Author Archives: usxcanada

 
Here’s a resonant paragraph from Kalí Tal’s Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma (1996) Cambridge University Press. A footnote suggests that the material has been summarized from another book. A heuristic for self-analysis?
 

In a social system that supports the systematic oppression and persecution of a particular minority group (such as Jews in Nazi Germany), the victims of persecution have a limited set of available options. They may capitulate, which will result in continued suffering and perhaps the eventual death of all members of the targeted group if the intent of the oppressor is genocide. They may resist by appealing to existing legal, moral, or ethical structures in the dominant society (i.e., litigation, religious arguments) and use tactics such as passive resistance or nonviolence. They may respond with force — intending to change the power structure. Or they may attempt to escape the confines of the oppressive social structure, either by relocating to a less hostile environment or by “passing” as a member of a nontargeted group.  (p. 8-9)

 
Phil Hodgen stands high among the few tax/law “professionals” in the U.S. expatriation sector that I have respect for. Hodgen has just shared this precious pearl:

        The real risk is uncertainty and fear.

If you wish, go on to read the whole classic answer that is distilled into this pure nacre.

The coda, also a quotation:  In the long run everyone pays the price.  Sauve qui peut.
 

 
The following nuggets extracted from a singular academic essay may help to further inform persistent Brocker campaignist tendencies toward LTA (lobbying the authorities) and DTM (doing the media).

Americans in Canada are not loved by their vassal state, and never will be. When the empire claims its own, the emotional juices of schadenfreude have to overwhelm narrow rational self-interest.

Just watch those Americans get what they deserve. What a delightful spectacle. The increase in my Canadian banking fees due to FATCA is less than I spend on watching hockey goons smash each other up, and the show is way more fun.

Sauve qui peut.

Continue reading →

 
Lynne Platt has just arrived as the new US Consul General in Vancouver. A three-year appointment. Perhaps obsessive Brock researchers can dig out detail on her earlier posting to … Baghdad.

http://vancouver.usconsulate.gov/news-events/2014-news-and-events/amb_pao_yukon.html
 

 
Somewhere around right about now, three years ago, the worldwide U.S. person horror show began its gruesome run. This fright night still plays strong in pretty well any country outside the United States that you may happen to reside in.

Here are my nominations for the top three quotations so far, in chronological order. Notice that two of the three characters have already departed the scene.

 
FATCA has far-reaching extraterritorial implications. It would turn Canadian banks into extensions of the IRS and would raise significant privacy concerns for Canadians. … Canada is not a tax haven. People do not flock to Canada to avoid paying taxes.
—  Jim Flaherty  (then Canadian Minister of Finance)  16 Sept 2011

 
My message on this one is to sit tight. We are not unreasonable. We are not unsympathetic. We are not irresponsible.
—  David Jacobson  (then US Ambassador to Canada)  18 Oct 2011

 
Political signals from the United States show that expatriation and tax policies are likely to get harsher. … The cost of expatriation now is less than the expected future cost of expatriation. Better to take the medicine now rather than later. … Expect the same exit tax rules, but more of them, and worse. Expect more expatriations. … Get out while the getting is semi-good. Don’t wait for more time. More time means more laws.
—  Phil Hodgen  (still a tax lawyer)  5 June 2012
 

Feel free to propose other sourced contenders in comments to this posting.
 

 
So they’re technically renouncing their U.S. citizenship. They’re declaring they’re based someplace else even though most of their operations are here. Some people are calling these companies “corporate deserters.”

And it’s only a few big corporations so far. …

—  Barack Obama  (24 July 2014)  White House Transcript

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/07/24/remarks-president-economy-los-angeles-ca

Post Tim Horton’s, Obama looks like he’s thinking about (1) Canada as haven (2) the individual lives worldwide that the U.S. has willfully been driving into the desperations of financial ruin, severe psychic stress, marital breakup, contemplation of suicide — and skyrocketing rates of renunciation.

