http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/media-advisories/Pages/09172012B.aspx
Unfortionately the Brussels visit was today. She will be in Paris the rest of the week then Singapore. Maybe she can drop in Eduardo Saverin while she is in town. No Canada visit announced. According to the press release she met with all EU Member States and is meeting with some OECD members but it is not clear which ones.
http://www.barackobama.com/nv/entry/nv-100-in-100-accomplishment-no-6-071712/
Feel free to comment but I suspect any negative comments will be taken down.
While this is fairly old it is the first time I have come across it so it wanted to link and post some relevant remarks.
Now, talking about the creation of a good environment to do business, there are a couple of issues that Canada and the United States need to address. Secretary Geithner and I have discussed these issues.
First of all, the requirement for dual U.S.-Canadian citizens living in Canada to file Foreign Bank Account Reports. Most of them didn’t even know that they had to file U.S. tax returns, even though they weren’t earning income in the United States, and there are substantial potential penalties. So this is something that we’re talking about to try to be effective and efficient in what is sought to be accomplished. What is sought to be accomplished, of course, is to avoid tax evasion and the use of tax havens.
There are different legal remedies that can be taken under UK law to attempt to block this agreement. However, there are not really any commentators here from the UK so I have not really spent much time explaining them. If anyone is interested in the UK I can provide more detailed advice if necessary.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_82_12.htm
The two individuals pictured are Emily McMahon of the US Treasury and Deputy Exchequer David Guake. One piece of news is that UK Credit Unions will be exempt from FATCA even if they have UK Resident US Person account holders. Again if their are individuals willing to fight FATCA in the UK I can provide assistance and advice however, no one appears to want to do so.
I don’t have a lot of details yet but apparently Tom Coburn of Oklahoma(a Republican for those of you who care about that type of thing) is proposing an amendment to make the existing passport revocation provisions of S.3457 even more onerous. Link to the amendment text below:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2012-09-13/html/CREC-2012-09-13-pt1-PgS6346-3.htm
US Senator Bill Nelson and his Senate colleagues are back up to their old tricks of trying to get a Passport revocation rule instated for back/unpaid taxes. This time they are trying to do it through enacting an amendment to the “Veteran Jobs Corps Act of 2012” which who could be against such a piece of legislation until of course you look at fine print and notice the provisions of the act that have nothing to do with veterans or jobs. The following Senators are Senator Nelson’s partners in crime so to speak on this issue:
Sen Blumenthal, Richard [CT] – 9/10/2012
Sen Franken, Al [MN] – 9/11/2012
Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [NY] – 8/2/2012
Sen Merkley, Jeff [OR] – 9/10/2012
Sen Murray, Patty [WA] – 7/30/2012
Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] – 9/10/2012
Sen Stabenow, Debbie [MI] – 9/10/2012
Sen Wyden, Ron [OR] – 8/2/2012
Link to legislation
According to G&M writer Adam Radwanski’s Twitter feed:
Submissions accepted until September 28. My impression is anyone can submit but Australian residents/citizens probably have more influence.
Is there anyway ACA will change their policy of we don’t lobby foreign governments just once on this one or are we all going to have to do this on our own.
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/taxation/publications/tax_lawyer_home/ttl-win12-berg.html
This article is pay-walled to members of the American Bar Association but it does seem to have a rather interesting premise. I also note the author appears to pick a fight with IBS Wall of Shame member Bruce Ackermann of Yale University. If anyone gets access to this article it might be something interesting to look it.
Remarks from Donald Johnston below:
I should tell you that the OECD began the program with a misnomer, calling it “harmful tax competition”, which, as I recall, was the language actually used in the résumé from the G-7 at the Lyon summit. They used the term “harmful tax competition”.
