So join with me in the singing of the commemorative song, and toast with me to all that is is possible in a group effort! We are fighting our War of 2012, FATCA.
Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad
China news: The USA is “a disgusting thief spying over his neighbor’s fence”
China fighter jets intercepted a US military patrol plane flying near its coast. The Pentagon reacted that their maneuver was “unsafe and unprofessional”. China says that the USA is “a disgusting thief spying over his neighbor’s fence”.
That is what FATCA is. FATCA is the United States being a disgusting thief spying on the bank accounts of people who have citizens in their countries of residence. By forcing FATCA on other countries, the USA is indeed the biggest rogue nation in the world, and “spying over the fence” is an appropriate metaphor–the fence being that of normal banking privacy. The USA is a financial voyeur.
Here is the full article of the Sina News response originally in Chinese (translation at Simon Black, Sovereign Man, emphasis his):
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Latest Foreign Earned Income Exclusion statistics: in five years, IRS offshore crusades added a hundred thousand ordinary new filers who don’t owe any U.S. tax
Via TaxProf Blog, we learn that the IRS has released its annual report on Individual Income Tax Returns, 2012. Page 9 has statistics on Foreign Earned Income Exclusion usage, from which we can calculate the average amount of the FEIE per return:
| 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of returns w/FEIE | 371,885 | 396,405 | 415,519 | 445,276 | 475,386 |
| +6.59% | +4.82% | +7.16% | +6.76% | ||
| Total amount of excluded income (constant 1990 US$ million) |
13,899 | 14,907 | 15,482 | 16,305 | 16,866 |
| +7.25% | +3.86% | +5.31% | +3.44% | ||
| Average FEIE per return (constant 1990 US$) |
37,374 | 37,604 | 37,258 | 36,618 | 35,478 |
| +0.62% | -0.92% | -1.72% | -3.11% |
Here’s another way of looking at these numbers. Assume that all of the FEIE users in 2008 continued to be FEIE users in 2012 (or equivalently, that they were replaced by similar filers or married-filing-jointly couples), and that over that period they suffered the same drop of 0.96% in earned income (in constant 1990 US$) that all U.S. returns demonstrated on average during that period. What would the average FEIE for each of the one hundred thousand marginal new filers have to be in order to fit with the above figures?
Answer (again, in constant 1990 US$): US$29,709, almost exactly the same as the average earned income across all U.S tax returns.
Non-US Accounts Being Reviewed in UK at the Expense of Non-US Persons
#FATCA #IGA ALL British trusts will be reviewed at expense of client; even w/out ANY US indicia http://t.co/2hL3nOXMes Please RT widely
— U.S. Expat Canada (@USExpatCanada) August 23, 2014
“Some individual customers are being contacted by their banks or other financial providers if, for example, they appear to have links with the US or own property there. But tens of thousands of other families are beginning to receive letters, and invoices, simply because they have established run-of-the-mill family trusts.”
The family in the article owes at least $635 CDN plus VAT. This is beyond outrageous. At what point will people begin to take action?
Article is HERE
ACA Update on RBT & Request for Testimonials
American Citizens Abroad has posted an update with information concerning their efforts to replace Citizenship-based Taxation with Residence-based Taxation. They are also calling for testimonials about how legislation is affecting you and for your support in by writing the Tax Committee directly responsible for tax reform and asking for the implementation of RBT.
Update on Residence-Based Taxation RBT – August 2014
ACA has been hard at work in Washington, DC bringing RBT to the attention of the legislature and the Administration. ACA has met with all the members of the Americans Abroad Caucus, and the Ways & Means and Senate Finance committees. ACA has been asked by the committees involved in tax reform to provide our input on the tax treatment of Americans living and working overseas. We are proud that ACA is now the government “go to” source for information on many of the issues affecting overseas Americans, and we regularly submit comments to government hearings on issues important to our membership.
Media attention on the issues of overseas Americans is growing. More and more major media outlets like Bloomberg, CNN, Forbes, Time, Politico and others are talking about RBT and FATCA. Much of this attention is due to the ACA commitment to bringing the issues of overseas Americans to the attention of the media. ACA is regularly solicited for interviews and quoted in the media.
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Jack Townsend says that Americans don’t admire me
Jack Townsend says that civil disobedience is only really justifiable in the case that there is a possibility of jury nullification, but no jury of US citizens would find a tax evader Canadian citizen “not guilty” for shirking the US tax code. Furthermore, he says that Americans don’t admire those who do their disobedience in hiding. I offer here the continuation of our discussion:
U.S. Consulate Appointments: Toronto is booked up — no problem; you can go somewhere else, ADDING TO YOUR EXPENSE for the whole U.S. expatriation experience
Patrick Cain, Global News, August 21, 2014: Want to shed U.S. citizenship? Get in line.
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UPDATE: August 27, 2014
UPDATE: August 22, 2014
The Patrick Cain article itself can use some comments, which uses Facebook, Yahoo, AOL or hotmail. There are only four there — the last saying “Being little brother has its benefits. But it also comes with a cost.”
(Correct!: Costs to stay within the new Berlin Wall and cost to get over it.)
