read some articles on google search and the homelanders comments on it. You will get the picture. It’s been 8 years the news is coming on different types of media TV, newspaper and articles and all they care is about the compliance industry dollars they name off us. The penalties and tax collected per year are not enough to run IRS for a few hours and yet they keep going on and on about imposing more laws on expats? Do you think congress foes not know? Yes they do know. They had several hearings of former expats who broke down with their stories. Bob please read several threads here and posts.
@sorry about misstyped words. Don’t know any ways to edit and correct the posts after posting.
I love the US but the US does not love me since I moved to another country for a better future.
@ Harrison
I agree, I wish I could correct my English spelling mistakes after writing/speaking French for too long !
IBS had an edit facility in the past but it disappeared.
@Willy – I’m not for universal CBT, but rather my idea is that if the USA taxes their citizens who live in Country X, then Country X should do the same back to their citizens living in the USA (not that Country X should have CBT regardless of what country Country X’s citizens live in) – in other words reciprocity. A citizen of Country X who lives in another country with RBT would not have to pay taxes to Country X. The idea is to teach the USA what it’s like to have (some of) its residents have to pay to meet a foreign country’s demand, to have money siphoned from the local economy, and to hopefully make homelanders realize what they’re doing with their extraterritorial laws.
This wouldn’t be the only case of another country reciprocating what they believe is an unfair practice of the USA – some countries don’t like the fees the USA charges their citizens for US visas, so they charge the same (or other higher-than-citizens-of-most-countries) fees to US citizens for visas to their country.
Kelly — the way homelanders would see it is, as usual, “just renounce!”. They’d tell the French, the Mexicans, whoever, “hey, you’re in America! What do you need your other passport for?? We have the biggest army, the biggest nuclear button, and the most money, and lots of food. Be happy you’re here in the land of the free.” And then they’d turn back to their phone and coffee mug.
Also, they’d never (quite rightly) agree to sign the reverse IGAs, and would be unwilling to report accounts to other countries. They’d immediately retaliate against withholding threats (again, quite rightly). Just goes to show the US would not put up with the s..t they force other countries (be they s..tholes or Norway) to eat up.
Basically, one way America is exceptional is that it is able to do stuff like CBT and FATCA but not accept it from others.
Fred (B) – Remember my idea also reciprocates renunciation fees.
@kelly
Other countries have tried and abandoned the practice in the past mainly because it was too difficult to administrate. Some still practice a time limited form of cbt, you can read a summary on this link.
http://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/01/08/citizenship-based-taxation-countries/
None have the financial clout that the US has into bullying the banks into turning over citizens financial accounts. It is the fact that the dollar is effectively the reserve currency and everyone seems to want to invest in the US stock market.
PS Kelly
Those other governments who once had cbt were pretty much oppressive and abandoned it when they reformed. You can’t really be suggesting we all go back to the dark days.
Some of us unfortunates have multiple citizenships. 🙂
@Harrison,
I did read many of the posts here, including long pages of comments, and I’m aware of the political effort done. What I had in mind though is a campaign targeted towards the *general public*. Politicians would be more inclined to support our cause, if the public stands behind it.
Not sure what are the practical steps of achieving this, but a simple message that CBT is immoral should be clearly heard, IMO.
‘As I’ve suggested before, even though a lot of you think it’s cruel, I think the best way for homelanders to finally wake up about the problems that CBT causes would be for another country to “reciprocate” and impose CBT and FBAR/FATCA-like reporting requirements on their citizens living in the USA (along with the fee if they want to renounce).’
It still won’t work.
Many in the US hate immigrants. Homelanders think anyone living in the US should renounce their other citizenships — and even those who have done so still get vilified for being immigrants — and even those who were born in the US get vilified for being immigrants because of where their ancestors came from (the same as happens in Japan, Myanmar, etc.). Now the US has a president who wants policies that would deport his own wife and his own mother.
Anyway, if those immigrants get taxed by other countries, so what, they’re immigrants, they have it coming to them, and real homelanders don’t get affected by it, so why should real homelanders care?
Cruelty to immigrants will not make homelanders wake up.
