Professor Christians has released the paper that was the basis for her presentation at the Tax Conference on January 18, 2013. In order to listen/view her presentation see an earlier post with commentary on the Pepperdine Tax Conference.
Author Archives: USCitizenAbroad
IRS should NOT be able to license tax preparers
As you know the IRS wants to require a license, issued by the IRS, in order to charge money to prepare tax returns. For the moment this requirement has been struck down by the courts.
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/292905409373683712
I believe that the discussion on this is missing the most important point which is captured in this exchange:
My comment on "IRS Stopped 'Dead In Its Tracks' In Efforts To Regulate Tax Preparers" @Forbes: http://t.co/8v7RKRz0
— Alvin S. Brown, Esq. (@USTaxAttorney) January 20, 2013
@USTaxAttorney @Forbes Big difference between the regulation of preparers and preparers being regulated by the IRS. Latter is the problem!
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 20, 2013
The problem is that that if it is the IRS that is issuing the license, then tax preparers will think that they must please the IRS instead of being fair to the client. It is like the problem of the lawyer who wants to put everybody into OVDP and the lawyer who considers a number of compliance options.
This case is likely to go to the Supreme Court. I suspect that the decision that the IRS can’t regulate will stand.
U.S. citizenship and a possible marriage penalty
This is an interesting topic to solicit comments on. I am increasingly of he opinion that the manner in which the U.S. imposes citizenship-based taxation may be a human rights violation. The reporting rules, threats, intrusion into the family finances, keeping the non-US spouse out of the family finances, disallowing a child deduction for children who are NOT U.S. citizens, making it difficult for the non-citizen spouse to inherit …
Does U.S. citizenship-based taxation interfere in marriages?
Subject to your comments, I think this would be worth a more comprehensive post.
Pepperdine #ObamaTaxAdvice Tweets and Conference
Results For #obamataxadvice :
The first tweet gives a link to the video of conference! Although the whole conference is interesting, the panel of most interest (FATCA, etc.) – Allison Christians – starts at about the 6:35 mark.
FATCANatics
The FATCANatic response starts at the 7:27 mark. He refers to the Drone analogy and acknowledges that it is a case of the U.S. telling foreign banks what to do. He makes three interesting points:
1. FATCA is the wave of the future for lawyers;
2. Surprised that FATCA has not been done sooner;
3. Thinks that other countries will follow the U.S. into FATCA.
Make sure you listen to it.
Discussion of matters of interest to #americansabroad:
Professor Allison Christians (starts at the 6:50 mark) introduced the conference attendees to FATCA and U.S. citizenship-based taxation.
At the 7:36 mark she answers a question from the audience which seems to be (I infer this from her answer) a two part question:
1. The questioner thought FATCA was reciprocal, so what’s the big deal?
2. Why on earth would Canadians object to filing U.S. tax returns?
Professor Christians gave a good description of the problem.
Prognosis:
After watching this you may want to consider where the tax environment for U.S. persons abroad is going. We DO know where the career prospects for lawyers are headed! Begins with “F”.
Overall impression of the conference:
Tax policy is simply to important to allow the discussion to be shaped and dominated by tax professionals! Perhaps they should not even be included in the discussion.
Advice:
Enjoy the video!
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Missed Tax Advice for the 2nd Obama Admin? Check out the video here: http://bit.ly/Zwo8qV
#ObamaTaxAdvice@TaxAnalysts@SoCalTaxProf
Pepperdine Law Rev. After hearing from @Demsabroad, Here is @BarackObama
The Obama “Fairy Tale”
@Demsabroad are grateful for the “privilege of being allowed the freedom to live outside the U.S”.
Reagan pointed out that Freedom was never more than one generation away from extinction.
From the man whose policies will make freedom extinct within this generation:
But, of course “freedom to live our lives” does not include the freedom to be alive:
One response – suggest you get over there and build a record of responses:
A tale of two taxpayers, evasion vs. avoidance?
This is fascinating. I would be interested in your views on these two taxpayers.
Alaska EA says IRS stealing from taxpayers
I came across this MUST read article. Note that this is written by a very experienced EA (“IRS Enrolled Agent“). He notes that it is hard to communicate with the IRS from Alaska. It is much harder for U.S. citizens abroad to communicate with the IRS. This is definitely worth a careful read. You will understand the IRS better.
Alaska EA: It's not ineptness or incompetence, The IRS is stealing from you http://t.co/h7Wy7lGJ – #ameriansabroad lack access to IRS too
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 14, 2013
Those who are NOT twitter literate can read the article here.
January 12, 2013
Saturday AM
By 1989 the Internal Revenue Service had closed virtually all of its field offices in Alaska, concentrating everything in Anchorage with an adjunct in Fairbanks. Travel budgets for IRS employees were virtually eliminated, too, so by the early 1990s almost all audits in the state of Alaska were done by telephone and fax machine. It was a system that worked because there was some IRS employee in Anchorage available via phone to us folks in the bush who would deal with our problem. Then in 2007 we got a new IRS commissioner and considerable transition in the Anchorage office, more or less simultaneously. One Sue Matters took over in Anchorage what used to be called “Problems Resolution,” put up a sign saying “Walk-ins welcome,” and turned off the telephone. So Anchorage is serviced, and the rest of us have been dumped into a large black hole.
Cook v. Tait 7: Equality: Law prohibits both rich and poor from sleeping on park bench
This post appeared on the RenounceUScitizenship blog.
Should #americansabroad be taxed according to the same rules as homelanders? http://t.co/q93tsGRq
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 11, 2013
Cook v. Tait 6: Taxation of Green Card holders who reside outside the U.S.
US taxation of #greencard holders who reside outside the US http://t.co/EKwPBqo8 is nothing more than taxing residents of other countries.
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 6, 2013
Giving up Your US Green Card – Make Sure It is Done Correctly or Pay the Price! | Let's Talk About: US Tax http://t.co/JS63iKvD
— V. La Torre Jeker JD (@VLJeker) January 9, 2013
This is a post from the RenounceUScitizenship blog that appeared about a week ago. It’s worth remembering that the U.S. claims the right to tax “U.S. persons”. The series of Cook v. Tait posts (1 to 5) strongly suggests that there is no justification whatsoever for citizenship-based taxation. But, remember that the U.S. is also claiming the right to tax “Green Card Holders” who no longer reside in the U.S. If the justification for taxing U.S. citizens abroad is weak, then the justification for taxing “Green Card Holders Abroad” is non-existent. To put it simply the taxation of Green Card Holders who:
1. Don’t reside in the U.S.; and
2. Do reside in other countries
is stealing from the Treasury of other nations. It’s high time that the world wakes up to what the U.S. is really doing! This doesn’t even consider the impact of FBAR, FATCA and any other F words!
Cook v. Tait 5: Citizenship-based taxation was NEVER justified – League of Nations reports
Fascinating 1923 report of League of Nations on citizenship-based taxation of interest to #americansabroad http://t.co/06uUZdAN
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 11, 2013
What I found most interesting about the Isaac Brock Society is that the comments are usually every bit as interesting as the posts (in some cases better). Citizenship-based taxation is such an important issue and is the “root of the problem”. Thanks to Shadow Raider for a fascinating comment that needs to be elevated to a post of its own.