An interesting item found on the Expat Forum today. A commenter writes (emphasis mine):
Got this from Metrobank today. This indicates that the IRS wants gross receipts and withdrawals or payments, even though I no longer have an account with Metro. Has anyone else got something like this from other banks?
Here is the redacted form letter the commenter received:
New Legislation Targets Inversions From Different Angle http://t.co/ryfRo5By1G – Incredible ignorance in the comments – #Homelanderthink
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) August 1, 2014
The article referenced in the above tweet includes the following radio interview. If you want to get inside the minds of Homelanders – this is a must listen. Only once is there an acknowledgement that all an inversion would do is mean that the U.S. would not tax profits earned in other countries. It’s as though they assume they have the god given right to tax activities in other countries that are NOT connected to the U.S. (Well except for the fact that the company is incorporated in the U.S. But, then again, maybe this does make sense because the U.S. citizens and U.S. companies are U.S. property!)
The Battle Over U.S. Corporate Tax Inversion http://t.co/H3HFB74DLt – Great radio interviews with #FATCA #FBAR @SenCarlLevin and more
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) August 1, 2014
The interview is in the above tweet.
Of course one could look at this from a non-U.S. perspective:
Bruton: Ireland promotes good business practice http://t.co/1MG5Iwv97F and identifies corporate inversions as the result of U.S. tax code
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) August 1, 2014
Since it’s that wonderful time of the year again, I’m reading the Federal Register a little more closely than usual. Not that this is a chore, mind you: the official notices coming out of Washington, D.C. are quite entertaining. Some of them are even true! Last week, for example, the State Department finally got around to cancelling regulations that were 37 years out of date — they were promulgated under a law that got repealed during the Carter administration. That was worth at least a chuckle.
But today, the funny men at the IRS have gone one-up on those State Department bores, and submitted this side-splitting, thigh-slapping article:
Revenue Procedure 2002-23 provides guidance for the application by U.S. citizens and residents of the U.S.—Canada Income Tax Treaty, as amended by the 1995 protocol, in order to defer U.S. Income taxes on income accrued in certain Canadian retirement plans.
Current Actions: There are no changes being made to the revenue procedure at this time.
Type of Review: Extension of a currently approved collection.
Affected Public: Individuals or households.
Estimated Number of Respondents: 20,000.
And I’m not the first one to notice this comedy gold, either.
From Bloomberg News, Russia Eyes Banning U.S. Chicken And Some European Fruit. But that is not all. They plan to ban the FATCA compliance industry as well:
In a separate development, Russia’s lower house of parliament, or Duma, may consider legislation to target companies in nations that impose sanctions against Russian citizens or businesses, according to Russian lawmaker Evgeny Fedorov.
The proposal would bar audit and consulting firms from nations defined as “country-aggressor” from working in Russia. If enacted, the law would cover Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst & Young LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Boston Consulting Group Inc. and McKinsey & Co., Fedorov said in a telephone interview today.
I’d love to see this in Canada too. It is time to get the IRS tax collectors out of Canada. They have no business here. Now Russia, thanks to retaliatory measures against Obama’s increased sanctions, will do what no one seems to realize is the only logical thing to do: deport the US tax compliance industry.
Barrie McKenna, Globe & Mail 30 July 2014, p. B3
“A leading accounting firm is taking the unusual step of urging Canadians to double-check their citizenship status, warning there may still be thousands of accidental Americans in Canada oblivious to their U.S. tax obligations.”
Only three comments so far. I made a comment, calling attention to the ADCS.
James George Jatras details the complete absence of legal authorization for FATCA Intergovernmental Agreements in a new opinion piece for Forbes, as well as on his own blog site, repealfatca.com. As willfully ignorant countries around the world line-up to needlessly sign-away their sovereignty and privacy rights, it is important to remember that all FATCA IGA’s are mere pseudo-treaties, built on a legal foundation of quicksand. Only Congress has the constitutional authority to enact international treaties, not the executive branch – not Treasury, not the IRS and certainly not Obama, no matter how many executive orders he may sign with a Louis XIV-like flourish.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, not later than 30 days after the close of each calendar quarter, the Secretary shall publish in the Federal Register the name of each individual losing United States citizenship (within the meaning of section 877 (a) or 877A) with respect to whom the Secretary receives information under the preceding sentence during such quarter.