(Turning off the irony for a moment, the only real homelanders are American native races and the whites/blacks/browns/yellows are all immigrants, but (turning the irony back on now) real real homelanders don’t care.)
Well, Bob, considering that opinion polls show that the vast majority of the American public supports stricter gun controls, universal health care, campaign contribution reform, genuine tax reform, and so on, I don’t hold high hope that educating the public about CBT and FATCA is going to somehow spur Congress into proper action. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, though. I try all the time.
@normandiamond
Indeed! If other countries imposed CBT on US residents from abroad then that might show them the audacity of their “exceptionalism”. And most of all it would hit them where it hurts- their purse.
@Barbara
I find it quite frightening that the majority of people actually want these things, and the government opposes the will of the people.
“I do believe that if the public becomes aware of the horrendous implications CBT/FATCA imposes on persons abroad, some at least would oppose it.”
Some, but very few.
They will only ever oppose it when it becomes clear that it is coming back to bite them, when they realise it is hurting the USA.
They don’t care that it’s hurting the rich ingrates hiding from paying their fair share in foreign countries, they don’t care if it’s immoral theft from residents of other nations and that compliance with the code amounts to a human rights abuse. They don’t care, because these people can afford to leave and therefore, owe the USA for their wealth.
Now we know that this is crap, these are ordinary people leading ordinary lives, but that doesn’t make for good Fox news now, does it?
They need to understand that the US tax code applied to people who do not live in the USA is making them prisoners in their own country, is not raising any money, is making them tax slaves owned by a government and they need to understand that this is severely hurting the US economy by restricting the ability of the US to get out there and compete.
It’s harming US jobs.
They need to understand that with the exception of the tax compliance industry, this is lose/lose for absolutely everyone and that sharing a tax principle that makes no money with an African dictatorship and no other nation is really stupid idea, and that it is un-American beyond belief.
The sympathy for US expats card has been tried and it’s been a spectacular failure unless seeing epic schadenfreude in action was the aim.
IRS is reciprocating bank data with some countries including Mexico, Netherlands etc since 2015. It’s by per country basis only. US has not signed any CRS treaty as of yet. But it was the first country to work with OECD agenda to destroy bank secrecy and use its USD reserve currency power to punish banks making them all scared to sign US citizen expats along with residents of US. As a HK banker told me if US even wants your money deposited here we will have no choice to give it to them as we don’t want our USD withholding taxes based on a few accounts. Even though I showed him all tax paperwork he stated we won’t be able to do anything if the US govt asks us to freeze and wire transfer to US. It’s better to close the account and deposit at another bank as suggested by him. That was in 2014 and I found no banks in HK willing to take my deposit. Many banks overseas also refused it on my US passport.
@Bob homelanders simply don’t care as they have too many other issues that concerns them not FATCA as they never live outside the US. When you live inside US you don’t know what is going on with US citizens living overseas. Even your own relatives in US would not care simply as they are not into your situation. So forget about campaigning targeted at homelanders. They want their own issues resolved.
As Barbara so succinctly pointed out, it doesn’t matter what the general US public think, they have very little say or control of their homeland issues( such as gun control, healthcare etc). It will only happen when American businesses fail to compete, the almighty dollar loses it’s place as the reserve currency and the Administration at that time wakes up to the reason why, too late to save the empire.
@Heidi, the new tax law passed by Republicans and Trump was for corporate America only. American business are not failing to compete as only small business owners overseas are in problems and US congress does not care about small time business owners overseas in their countries of residencies or second citizenship. There is no such thing as strict gun controls as looking at UK I think keeping guns away from people is the only logical choice left now after all the recent violence in US. It’s people not guns who kill people and as long as there are guns there would be people using them. This is not a forum for gun control so no arguements here. Homelanders want to keep their guns as a constitutional right to bear arms but the ground realities are different from hundreds of years when US constitution was drafted. Hollywood was not producing violent sick movies at that time of drafting US constitution that is disturbing people all over the world into learning new forms of thefts, violence, terror etc.
@ Harrison
I am not making any point for or against gun control in the US, the point I and I think Barbara was making is that the US people had in the past favoured some form of gun control and even a
Democratic congress had not been able to heed their wishes. So the chance of educating the US public to the inequity of CBT and then for them to make a difference is in my view pointless. (The Swiss in fact have a much larger gun ownership per population yet do not experience anything like the gun violence the US does. There is a different mind set.)
