Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

Glad to post, Em:

Overseas Americans Week – Recap from AARO

As we tune in, thanks, Victoria and AARO — especially videographer, Mathieu.

In how many ways should CANADIANS who are deemed US citizens have US law take precedence over Candian law? Will it be only about US taxation and financial reporting to the US of those deemed US Persons in Canada — or will it extend to what passport we use to travel to other countries, perhaps firearms laws, capital punishment laws, etc.?

Just how many of our rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms will you vote away now that you determine it OK that Canadian financial privacy of deemed US Persons is no longer their right as you condone discrimination by US national origin? I ask because of the following that appears on the Toronto US Consulate web site:

Another question on dual nationality: Is it okay to travel outside of the U.S. on my other passport?

“While the U.S. does not prohibit dual nationality, Americans must comply with U.S. laws (e.g. federal and state taxes, selective service, and foreign assets control) regardless of their location. Thus, a dual citizen who travels to Cuba on a Canadian or other passport, may violate U.S. law and be subject to criminal or civil penalties.”

As Kathy asks:

I wonder if all those bankers and Conservative MPs would be happy to have our duals going to Cuba for a winter vacation being charged as criminals. They’re US citizens, so they have to follow US laws even if they’ve spent their entire lives in Canada, right? That’s what they said about filing US taxes. So I guess we can assume that they’re OK with Canadian duals not traveling on a Canadian passport? And we can assume that they’re OK if a Canadian dual travels to Cuba on a Canadian passport and then is charged as a criminal by the US?

George comments and poses questions to ask Canadian MPs:

Will Canada enforce the US restriction on travel to Cuba of a Canadian Citizen, resident in Canada, with “clinging US nationality,” who travels on holiday to Cuba with his/her Canadian passport?

I would like to suggest a letter writing campaign bringing this to the attention of various MPs and asking if Canada will enforce this ban and aid the US Government. The reason is that it will flush out the sovereignty question.

Must you have a CLN to travel to Cuba on your Canadian Passport?

Or can you travel to Cuba on your Canadian Passport if you have a reasonable explanation of why you do not have a CLN despite having relinquished your US citizenship?

If you have an unambiguous place of birth in the USA can you travel to Cuba on your Canadian Passport at all?

I received this from “Disgusted” who, for some reason, isn’t able get a comment to take at Isaac Brock:

Ottawa slyly expanding its power to invade our privacy

…Bill C-13 is the child of C-30, which was abandoned by the government after previous public safety minister Vic Toews said his Liberal critic could “either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

Unlike C-30, C-13 does not require service providers to hand over personal information to police without a warrant, but it allows them to do so, which, in practical terms, is the same thing.

This will provide legal cover for what they are already doing. Last month the privacy commissioner reported that in 2011, government agencies requested data from telecoms and social media companies more than a million times.

What kind of data? The government won’t say. Conservative MPs recently voted down an NDP motion to make public the number of warrantless disclosures from telecom firms. When asked about this in the House, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and Justice Minister Peter MacKay give misleading answers, blathering on about warrants when none are required and giving assurances that contradict the legislation. This week, Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay joined with them in disingenuity when she responded to a question in the House about a clause buried in C-31, a massive budget omnibus bill.

The bill will allow Canada Revenue Agency officials to give taxpayer information to police if officials have “reasonable grounds to believe” that certain offences have been committed. Continue reading →

UPDATE: May 22, 2014
Laura Frost (Canmroe) comments on this article “I was born in Saskatoon to a Canadian father and a mother who was a U.S. citizen. Previously, I was denied U.S. citizenship because my mother had not registered my birth before I was 18. Now that money is involved, I am a U.S. citizen for taxation purposes.

As I just heard this on CBC, The Sunday Edition: Welcome to the World on Online News — is this the death of serious journalism?, Molly found and commented on a Calgary Herald

“Egregious privacy breach attracts little attention” by Karin Klassen, Calgary Herald, May 16, 2014

Meanwhile, almost under the radar, except for a pocket of people trying desperately to raise the alarm, outrageous legislation has passed, enforceable in July, that directly affects the privacy of Canadians in the worst possible way. While indignant tweets were a flyin’ over whom precisely is allowed to read on my newsfeed that one of my friends needs help with diaper rash, we endured with barely a peep this egregious invasion of the privacy of actually important information.
…
Every country has a problem with this legislation; Stephen Harper, however, has handed over the ransom, possibly some argue, violating the Constitution. Canada is the last of the G7 countries to agree, but agree it did in a big way, by letting the Canada Revenue Agency be the middleman. (I suppose this was to avoid the banks getting a bad name, but also ostensibly to assure Canadians they are being violated by a not-for-profit organ.) Continue reading →

I urge one and all to watch this important and revealing look at the most powerful rogue state in history:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/

United States of Secrets, Part Two, will air on Tuesday, May 20th.