One comment (Innocente) reports:
When the US DOS set the renunciation price at $450 in 2010, it stated that it covered less than 25% of the cost. Will the new price be increased to $1,800 ($450/.25) or perhaps $2,250 ($450/.20)?
Also, see the reasoning for the subsidized $450 below:
“Schedule of Fees for Consular Services, Department of State and Overseas Embassies and Consulates
A Rule by the State Department on 06/28/2010
Documentation for Renunciation of Citizenship
The CoSS demonstrated that documenting a U.S. citizen’s renunciation of citizenship is extremely costly, requiring American consular officers overseas to spend substantial amounts of time to accept, process, and adjudicate cases. A new fee of $450 will be established to help defray a portion of the total cost to the U.S. Government of documenting the renunciation of citizenship. While the Department decided to set the fee at $450, this fee represents less than 25 percent of the cost to the U.S. Government. The Department has determined that it must recoup at least a portion of its costs of providing this very costly service but set the fee lower than the cost of service in order to lessen the impact on those who need this service and not discourage the utilization of the service, a development the Department feels would be detrimental to national interests. See 31 U.S.C. 9701(b)(2).”
Another says:
Today I visited the consulate in Vancouver. … Both the clerk and the Consular encouraged me to renounce not relinquish as my relinquishment would be denied and I would have to come back later to renounce and then the fee would be going up to I think they said 2800.00 but it might be 2400.00 I stopped listening after they repeated no relinquishment one too many times. I insisted they forward my file to Washington.
So what will be the new fee that is a guaranteed right to renounce and when will it be implemented?
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As is pointed out, in Patrick Cain’s article:
Pushing the appointment into next year doesn’t just frustrate the impatient, however – it adds an entire year to U.S. tax reporting. Someone making an appointment now to renounce in Toronto in January wouldn’t be able to log out of the U.S. tax system until June 2016.
However, people can work the phones and find a U.S. consulate that can give them an earlier appointment, Nightingale says:
“If Toronto is booked up, you can go somewhere else. You can go to the Montreal consulate; you can go to the embassy in Ottawa.”
The U.S. State Department estimates that about a million people considered American under U.S. law (who may also be Canadian citizens) live here. In theory, all of them, unless their income falls under minimum levels, are supposed to file tax returns with the IRS, and report their bank accounts to an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, on pain of heavy fines.
In practice, few did until recently.
Want to Submit a Post to a Forbes Blog?
Got something to say about citizenship, #FBAR, #FATCA and renouncing? @taxgirl has a guest post opportunity for you: http://t.co/FqTBj0bZ3w
— Rachel Millios, EA (@RachelMillios) August 20, 2014
Kelly Phillips Erb, a commentator on Tax issues at Forbes, has put out a call for posts to be submitted for her blog.
“It’s my annual call for guest posts! As I have done for the past few years, I’ll be turning over the blog to my readers for an entire week.
This year, I’m offering readers the chance to answer one of six tax-related questions:
- To combat inversions and other tax planning techniques for corporations, do you think Congress should lower corporate tax rates?
- Do you support repeal of the federal estate tax?
- Would you be willing to give up your citizenship if it meant you would save money in taxes?
- Should our Social Security system be privatized?
- Would you support a commuter tax by the mile if it meant the elimination or reduction of excise taxes on gas?
- If you could make one significant change to the existing Tax Code (change a rate, eliminate a deduction or something else), what would it be and why?”
Ms Erb indicates that each question relates to some corresponding pending legislation or active discussion in the Congress. Perhaps a chance to inform them that that is not what is going with renunciation?
More info Here
Conversations on RRSPs, renunciation of US citizenship, and civil disobedience with Jack Townsend
The following conversation that took place at Jack Townsend’s blog. Jack Townsend is of the opinion that Canadians can’t simply choose not to obey the IRS. I am of the opinion that the IRS is a criminal organization that is violating the rights of Canadians and it is only good and proper to disobey what are clearly unjust laws. Jack’s view is that Canadians who choose to disobey US tax laws are not going to get any sympathy from him. What he says about jury nullification is particularly interesting in light of my argument that the US tax laws applied in Canada are a violation of the right to trial by jury in the district in which the alleged crime was committed. It is sad to see the law professor with such little sympathy for the our situation, as it is so very much like the causes of US revolution against British rule.
That an RRSP is even considered some kind of delinquent account at all is offensive to Canadians. The IRS could take a much more lenient stand towards RRSPs since they are equivalent to IRAs except in a “foreign” country. Foreign only from the point of view of the IRS, but domestic as far as Canadians are concerned. What’s “foreign” to us is the IRS, which is the External Internal Revenue Service.
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No More Renunciation Appointments Available in Toronto for 2014
I have just become aware of this information via Twitter. As someone asked which Consulate would be closest, I thought it might be helpful to post all of the Consulates and the Embassy in one location. I have no idea whether this is the situation at any of the other Canadian locations.
If anyone is aware of any similar information, please post it.
Embassy:
Ottawa covers the areas of:
Eastern Ontario (Kingston, Lanark, Leeds, Prescott, Renfrew, Russell and Stormont); and those parts of the Québec regions of Outaouais and Abitibi-Témiscamingue near Ottawa.
Info
Consulates:
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