Businesses apart, I do think that banks and by extension Govs around the world have been stung by American hedgemony, Think about the huge penalties BNP paid for doing business with Iran which was not against any French law, just because the pass through payment was in USD. I am sure the world is quietly looking for an alternative.
@Heidi I agree with you that it is pointless to keep trying for US public to be sympathetic for US expats. It is also pointless now except to renounce with your feet as all over the world banks and brokerages are refusing or closing down accounts due to abusive power of US govt. As bankers all over the world told me we don’t to mess with your govt with compliance problems and hire extra staff just for you and few accounts. Not worth our time and money. I don’t blame them at all. It might not be happening in Canada as they have lot of dual nationals but I know it’s happening in many countries and Singapore and HK are very scared of Americans and ejecting previous clients.
@Heidi regarding gun control I know US and most countries have a different mindset than Swiss. Switzerland was never involved in both World Wars as it remained arm and neutral always. What a country. Tina Turner is lucky to be a Swiss. Canada is involved only due to US always dragging it into its wars.
“…and US congress does not care about small time business owners overseas in their countries of residencies or second citizenship…”
TBD. My Congressman is apparently taking a letter I wrote about the Transition Tax and my solely Canadian operated corporation to the Ways and Means Committee. I continue to do may part to make sure this unfortunate predicament is properly dealt with, as armchair activism accomplishes nothing.
As I’ve suggested before, even though a lot of you think it’s cruel, I think the best way for homelanders to finally wake up about the problems that CBT causes would be for another country to “reciprocate” and impose CBT and FBAR/FATCA-like reporting requirements on their citizens living in the USA (along with the fee if they want to renounce).
@Kelly
You are saying that (all) other countries should adopt CBT, thus giving in to the US system… If you can’t beat them, then join them…
All other (non-US) countries should have demanded that the US abandon CBT and use RBT like any other civil country before signing the FATCA treaty.
So few demonstrated above anecdotal evidence for homelanders not caring about expat issues. I don’t think that such evidence is enough to draw such a strong belief about “expat hostility”. Fact is, there was a congress hearing, and many layers/CPAs/people in the know-how do care.
And even is we assume it’s true, this makes it all the more important to address it. We should attack the hardest core of resistance, ie. the general public itself. Those who oppose CBT change are not inherently evil, but simply brainwashed/misinformed. A targeted campaign can change that.
@Bob. Target campaign eh? What were all those Jim Bopp cases and Senator Rand Paul trying to get FATCA repealed about? I suggest please read all the blogs here and read some articles on google search and the homelanders comments on it. You will get the picture. It’s been 8 years the news is coming on different types of media TV, newspaper and articles and all they care is about the compliance industry dollars they name off us. The penalties and tax collected per year are not enough to run IRS for a few hours and yet they keep going on and on about imposing more laws on expats? Do you think congress foes not know? Yes they do know. They had several hearings of former expats who broke down with their stories. Bob please read several threads here and posts.
@sorry about misstyped words. Don’t know any ways to edit and correct the posts after posting.
I love the US but the US does not love me since I moved to another country for a better future.
@ Harrison
I agree, I wish I could correct my English spelling mistakes after writing/speaking French for too long !
IBS had an edit facility in the past but it disappeared.
@Willy – I’m not for universal CBT, but rather my idea is that if the USA taxes their citizens who live in Country X, then Country X should do the same back to their citizens living in the USA (not that Country X should have CBT regardless of what country Country X’s citizens live in) – in other words reciprocity. A citizen of Country X who lives in another country with RBT would not have to pay taxes to Country X. The idea is to teach the USA what it’s like to have (some of) its residents have to pay to meet a foreign country’s demand, to have money siphoned from the local economy, and to hopefully make homelanders realize what they’re doing with their extraterritorial laws.
This wouldn’t be the only case of another country reciprocating what they believe is an unfair practice of the USA – some countries don’t like the fees the USA charges their citizens for US visas, so they charge the same (or other higher-than-citizens-of-most-countries) fees to US citizens for visas to their country.