This series dissects, with chilling precision, just how far the United States has strayed from its Constitutional and moral center, especially since 9/11. There appears to be no law or Constitutional amendment which cannot be safely dispensed with in the name of those who died on that fateful day. Any true patriots who perished in those towers must surely be rolling over in their graves by now.

While the NSA’s massive domestic and international electronic surveillance campaign, dubbed “The Program”, was initiated by the Bush-Cheney White House, it has not only continued under Obama, but has flourished, for it is now enshrined in law. In the larger context provided by this documentary, FATCA may be seen as just one more layer of a pervasive, persistent, global information dragnet that is truly Orwellian. By any objective measure, this monstrous technical and legal system provides the very foundation for an inevitable one-world surveillance society.

The would-be heroes of this story include not only Edward Snowden, but an unlikely cast of NSA insiders, who agonized about the removal of all remaining privacy and due-process safeguards, and who ended-up like all good American government whistleblowers: having their front doors rammed-in by FBI SWAT teams. A cautionary tale, to be sure.

This is not even the already sick and dying America I remember as a ten year old kid by the late 60’s. This is something even more evil and dangerous. This is a nation that has not only completely forgotten its founding principles, but which continues to cloak itself in hypocritical, pious rhetoric while simultaneously destroying every last vestige of democratic freedom for its own people, and for the entire world. We are indeed mere roadkill on America’s unstoppable journey to a vastly greater version of hell.

Watch the program, and weep.

As Bill C-31 winds its way through the Canadian parliamentary system, those who defend the  FATCA IGA legislation buried within 300+ pages of the omnibus bill it is hidden in, respond to the cry of the victims, by repeating the message, ‘Well, you might win a Charter Challenge, but if you do, it will hurt ALL Canadians’.

Should the estimated one million Canadians, deemed ‘US persons’ by a foreign nation,  and their family members feel guilty about actively opposing this deal with the devil?  Should they all just shut-up, and take one for the team?  After all there are 30-something million other Canadians who are not affected by a FATCA IGA with the USA, who could care less, or so it seems.

Are Canadian citizens, deemed ‘US persons’, asking their fellow Canadians too much by insisting they risk their economic well being in exchange for the rights and freedoms, and economic well being of the ‘US persons’ in their midst?

Do  Canadians want to live in a country where the majority is protected – until it’s not – at the expense of others who find themselves in the cross-hairs of a foreign nation through no fault of their own?

Has Canada become a mockery of a country with a reputation for high standards of human rights and freedoms?

Has Canada never been what many thought it was, with those deemed ‘US persons’, the first to be disillusioned by the reality that none of us are free, and  none of us are protected, as is evidenced when a bigger power comes knocking and demanding tribute from those it illegitimately considers its own?

NorthernStar, in an email she shared with me, writes the following comment with regard to an article written by Don Cayo published at the Vancouver Sun:

I refused the offer.    and I got off lightly….
Continue reading →

Don Cayo, a reporter for the Vancouver Sun (and has covered some of our issues in the past) has jumped on the bandwagon, criticizing us for mounting the charter challenge. His source, Warren Dueck is a CPA/CA located in British Columbia. (More of his viewpoint is available on his blog).

If you think a policy requiring our government to give such personal information to a foreign taxman won’t withstand a Charter challenge, Dueck concedes you may be right. But if you think this would be a good thing, he disagrees.

The problem is that if our institutions won’t — or can’t because of privacy laws — give the IRS what it wants, 30 per cent will be withheld from all U.S. transactions.

“This would be a devastating result for Canadian financial institutions and their customers who exchange hundreds of millions of dollars daily with U.S. individuals, businesses and other entities,” Dueck wrote to clients.

Ditto if you tell your bank to buzz off when it asks about your citizenship, except you’ll shoot only yourself in the foot by subjecting only your own earnings to withholding.

Dueck says there’s little chance any money withheld by the IRS could be applied against Canadian tax owing, and the only way for you to get it back would be to file a U.S. tax return, then wait for months for it to be processed.

