Author Archives: Petros

For at least two years now, people concerned about FATCA have pleaded with the media to stop treating them as tax cheats.  We are law abiding Canadian residents and Canadian citizens who pay all our taxes in Canada.  Yet the media continues to treat us as criminals.  This is a form of libel, to be sure.  But it is worse.  It is destroying our ability to get our message out:  We are law abiding but even the Canadian media treats us as shirkers and tax cheats.  Consider this headline by Barbara Shecter of the National Post:  Canada signs agreement to dull impact of U.S. crackdown on tax cheats.

This is journalistic incompetence at best; but at worst, it shows malice towards people of US National Origin. It is incompetence because it employs a logical fallacy, a common  propaganda tool called “Poisoning the Well“:

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I promised yesterday that I would write a post to discuss the usefulness of purchasing tangible assets in order to structure one’s finances and to keep one’s business out of the banks.  Here are some of the ideas I had:

1. Real estate
2. Precious metals
3. Food

If one is wealthy it is likely that the first two of these would be the most helpful.  Real estate is harder to steal. Real estate however is propped up by the banking system and is therefore in a likely bubble in Canada.

One must find a safe place for precious metals.  But precious metals, unlike real estate, is actually being oversold by the banking system through the paper markets in which large holders of gold like the US treasury and the Federal Reserve bank lease their gold to the bullion banks, who in turn sell it in the gold market to keep the prices artificially low.  This means that while the fundamentals for precious metals remains strong, the price continues to remain obstinately low.

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Please read and comment on this text:

Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Canada to Improve International Tax Compliance through Enhanced Exchange of Information under the Convention Between the United States of America and Canada with Respect to Taxes on Income and on Capital (pdf)

I won’t take to heart the accusation that I hate the United States–a refrain from a commenter Adam West at Think Progress.  It is not surprising that those Homelanders who support Obama, see dissension on extra-territorial taxation, FATCA, and citizenship as unpatriotic.  As too often occurs, nationalism and political partisanship become mixed into an idolatrous blend.  Back when George W. Bush was president,  these same people often insisted that their protests against him were not unpatriotic. Who can forget Hillary Clinton’s passionate plea for the right to question the current administration?

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Some Americans disturb me. Yesterday, a commenter told me to eff-off on my timeline on Facebook. I had expressed opinions at Think Progress that he didn’t appreciate so he came over and told me to eff  myself (but he used the real f-word).  Later he took down his comment. Still, we cannot judge an entire country on the basis of isolated trolls on the internet, who may only be interested in writing offensive comments in order to piss you off. However, some months ago, I received  from a former US government employee a private email that mocked me because I am a Christian. Of course, this same man also scorned my views on his own blog (without mentioning me or the Isaac Brock Society by name), but to take it to the level of sending me a taunt to my personal email is somehow barbaric.   This former government employee undoubtedly has a very high opinion of himself. But why do these Americans drop the level of conversation to a child’s game, whereby they get their five-year old jollies? The man that told me to eff-off on Facebook claimed that he represented the majority of Americans, judging by the last two presidential elections.  So alleged US persons, please meet your persecutor: the Obama voter.

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I wonder when the arses that are leading the various nations of the world will stand up to the United States. For one, the Canadian government has claimed that they are powerless to change US law, and so they are working on an IGA to sell out Canadian citizens to the IRS. Why don’t they invoke international law?  Because they don’t have the balls, and until our leaders each get a pair, they are not worthy of our support.  The law in question is the Master Nationality Rule.  Here is an excerpt from a blog which shows that both FATCA and citizenship-based taxation are illegal according to international law (emphasis mine):

While nationality laws can be rather straight forward to those who lived in their native countries and never emigrated it can be confusing to those whose families had emigrated to different places over the generation or in a few cases those who marry people from different countries.

What many are unaware of is that there is something under International treaties called The Master Nationality Rule. It is listed under Article 4 of The Hague Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws of 1930. In terms of practical effect, it means that when a citizen is in the country of one of his two or more nationalities, that country has the right to treat that person as if he or she were solely a citizen or national of that country. This includes the right to impose military service obligations, require the person to enter and or exit the country using the country’s documentations, or to require an exit permit or other restrictions to leave the country. If any of the above is an issue there is little if anything the consulate of the person’s other country of citizenship can do as the Master Nationality Rule states that “a State may not afford diplomatic protection to one of its nationals against a state whose nationality such person also possesses.” The UK Home Office explains this rule as “the practical effect of this Article is that where a person is a national of, for example, two States (A and B), and is in the territory of State A, then State B has no right to claim that person as its national or to intervene on that person’s behalf.

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Anti-FATCA Campaign Picking Up Visibility in U.S., Canada!

As noted previously, one of the key advantages of proponents of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”) have had going for them is that almost no one in the United States knows much about FATCA. That’s why the “worst law most Americans have never heard of” continues to make headway, slow and uncertain though it is, despite its numerous fatal defects.

This “under the radar” advantage makes it all the easier for the U.S. Treasury Department to sell the supposed “inevitability” of complying with it to foreign governments and institutions, who wrong assume FATCA is a “done deal” in the United States.

Some recent developments put that advantage in doubt.

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