Kelly — the way homelanders would see it is, as usual, “just renounce!”. They’d tell the French, the Mexicans, whoever, “hey, you’re in America! What do you need your other passport for?? We have the biggest army, the biggest nuclear button, and the most money, and lots of food. Be happy you’re here in the land of the free.” And then they’d turn back to their phone and coffee mug.
Also, they’d never (quite rightly) agree to sign the reverse IGAs, and would be unwilling to report accounts to other countries. They’d immediately retaliate against withholding threats (again, quite rightly). Just goes to show the US would not put up with the s..t they force other countries (be they s..tholes or Norway) to eat up.
Basically, one way America is exceptional is that it is able to do stuff like CBT and FATCA but not accept it from others.
Fred (B) – Remember my idea also reciprocates renunciation fees.
@kelly
Other countries have tried and abandoned the practice in the past mainly because it was too difficult to administrate. Some still practice a time limited form of cbt, you can read a summary on this link.
http://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/01/08/citizenship-based-taxation-countries/
None have the financial clout that the US has into bullying the banks into turning over citizens financial accounts. It is the fact that the dollar is effectively the reserve currency and everyone seems to want to invest in the US stock market.
PS Kelly
Those other governments who once had cbt were pretty much oppressive and abandoned it when they reformed. You can’t really be suggesting we all go back to the dark days.
Some of us unfortunates have multiple citizenships. 🙂
@Harrison,
I did read many of the posts here, including long pages of comments, and I’m aware of the political effort done. What I had in mind though is a campaign targeted towards the *general public*. Politicians would be more inclined to support our cause, if the public stands behind it.
Not sure what are the practical steps of achieving this, but a simple message that CBT is immoral should be clearly heard, IMO.
‘As I’ve suggested before, even though a lot of you think it’s cruel, I think the best way for homelanders to finally wake up about the problems that CBT causes would be for another country to “reciprocate” and impose CBT and FBAR/FATCA-like reporting requirements on their citizens living in the USA (along with the fee if they want to renounce).’
It still won’t work.
Many in the US hate immigrants. Homelanders think anyone living in the US should renounce their other citizenships — and even those who have done so still get vilified for being immigrants — and even those who were born in the US get vilified for being immigrants because of where their ancestors came from (the same as happens in Japan, Myanmar, etc.). Now the US has a president who wants policies that would deport his own wife and his own mother.
Anyway, if those immigrants get taxed by other countries, so what, they’re immigrants, they have it coming to them, and real homelanders don’t get affected by it, so why should real homelanders care?
Cruelty to immigrants will not make homelanders wake up.
(Turning off the irony for a moment, the only real homelanders are American native races and the whites/blacks/browns/yellows are all immigrants, but (turning the irony back on now) real real homelanders don’t care.)
Well, Bob, considering that opinion polls show that the vast majority of the American public supports stricter gun controls, universal health care, campaign contribution reform, genuine tax reform, and so on, I don’t hold high hope that educating the public about CBT and FATCA is going to somehow spur Congress into proper action. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, though. I try all the time.
@normandiamond
Indeed! If other countries imposed CBT on US residents from abroad then that might show them the audacity of their “exceptionalism”. And most of all it would hit them where it hurts- their purse.
@Barbara
I find it quite frightening that the majority of people actually want these things, and the government opposes the will of the people.
“I do believe that if the public becomes aware of the horrendous implications CBT/FATCA imposes on persons abroad, some at least would oppose it.”
Some, but very few.
They will only ever oppose it when it becomes clear that it is coming back to bite them, when they realise it is hurting the USA.
They don’t care that it’s hurting the rich ingrates hiding from paying their fair share in foreign countries, they don’t care if it’s immoral theft from residents of other nations and that compliance with the code amounts to a human rights abuse. They don’t care, because these people can afford to leave and therefore, owe the USA for their wealth.
Now we know that this is crap, these are ordinary people leading ordinary lives, but that doesn’t make for good Fox news now, does it?
They need to understand that the US tax code applied to people who do not live in the USA is making them prisoners in their own country, is not raising any money, is making them tax slaves owned by a government and they need to understand that this is severely hurting the US economy by restricting the ability of the US to get out there and compete.
