I have no idea how the Canadian Medical Association got involved with issue but apparently they did sending a letter to Jim Flaherty and receiving a response back both of which I have linked to below:
Perhaps we need to get other “professional” organization outside of banking and finance to take a stand on this issue.
I don’t how I missed this gem of a letter but apparently in the fall MP Denise Savoie of Victoria sent a letter to US President Obama on the subject of FATCA, OVDI, FBAR etc. I have linked to it below.
http://denisesavoie.ca/download/1467/letter_to_president_obama.pdf
MP Savoie also has a section of her website devoted to US tax issues(although it hasn’t been updated since December) in which she continues to indicate her opposition to FATCA.
http://denisesavoie.ca/us-tax-information
I am also trying to get together all of the official responses we have received and obtained for submission to Deloitte’s FATCA comments page. I don’t know whether Deloitte will publish them but there are all very much authentic.
If anyone wants to helpful post a link to any previously published letters here at Isaac Brock Society.
While this is fairly old I have never seen it before. MP Jean Crowder (NDP) seems to be very much aware of the provisions of FATCA in this writeup and is none too pleased.
Given where Jean Crowder sits on the political spectrum in Canada this could be seen as something pretty close to a ultimate betrayal by American “Progressives” coming from their Canadian “Progressive” brethren.
Everyone should read this. You need to scroll down several pages.
I don’t how these two things got attached together but I found an interesting letter from the Canadian Bankers Association to Flaherty AND a letter from the UK Ambassador to the US to Geithner. This is the first I have ever seen a foreign governments direct response to the US. Take a read.
I have no idea who put these on YouTube but they are pretty good. I know the first one was posted on January 3rd before I started posting here and has information that was not being commonly discussed at that time(IBS was just getting started although at the point Expat Forum, where I never posted but did read from was ongoing)
I found an interesting article on FATCA at Financial News this morning that for an “industry” publication is the first I get some sense that they are getting it. A couple of interesting quotes:
“Once countries have got the structure in place to comply with US Fatca, their governments won’t just say, ‘we’ll bear the costs of helping the US gather its tax and leave it at that’. Something will happen.”
That “something” will not be a repeal of US Fatca, Fleming said. The realistic options, he said, are either that every country develops its own version of Fatca, or that a “global Fatca” is developed, where every country has to disclose the assets of every other countries’ citizens under a common framework. He said: “There will have to be a ‘global Fatca framework’ – the alternative is even worse. We couldn’t operate on the basis of 27 Fatcas in the Europe Union, say.”
The significance is enormous, he said: “It will be a global tax system. It is impossible to comprehend how you maintain national tax integrity under such a system; how you get to a global Fatca is an immense challenge.”
A few points they seem to be making:
Many in the financial industry are increasingly taking the view that FATCA and any copy cat legislation is going to be an overriding issue for the rest of the decade.
In closing the authors state that they in fact think the US is playing a “long game” of trying to determine the world’s taxation model.
Unfortunately this article now seems to be pay-walled, but you can sign up for a free four week trial.
http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2012-03-27/fund-managers-predict-global-fatca
A lot of people here in Canada have lately not viewed the UK favorably on many of the issues we discussed here. However, I wanted to post an article that recently went up the Independent’s website about some UK politicans complaining about the US trying it impose its infamous no-fly list on British Airways flights between the UK and Canada including flights from London to Calgary and Edmonton that don’t even touch or get near US airspace. The US is also insisting on seeing all the passenger details of UK flights to the Carribean and Cuba. I am somewhat familiar with past issues regarding Canada and the no-fly list so I welcome any comments.
A couple of initial completely unscientific nuggets of information I found on this subject.
1. There are a lot of US Citizens living is Israel some of which arrived many years ago and in other cases arrived as recently as a year or two ago. On a per capita basis numbers as high or higher than Canada
