Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

From Value Walk, an article outlining Nigel Green’s enthusiastic support for superlawyer Jim Bopp’s upcoming lawsuit.  Disqus comments are ready for feedback.

DeVere Champions Super Lawyer Battle Against ‘Toxic’ FATCA

The founder and CEO of one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organizations is hailing the involvement of one of America’s most prominent superlawyers in the campaign to repeal the highly controversial Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as “the tipping point.”

The comments from Nigel Green of deVere Group, which has 80,000 clients and $10bn under advice, are in response to attorney Jim Bopp Jr’s decision to mount a legal challenge to the new law – due for implementation on July 1.

A legal challenge to FATCA

The high profile, no-nonsense lawyer is preparing a legal challenge to FATCA, which its opponents insist has a host of serious unintended adverse consequences.

Mr Green says: “The decision taken by Mr Bopp, who has previously successfully challenged other questionable finance laws in the Supreme Court, to take on the fatally-flawed FATCA could, I suspect, be the tipping point in the campaign to ultimately have it repealed.

“He is on a legal mission to definitively prove that FATCA, which has far-reaching negative consequences for the 7.6 million U.S. citizens abroad, the 13 million green-card holders and American businesses that operate globally, is unconstitutional on at least three counts.

“I believe that common sense and justice is on his side on this issue of national and international importance.  I am confident that his legal opinion will prove to be sound and robust.”

As most of us will recall from our school days, an iceberg is a deeply deceptive thing since 90% of its mass lies hidden beneath the waves. Like an iceberg, the full reality of FATCA remains largely hidden from view, even now, a mere 20 days before its implementation.

Much attention has been paid to FATCA’s most visible aspects – the growing numbers of both signed and “in substance” agreements – as well as the more than 77,000 FFIs which have entered the Portal of Mordor and received their shiny new IRS deputy badges.   As Robert Stack, deputy assistant treasury secretary for international tax affairs crowed, “The strong international support for FATCA is clear, and this success will help us in our goal of stopping tax evasion and narrowing the tax gap.”

But appearances are indeed deceiving with FATCA, and the imminent danger lies not so much with what is already seen, but that which remains to be seen, still lurking in the shadows beneath the surface.
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Not That Lisa brings to our attention: Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act Hurts Law-Abiding Americans Living Abroad

George agrees:

NTL, thats an important article from Heritage and it should garner publicity. Can we link to it on a side bar?

Not That Lisa says:

Yes, it is important because the Heritage Foundation is a major, well respected, conservative think tank. I hope Solomon Yue at Republicans Abroad is aware of this article. It might help to booster his platform within the party.

Anthony B. Kim is a Senior Policy Analyst for Economic Freedom in the Center for Trade and Economics, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. Curtis S. Dubay is Research Fellow in Tax and Economic Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity.

They start by saying:

On July 1, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) will fully take effect. FATCA is supposed to reduce tax evasion by making it harder for tax cheats to abuse tax havens. In practice, however, FATCA is forcing law-abiding American taxpayers residing overseas to bear enormous financial and legal burdens.

Congress should reform FATCA so that it does not hurt innocent Americans residing and working overseas. More important, Congress should turn its full attention to broader tax reform that would help curtail tax evasion in a more effective way without resorting to onerous and intrusive regulations such as FATCA.

This isn’t the worlds best article and I don’t agree with everything said including some of the links to the likes of Pro FATCA-ite David Dayen. However, overall the author does seem to get it especially as most left wingers in the homeland defend “Operation Chokepoint” as strongly as they defend FATCA.

http://www.salon.com/chromeo/article/spying_sex_and_finance_what_banks_and_payment_processors_are_secretly_watching_to_avoid_risk/

Denying people access to the economy is a powerful method of oppression that many marginalized groups have been reporting for a long time,” said Maggie Mayhem. “You’ll hear everywhere that ‘sex sells’ and there is the assumption that you’re probably wealthy,” she added, and yet, “our very existence is outside the boundaries of lawful digital commerce.”

After subjecting us to multiple articles by Barrie McKenna on FATCA, the Globe and Mail comes out with this:  Treat all Canadian citizens equally under the law:

Stripping a citizen of citizenship is characteristic of a totalitarian regime such as the Soviet Union, which banished dissidents, including the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1974. It’s not a model for Canada to emulate.

Sending the banking information of Canadians of US origin to the IRS is an effective stripping of their protection under Canadian law as citizens. Hence it is another way that the Harper government wants to strip people of their Canadian citizenship.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a tyrant and does not deserve to lead Canada.

There is a lot argument going on right now especially in the US State of Massachusetts as to the legitimacy of non compete agreements.  Non compete employment agreements are currently allowed in most EU countries, all Canadian provinces, and 49 of 50 US States. The 50th US State that prohibits non competes happens to be California, the largest US State.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/business/noncompete-clauses-increasingly-pop-up-in-array-of-jobs.html?hpw&rref=business

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/19/time-get-rid-noncompete-agreements/VcIjVuaAcOopLZOvwqSMtK/story.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause

Canadian courts will enforce non-competition and non-solicitation agreements, however, the agreement must be limited in time frame, business scope, and geographic scope to what is reasonably required to protect the company’s proprietary rights, such as confidential marketing information or client relations^[32] and the scope of the agreement must be unambiguously defined. The 2009 Supreme Court of Canada case Shafron v. KRG Insurance Brokers (Western) Inc. held a non-compete agreement to be invalid due to the term “Metropolitan City of Vancouver” not being legally defined.^[33]

The 2000 Ontario Court of Appeals case Lyons v. Multary established a general preference towards non-solicitation over non-competition agreements, regarding the latter as “much more drastic weapons” and held a non-competition agreement to be invalid when a non-solicitation agreement would have been sufficient to protect the company’s interests.

In recent testimony before the Canadian House of Commons Finance Committee, Queen’s University law professor Arthur Cockfield testified the American Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) “is really a sea change” in the long-standing tax information exchange relationship between Canada and the United States.

Historically, the neighbouring nations exchanged information on temporary residents in each country. The FATCA Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) requires Canada to provide information on permanent residents of Canada, including Canadian citizens who were born in the United States.

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I have sad news to impart: On June 2, 2014, Don Whiteley passed away. See his obituary in the Vancouver Sun.  He was a great ally from the journalistic community, and he will be greatly missed.

See also some of his articles:

The accidental Kenyan: What would happen if the African nation copied U.S. tax policy?

@BCBusiness Gets the Canadian #FATCA Capitulation story right! By Don Whiteley

Will Canada’s hard line on Eritrea’s ‘diaspora’ tax apply to the U.S.?

IRS wants Canada to nab U.S. tax cheats: Why we should care

Well, it really IS beginning. Three weeks from tomorrow, FATCA begins. Apparently our compatriots in Mexico are about to be hit in a very big way.

None has been so far reaching as this notice sent to US citizens who have accounts at Banamex USA in Mexico this week, however.

Banamex USA’s parent, Banamex, is the second largest bank in Mexico and there are over 1 million US citizens living in Mexico, by far the largest amount of any country, and so this news will be felt over a very widespread area.

Notices have begun to be sent by Banamex USA, a bank operating in Mexico and used by many American expats in Mexico, to all US citizens notifying them that their accounts will be closed within 30 days.

Here, here and here you will find three separate online discussions surrounding Banamex USA’s summary closure of American’s accounts.

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Strong language from the Globe and Mail’s Barrie McKenna:

It’s the first bit of goods news in a while for a large group of Canadians who until now have felt targeted by their country of birth and abandoned by their country of choice.