It’s harming US jobs.
They need to understand that with the exception of the tax compliance industry, this is lose/lose for absolutely everyone and that sharing a tax principle that makes no money with an African dictatorship and no other nation is really stupid idea, and that it is un-American beyond belief.
The sympathy for US expats card has been tried and it’s been a spectacular failure unless seeing epic schadenfreude in action was the aim.
IRS is reciprocating bank data with some countries including Mexico, Netherlands etc since 2015. It’s by per country basis only. US has not signed any CRS treaty as of yet. But it was the first country to work with OECD agenda to destroy bank secrecy and use its USD reserve currency power to punish banks making them all scared to sign US citizen expats along with residents of US. As a HK banker told me if US even wants your money deposited here we will have no choice to give it to them as we don’t want our USD withholding taxes based on a few accounts. Even though I showed him all tax paperwork he stated we won’t be able to do anything if the US govt asks us to freeze and wire transfer to US. It’s better to close the account and deposit at another bank as suggested by him. That was in 2014 and I found no banks in HK willing to take my deposit. Many banks overseas also refused it on my US passport.
@Bob homelanders simply don’t care as they have too many other issues that concerns them not FATCA as they never live outside the US. When you live inside US you don’t know what is going on with US citizens living overseas. Even your own relatives in US would not care simply as they are not into your situation. So forget about campaigning targeted at homelanders. They want their own issues resolved.
As Barbara so succinctly pointed out, it doesn’t matter what the general US public think, they have very little say or control of their homeland issues( such as gun control, healthcare etc). It will only happen when American businesses fail to compete, the almighty dollar loses it’s place as the reserve currency and the Administration at that time wakes up to the reason why, too late to save the empire.
@Heidi, the new tax law passed by Republicans and Trump was for corporate America only. American business are not failing to compete as only small business owners overseas are in problems and US congress does not care about small time business owners overseas in their countries of residencies or second citizenship. There is no such thing as strict gun controls as looking at UK I think keeping guns away from people is the only logical choice left now after all the recent violence in US. It’s people not guns who kill people and as long as there are guns there would be people using them. This is not a forum for gun control so no arguements here. Homelanders want to keep their guns as a constitutional right to bear arms but the ground realities are different from hundreds of years when US constitution was drafted. Hollywood was not producing violent sick movies at that time of drafting US constitution that is disturbing people all over the world into learning new forms of thefts, violence, terror etc.
@ Harrison
I am not making any point for or against gun control in the US, the point I and I think Barbara was making is that the US people had in the past favoured some form of gun control and even a
Democratic congress had not been able to heed their wishes. So the chance of educating the US public to the inequity of CBT and then for them to make a difference is in my view pointless. (The Swiss in fact have a much larger gun ownership per population yet do not experience anything like the gun violence the US does. There is a different mind set.)
Businesses apart, I do think that banks and by extension Govs around the world have been stung by American hedgemony, Think about the huge penalties BNP paid for doing business with Iran which was not against any French law, just because the pass through payment was in USD. I am sure the world is quietly looking for an alternative.
@Heidi I agree with you that it is pointless to keep trying for US public to be sympathetic for US expats. It is also pointless now except to renounce with your feet as all over the world banks and brokerages are refusing or closing down accounts due to abusive power of US govt. As bankers all over the world told me we don’t to mess with your govt with compliance problems and hire extra staff just for you and few accounts. Not worth our time and money. I don’t blame them at all. It might not be happening in Canada as they have lot of dual nationals but I know it’s happening in many countries and Singapore and HK are very scared of Americans and ejecting previous clients.
@Heidi regarding gun control I know US and most countries have a different mindset than Swiss. Switzerland was never involved in both World Wars as it remained arm and neutral always. What a country. Tina Turner is lucky to be a Swiss. Canada is involved only due to US always dragging it into its wars.
“…and US congress does not care about small time business owners overseas in their countries of residencies or second citizenship…”
TBD. My Congressman is apparently taking a letter I wrote about the Transition Tax and my solely Canadian operated corporation to the Ways and Means Committee. I continue to do may part to make sure this unfortunate predicament is properly dealt with, as armchair activism accomplishes nothing.