Ottawa has been accused of selling out by agreeing to this, but once again Dueck disagrees. Without the agreement, he said, financial institutions would still face a no-win choice of either providing information about clients or having earnings withheld. And, while the agreement excludes earnings on such things as Registered Retirement Savings Plans, Registered Retirement Income Funds, Registered Educational Savings Plans and Tax-Free Savings Accounts, there’ll be no such exemptions if court challenges succeed in overturning the agreement.

Some of the Brocker SWAT Team (Special Writers and Authors) have already commented on the blog.

What do you think?

Hat tip to Tim for finding the article.

At George’s suggestion, this comment is now a post.

By Paul Cochrane, April 30, 2014 in “Executive”– Forthcoming US rules loom large over Middle Eastern banking sectors

BC Doc says: “An article from Lebanon. A good quote”:

More pressing in the immediate term is the issue of privacy and the safety of American citizens. “One thing the Treasury has not thought about is how do you protect US citizens? In a country like Lebanon, with Hezbollah and other US designated terrorist organizations, banks will identify US citizens, which could put them at risk,” said the BDL source.

And:

Further questions may arise if there is a dawning realization about negative economic impacts on the US itself. “What happens when we start shorting payments on our Treasury bonds (TBs) by 30 percent? A sovereign holder is not subject to withholding, but for a private institution, what if the interest payment is done through SWIFT to a commercial bank that has not signed an IGA? Treasury will take the interest,” said Jim Jatras, Manager of RepealFATCA.com, which is lobbying against the law in Washington. “This is the kind of thing that could promote dumping TBs, and affect interest rates and the dollar as a global currency, which are issues nobody has thought out.”

It just gets weirder:

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2014/05/15/407761/Ma-promises.htm

TAIPEI, Taiwan — If President Ma Ying-jeou is indeed subject to U.S. taxes, he will take political responsibility by resigning, the Presidential Office said yesterday.

Next Magazine yesterday released a report claiming that the president has to pay taxes to the U.S. under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), saying that Ma is poised to turn himself into an “international laughingstock” by becoming the first R.O.C. president subject to U.S. taxes.

That the president of Taiwan has to pay taxes to the U.S. is an unacceptable shame to this nation, and more importantly, Ma has been dishonest, making all sorts of excuses to evade the fact that he became head of state while holding a valid Green Card, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang said in response to the Next Magazine report. “If Ma has a sense of shame and responsibility, he ought to step down immediately.”

Former DPP Chairmen Frank Hsieh and Yu Shyi-kun made similar remarks while speaking to the press.

The Presidential Office would like Su, Hsieh and Yu to promise that they will apologize to the nation for their unfounded remarks, Presidential Office spokeswoman Garfie Li said.

Next Magazine, IRS Beijing
A Next Magazine reporter apparently sent an email to IRS Beijing, claiming to be a Green Card holder named “Mark Y. J. Ma” born on July 12, 1950, and asked whether or not he — “Mark Y. J. Ma” — is subject to tax payments under FATCA.

The magazine explained that the inquiry was explicitly written using the president’s Green Card details.

IRS Beijing reportedly responded by saying that even if a person’s Green Card expires, “it doesn’t necessarily mean that (the person is) no longer (a) U.S. resident for tax purposes” and that the person “is required to report and pay (U.S.) tax on (his or her) worldwide income regardless of where (he or she) lives,” unless that person has voluntarily renounced his or her Green Card status “in writing” to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) or if that status has been “administratively terminated” or “judicially terminated” by the USCIS or a U.S. federal court.

Response to Report, ‘IRS Reply’
According to sources, the president applied for a Green Card under the name “Ying-jeou Ma” as opposed to “Mark Y. J. Ma.”

Furthermore, the president was born on July 13, 1950, not July 12, 1950.

Experts said that legal action can be taken against the reporter for attempting to impersonate the head of state.

Sources said that IRS Beijing wrote a “general response” as opposed to a specific response to “Mark Y. J. Ma,” judging from the content of the reply.

Additional reports here:

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1101&MainCatID=11&id=20140515000077

http://www.straitstimes.com/story/taiwan-president-dismisses-report-he-holds-united-states-green-card-20140514

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2014/05/15/2003590395

And, for good measure:

http://hodgen.com/expatriation-and-the-expiring-green-card/

http://blogs.angloinfo.com/us-tax/2012/12/31/giving-up-your-us-green-card-make-sure-it-is-done-correctly-or-pay-the-price/

So, will he or won’t he? Inquiring minds would like to know.