Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

New Democrats are calling on the Conservatives to acknowledge the concerns with the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and agree to remove it from Budget Bill C-31.
“Despite broad opposition, the Conservatives are charging ahead with the implementation of this agreement,” said NDP National Revenue Critic Murray Rankin (Victoria). “Serious concerns remain about the potential violation of privacy and constitutional rights, as well as unknown costs to Canadians.”
Bill C-31 moves to implement the Canada-US intergovernmental agreement on the FATCA and also to grant the Minister of National Revenue sweeping powers to make any regulation necessary to carry out the agreement.
“How can the Conservatives justify burying this agreement – that could negatively affect 1 million people and that has nothing to do with the budget – inside a 359-page omnibus bill,” said NDP Finance Critic Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley).”There’s no excuse. FATCA must be removed from the budget so it can be properly scrutinized.”

http://www.ndp.ca/news/conservatives-must-remove-fatca-budget-bill

http://www.executive-magazine.com/business-finance/finance/fatca-answering-to-uncle-sam

FATCA – Region preparing for Uncle Sam

Forthcoming US rules loom large over Middle Eastern banking sectors

An excellent article by Paul Cochrane, Middle East Correspondent for International News Services.

The word “sanctions” in relation to FATCA seems to be growing in common usage, and this story is no exception:

“If a country is not FATCA compliant it will be financially sanctioned in a new way, ‘the FATCA way’, and the readiness in the MENA is not sufficient in my opinion for a FATCA go-live situation,” said Camille Barkho, chief compliance officer at Lebanon and Gulf Bank.

The potential sanctioning of the Lebanese banking sector is a grave concern in Beirut, given the high degree of the economy’s reliance on banking.

The article also raises the issue of data privacy and security for US citizens in the Middle East:

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.

Jim Jatras is also quoted in comments about the negative economic impacts of FATCA on the US:

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.”

Levin, McCain call for U.S. to refrain from FATCA negotiations with Russia

Without agreement, Russian banks face 30 percent tax on U.S. investments

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

WASHINGTON – Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., today urged the Obama administration to continue to refrain from further negotiations with Russia on compliance with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act until Russia ends its aggressive and destabilizing actions toward Ukraine.

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We are working on the website to use for ADCS/ADSC fundraising for our legal challenge. We already have some quotes from Canadians across Canada.

We would also like to include quotes from our friends around the world. We have two quotes, but would like more.

If you live outside Canada and will contribute a quote of two or so sentences about how you feel about FATCA, please send it to Lynne Swanson at maplesandbox at yahoo dot ca by Friday May 2. Please also include a sentence on why you think the Canadian legal challenge is important.

If you use the french language, please provide your comment in french as well.

To protect your privacy, we will not use your real name, so please provide a suggested alias. Please also include your country.

If you are interested, you can also post your comment on Brock.

Thanks.

Here is our new logo for the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty/L’Alliance pour la défense de la souveraineté canadienne

Marc Garneau, “Tabling of Treaty” Points of Order, Routine Proceedings, April 28, 2014

…This agreement is indeed a treaty, and is even housed in the “treaty” section of the Department of Finance’s website.

With a treaty before us, our attention turns to the Government of Canada’s “Policy on Tabling of Treaties in Parliament”. I turn the attention of the House to part 6.2 of that policy, which states in part (b):

For treaties that require implementing legislation before the Government can proceed to ratification, acceptance, approval or accession…the Government will:

Observe a waiting period of at least twenty-one sitting days before the introduction of the necessary implementing legislation in Parliament…

I have made a search of the Journals and I am unable to find any notice of this treaty being tabled before this body prior to 21 days before the introduction of Bill C-31. This leads me to believe that the government may have sought to use the exception to this part of the tabling policy, but that stipulates:

If an exception is granted, the Minister of Foreign Affairs will inform the House of Commons that Canada has agreed to be bound by the instrument at the earliest opportunity following the ratification.

That is from 6.3, part (b), of the government’s “Policy on Tabling of Treaties in Parliament”.

We have now incorporated a Canadian non-profit organization with Corporations Canada:

ADCS/ADSC is not affiliated with any other organization.

The present Board Directors are listed below. Other individuals critical in setting up ADCS/ADSC are Gwendolyn Brock, K. Badger, and many others. Lynne Swanson will chair the legal challenge committee.

The overall purpose of the Corporation is to defend Canadian sovereignty and protect all persons in Canada from the attempts of other countries to impose their “extra-territorial legislation” on Canada.”

Its immediate objective is to fund a legal challenge to oppose changes in Canadian laws that would impose the U.S. FATCA law on all people in Canada.

Given that the Canadian government has extensive financial resources (courtesy of the taxpayers of Canada), significant monies need to be raised. We are counting on your support.

Stephen Kish (Chair)
John Richardson (co-Chair)
Patricia Moon (Secretary/Treasurer)
Carol Tapanila (Director)

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Nous avons maintenant constitué une organisation canadienne à but non lucratif auprès de Corporations Canada :

“Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty (ADCS)/L’Alliance pour la défense de la souveraineté canadienne (ADSC)”

ADCS/ADSC n’est pas affiliée avec aucune autre organisation.

Les noms des administrateurs du conseil actuels apparaissent ci-dessous. D’autres individus indispensables à la création d’ADCS/ADSC sont Gwendolyn Brock, K. Badger et plusieurs autres. Lynne Swanson sera la présidente du comité responsable de la contestation judiciaire.

Le but global de l’organisation est de défendre la souveraineté canadienne et de protéger toute personne au Canada face aux tentatives de pays étrangers d’imposer leurs « lois à portée extraterritoriale » au Canada.

Son but immédiat est de lever les fonds nécessaires pour opposer tout changement aux lois canadiennes qui imposerait la loi américaine FATCA à tout individu au Canada.

Étant donné les vastes ressources financières du gouvernement canadien (gracieuseté des contribuables du Canada), nous devons recueillir des sommes considérables. Votre appui nous est indispensable.

Stephen Kish (Président),
John Richardson (Vice-Président),
Patricia Moon (Secrétaire/Trésorière)
Carol Tapanila (Administrateur)

Cross-posted from The Flophouse. Also, just for fun (and because my mom bugs me about keeping the bloghouse tidy) I updated the page of Flophouse posts, articles, interview and links on the page called The American Diaspora Tax War of 2012-2014: The fight against FATCA and citizenship-based taxation. Anything up there, folks, is all yours if you want to quote or repost.

I think it is fair to say that the face of American emigration/expatriation today is Eduardo Saverin. That is the name that consistently comes up when I talk with homelanders about Americans abroad and our relationship to the U.S. tax system. This is the face, the poster child if you will, that supports the narrative that Americans abroad have all fled the US to escape taxes. That’s right, folks, American emigration is all about criminal behaviour unless we can prove otherwise to the satisfaction of our compatriots.

How powerful is this narrative in the homeland? Powerful enough that two senators tried to get a law passed based on that one highly publicized case. The bill, called the ex-Patriot act, was introduced in reaction to Saverin’s renunciation and had a very clear objective: it was mean to punish past, present, and future expatriation – to prevent (or at least strongly discourage) Americans from leaving the US for other lands and cutting their ties to the American political community.

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My advice I would get moving on submissions this weekend. I did talk to the committee clerk who said there is no formal deadline but the sooner the better will be better for them.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/sencommitteebusiness/Notice.aspx?parl=41&ses=2&comm_id=13&Language=E&meeting_id=15038

2. Subject-matter of Bill C-31, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures. Part 5 (Clauses 99 to 101)(FATCA)