Notices to be printed in the Federal Register for 30 July 2014 have just been placed on public inspection, but the Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate is not among them. This means that for the eighth quarter in a row, the list of certain expatriates will not be published in a timely fashion as required by 26 USC § 6039G(d).
Defenders of the poor beleaguered Secretary of the Treasury will claim that he already approved the list for publication, and it’s someone else’s fault that it failed to actually get published on time, and that he hasn’t broken the law. But applicable case law shows quite clearly that when a statute requires publication of a notice, mere agency approval or placement on public inspection is not enough to meet the requirement of the law.
And since the IRS is so concerned that about international reporting requirements these days, shouldn’t they be enforcing 6039G(d) just as strictly as they enforce its neighbour, 6038D?
UPDATE November 28, 2017:
Also, see MuzzledNoMore’s updated post, United Nations Human Rights Complaint: Seeking Advice and Additional Signatures
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UPDATE November 23, 2017:
UN Complaint Final July 29 2014 – updated links November 23 2017
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UPDATE JANUARY 10, 2017:
From MuzzledNoMore:
Just letting everybody know that we’re still waiting to hear from the UN about the status of our Complaint. With any luck we’ll have the matter taken care of within the next few months by the new Republican administration in Washington. Who knows? Maybe the UN is watching and waiting to see what happens as well. In any regard, the UN has informed us that it can take up to three years for a Complaint to reach the stage at which it will be considered or rejected.
If a “domestic” solution is possible, there will be no need for the UN to address the issue. When we filed the Complaint nearly two and a half years ago we could never have believed that repealing FATCA and switching to residence-based taxation would have made it to the 2016 Republican Party Platform. Now it remains to be seen if the party will follow through with its promises.
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UPDATE MAY 21, 2015:
Today we received official confirmation from the United Nations Human Rights Council that our Complaint has been received and is in the queue pending approval (or not) for admittance into one of the Working Groups. The next session of the Working Group on Communications is scheduled from 17 to 21 August 2015. Further information will be shared with us after that date.
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UPDATE NOVEMBER 6, 2014:
From MuzzledNoMore:
We have finally received confirmation that our Human Rights Complaint against the United States has been received by the United Nations. This is great news! But let’s not pop champagne corks just yet. There is no indication that the Complaint has been read or considered for acceptance into the complaints process in any way. That is all yet to come. But we have made a huge step forward! That deserves a few cheers all round … even without the bubbly!
UPDATE OCTOBER 27, 2014:
Permission has been given a university researcher to access to our UN Human Rights Complaint to analyze ethical assumptions on FATCA. That access will be used for academic purposes, content not to be released (as the UN has not yet acknowledged receipt of this UN Human Rights Complaint).
We view as a significant step that this document will be studied for moral dimensions and ethics. We continue to anticipate the time we will be able to publicly release contents of the Complaint, likely AFTER the next scheduled meeting to review such complaints, sometime in April 2015.
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UPDATE SEPTEMBER 10, 2014:
“JC” commented, and he’s right:
Whenever that text for the human rights complaint comes out that, I believe, will be a big help at raising awareness.
The text of the Human Rights Complaint will be published when we know the UN has received and considered it. There has been no confirmation that our submission was considered for the meeting in August (…our submission was sent just before the August meeting so, just by number of other submissions received before ours, our Human Rights Complaint may not have been considered in the time allotted). It looks like the next UN meeting to consider Human Rights Complaints is scheduled for April of 2015 — that Committee meets twice a year.
In the meantime, our fundraising must be pinned to its stand-alone legal claim and importance which absolutely addresses our human rights issues.
Donate Now: http://adcs-adsc.ca/
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August 7, 2014 UPDATE:
The Human Rights Complaint has been submitted. Thank you to those who worked on the document and made this happen. A very special thank you to all who came forward to put your names on this important document. We had a total of 41 signers, representing the countries of Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Estonia, Switzerland and Belgium.