What really ticks Obama off is those big corporations. He talks about them just like they were individuals. Oopsie. Category mistake!
 

Here are what look to be a few specific red flags streaming in the wake of Canada’s new FATCA bomb (pdf):
6.4.b (p. 18)
Three-year window. By 1 Jan 2017 specified US persons in Canada can expect that they will be required to provide US TIN to Canadian financial institution. (How long does it currently take to get a TIN/SSN if you feel you need to do that?)
I.C (p. 19)
Canadian financial institutions can elect to follow U.S. Treasury regulations rather than FATCA agreement “to establish whether an account is a US Reportable Account.” This trapdoor means these regulations also need to be examined for what they would allow Canadian banks to do to US persons. [See also VI.F below]
II.B.3 (p. 21)
“The Reporting Canadian Financial Institution must treat the account unless it elects …” Canadian financial institutions are given carte blanche to treat suspected US persons as a mass and to make no further effort to verify validity of indicia. See also II.D.5.b (p. 25) and II.E.4 (p. 26)
II.B.4 (p. 21-22)
Getting out of US-person jail requires that Canadian financial institution maintain record of three distinct discriminatory pieces of data. These should also be maintained on Eritreans for the benefit of Eritrea? Etc.
II.B.4.a.3.b (p. 22)
Here’s the gotcha for accidental US persons who have not relinquished/renounced.
II.C.1 (p. 23)
Point of interest. Canadian financial institution has two years to review pre-existing lower value accounts ($50,000 to $1 M).
VI.C.1 (p. 36)
“Each holder of jointly held Financial Account shall be attributed the entire balance” The joint account gotcha. So what if all the funds actually originate from a non-US person? They all get reported as belonging to the US-person.
VI.D.1 and VI.D.2
Documentary evidence for individual. No requirement beyond what any Canadian resident would normally provide in present circumstances?
VI.F
Private personal data can be extracted by Canadian financial institutions from third parties under alternative elected under I.C? [see above]

This document — US Citizens Living in Canada — Income Tax Considerations dated February 2013 — just floated up out of the surf. This may be old hat. It may be new hat for a newbie. In any case, FWIW. Here’s a link to the 6-page fancy pdf:

http://www.bmo.com/pdf/nesbitt/USCitizensLivingInCanada_Eng%20-%20BMO%20NB.pdf
 

 
A research paper commissioned by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada concludes:

The current reality is that the parties are managing vast databases within which a variety of sensitive personal information from disparate sources is processed. For the most part, individuals have no legal rights to learn what information is contained therein, to access and correct those data, to remove themselves from the systems, or to restrict the collection, use and disclosure of their personal data. For the most part, parties have no legal obligations to keep that information secure, to only retain it for as long as necessary, and to control who has access to it.

The entire March 2012 paper, Canadian Federal Political Parties and Personal Privacy Protection: A Comparative Analysis, can be viewed at:

http://www.priv.gc.ca/information/research-recherche/2012/pp_201203_e.asp#toc6

Given this failure by dominant Canadian political parties to implement respectable privacy safeguards that restrict their own activities, expectations for maintenance of inconvenient privacy policy in the face of FATCA implementation seem unrealistic.
 

 
Add this item to the list of benefits/disadvantages of U.S. citizenship?

According to the former officials, U.S. cyberspies, most from military units who’ve received specialized training, sit at consoles running sophisticated hacking software, which funnels information stolen from computers around the world into a “fusion center,” where intelligence analysts try to make sense of it all. The NSA is prohibited by law from spying on people or entities within the U.S., including noncitizens, or on U.S. citizens abroad. According to one of the former officials, the amount of data the unit harvests from overseas computer networks, or as it travels across the Internet, has grown to an astonishing 2 petabytes an hour—that’s nearly 2.1 million gigabytes, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pages of text.

Emphasis added.

Source: How the U.S. Government Hacks the World / Bloomberg BusinessWeek (May 27-June 22, 2013) 36

Full article at http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-23/how-the-u-dot-s-dot-government-hacks-the-world