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August 5, 2014 UPDATE:
Note: there is a confidentiality clause in the document that your name / nationality / country be kept confidential. My name and address will be the only one that might not be confidential. I wanted to share with you two notes waiting for me this morning:
Hi Carol,
I am very disappointed that more people did not come forward and sign this document, I do not understand why people are afraid to speak up for what they believe. People are so afraid of the bully acts of the USA, We must stand together, I am asking all people that the US government deem US citizens to step forward and stand up against the US and the Harper government for allowing FATCA into the Canadian banking system.
I am not on facebook or twitter. I give you permission to post this.
Disappointed
XXX
Hi Carol,
I am surprised that so few people have signed. This makes me uneasy. People must be frightened. Do you expect repercussions against the signers? At the moment I don’t have the strength to deal with any more troubles. Would you please put a hold on my name until I can evaluate your assessment of possible repercussions.
Thank you,
YYYY
I answered YYYY:
Absolutely. I can take your name off the list of signers if you are not comfortable with that — you must be OK with your decision. We will probably be sending the Complaint on Thursday, August 7th .
No, we don’t expect any repercussions against any of the signers. We will ask for confidentiality in one of the clauses.
As with everything else of this with this (persons on blogs, getting together for protest, etc.), people are afraid to step forward. The US weapon toward its people always is FEAR. That is what we see here. That is our biggest obstacle and what may defeat us in the end.
Dr. Stephen Kish, Chair of the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty signs his name on behalf of the millions of *US Persons* Abroad who are afraid to sign.
Thanks, YYYY.
FEAR: the most effective tool the USA has at its disposal is at work in all we see regarding US Persons Abroad coming forward in unison to fight the good fight. If anything defeats us, it will be our FEAR.
As you all know, I fear too for my son’s name to be out there as it is my duty as a parent to protect his best interests. Because of my own fear, I went through all the complex back US tax filings through use of professionals in the US compliance industry. That was my choice as I could absolutely not do it myself and I so wanted this behind me, to stop the leak of my hard-earned retirement funds to be passed to the US IRS. I’m still in this game. I replied to a commenter at Isaac Brock yesterday and Stephen Kish picked part of what I said to update the ADCS-ADSC Charter Challenge post yesterday:
UPDATE August 5, 2014 (https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/06/01/its-time/)
Carol, an ADCS-ADSC Board Director, explains why she donated to this lawsuit:
The purpose of the lawsuit, to me, is to stop the obscene injustice of all of this, regain rights waived by the Canadian government’s implementation of the US FATCA IGA, thereby putting the financial institutions before individuals and families who are being criminalized!
I’m in for that just as I’m on this blog, hoping people learn from all of the stupid mistakes I made along the way — I don’t want others to make those same mistakes.
It’s about people getting their lives back, along with their dignity and their mental and physical health and to stop the the handing over to the US a good portion of what they’ve saved for their retirements.
It is about wanting Canada to remain a sovereign country, not taken over by the USA. It’s about what I think is right and not wanting to silently stand by and let this happen. It’s because I believe in free speech and don’t want to be shamed into not speaking out, at this point especially for other families who have a family member with some developmental disability or some other ‘mental incapacity’.
My update for now and my regards to all,
August 2, 2014 UPDATE:
Thank you very much for everyone who has corresponded to me at calgaryfouroneone@gmail.com to request the password and give permission for your signatures to be added. Your supportive emails are wonderful.
He is what we have for signers to the Human Rights Document:
18 – Canada
2 – UK
1 – Australia
1 – Belgium (US/Dutch Citizen)
1 – Denmark
1 – Germany
1 – Japan
1 – Switzerland
Note that one of the Canadian signers is Dr. Stephen Kish (Canadian, US)–signing personally, and on behalf of the “Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty” Board of Directors, and the millions of U.S. persons living abroad who are too frightened to sign this document.
Also waiting to hear back from 4 in Canada (one from Quebec) and one from New Zealand.
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July 30, 2014 UPDATE:
Here is the FINAL Human Rights Complaint, available to those that are considering signing. To access the password for this document, contact and request from calgaryfouroneone@gmail.com.
Each person sending a request will receive a copy from calgary411 “in Confidence” with the CLEAR understanding that it is NOT to be published. For anyone who wants to have another person read/sign the document, that other person also needs to obtain it through the Isaac Brock Society or Maple Sandbox channels. Signatures will only be accepted from those who have gotten the document through calgary411. This stipulation is necessary to keep some lid on the proliferation of this information.
We will announce when we know the timing for the agency committee looking at this document for review. We will update on this post any feedback from the agency as it is received.
This document is the collaboration of contributors to both blogs and took over a month to write, discuss and edit in consensus with a group of 15 who have vetted and approved it in its entirety. It stands as presented to them. Bloggers can have their say but there will be no further changes to the document. It is what the agency says that matters.
Sign if you are in agreement and can do so by providing to calgaryfouroneone@gmail.com your name and your nationality and/or country of residence. The Human Rights Complaint will be submitted electronically. Submitters’ names and nationalities will be typed onto the lines provided on page 1. No physical signature is required.
If you are not comfortable with the document, you do not have to sign.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.
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Two dedicated individuals who participate at both the Isaac Brock Society and the Maple Sandbox blogs have prepared a comprehensive Human Rights Complaint that will be submitted on behalf of all *US Persons Abroad* the world over. Others offered suggestions on how that information should best be presented in the constraint of number of pages allowed for the Complaint. We appreciate the legal eye and suggestions for going forward with this Complaint from Professor Allison Christians.
The document now complete, I have been asked to post an announcement on their behalf. Unfortunately, because of their personal situations, they cannot lend their names to the document and this will be the end of Phase I, produced for all of us, with their great care.
I so appreciate the incredible work that has gone into this on behalf of all of us. Here is what they say:
A group of writers from the Isaac Brock Society and Maple Sandbox blogs has prepared a document that challenges citizenship-based taxation (CBT) as a violation of internationally recognized human rights. This document will be submitted as a formal complaint to a major international human rights organization within the next ten days.
Any readers who would like to support this effort by “co-signing” (having their names added to the list of those filing the complaint) should so indicate by sending an email to: calgaryfouroneone@gmail.com.
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The Canadian writers of the complaint hope to make this a truly international effort. Bloggers from all over the world are welcome to lend their names to this historic document. Signers do not have to be US Persons.****************
Signers should feel comfortable with using their own names (pseudonyms are unacceptable in this instance) and should provide their nationality and/or country of residence as well.
Jack Townsend recently posted an article on his blog by David Jolly out of the UK about France now going after UBS for tax evasion.
This prompted me to write a reflection, which Petros has asked if I would post here. It did NOT attract any attention there, so might as well. LOL.
In a quick synopsis I make the connection of UBS being the triggering mechanism for FATCA and the global GATCA, mostly unreported in U.S. media. I have some thoughts about what this might mean for regulatory overload as more and more is piled onto small and medium sized financial institutions that can not keep up. When will the full FATCA blow back happen in the USA, and what will the impact be?
Nothing earth shattering in analysis, or insight. It is just something that has fascinated me. I have been watching for a long time. We are well down the road now to a global dragnet and the total surveillance state. It is dressed up by Progressives, OECD elites and the Tax Justice types as some desired dream state of financial transparency for ALL. For me, it seems like a nightmare. How regressive, dare I say repressive, will these Progressives types be in pushing their GATCA agenda?
I have reproduced my comment below with some tweaks. Might edit it more later, but off for 3 day back packing trip and wanted to post before I left.
A U.S. law aimed at cracking down on tax evasion by expatriates has collectively cost Canada’s five biggest banks about 750 million Canadian dollars (US$693.5 million) in initial compliance expenses, according to people familiar with the matter.
Read more here: http://online.wsj.com/articles/canada-banks-tally-their-tax-compliance-tab-1406504252?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LatestHeadlines
Hint: if you have trouble viewing this article, try cutting and pasting the headline into a Google search.
i.e., If anyone cannot get past the log in / subscription page: go to GOOGLE NEWS; in the search box there, insert Canada Banks Tally Their Tax-Compliance Tab.
