Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

John Richardson and Bahman Yazdanfar discuss citizenship issues with Peter W. Dunn and Trica Moon.  The topic at hand is:

“Should non-citizens be able to vote in 2014 Toronto municipal election?”

Don’t be too surprised when FBAR, FATCA and/or citizenship based taxation becomes part of the discussion.

As MPs tell their constituents what a good deal Canada’s IGA signing with the USA is, I am posting this so others can consider.

I will have to read this a few more dozen times to get my head around it.

“In FATCA-Land, a Canadian Trust is a Bank” Published on February 10, 2014 at 10:03, by Roy A Berg JD, LLM

Roy Berg’s conclusion is:

Conclusion

“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Non-US trusts occupy an unenviable position in FATCA-Land. Most will be classified as Financial Institutions and therefore will have to carefully navigate the vagaries of domestic and international law in order to avoid the consequences of inadvertent non-compliance. The Canada-United States IGA goes a long way to mitigate the compliance cost and consequences of non-compliance but, as noted, some clarifications are required.

Just as Alice couldn’t go back to the person she once was, neither can we go back. FATCA has changed the global banking, business and tax landscape – and more changes will follow.

February 17, 2014 UPDATE – my email regarding this: Help, I Want to Expatriate But They Won’t Let Me, Part 2

AngloInfo, Virginia La Torre Jeker J.D.: “Help! I Want to Expatriate, but They Won’t Let Me…..Part I”

My comment on this tax blog post regarding what will be discussed in Part 2:

calgary411 says:
February 10th, 2014 at 21:07

As a comment to me at isaacbrock some time ago: (https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/06/29/accidental-americans-born-abroad-to-us-parents-and-not-registered-with-the-us-are-they-automatic-us-citizens-or-do-they-have-a-right-to-claim-us-citizenship-when-they-can-make-that-decision-as-an/comment-page-2/#comment-412753)
quote:
This is what is so disappointing and disturbing about this posting and string: My late friend, Andy Sundberg, founder of American Citizens Abroad, worked tirelessly during the 70s and 80s to change US law to be much more inclusive than it had been. One of the reasons was his daughters were born effectively “stateless”; he, an American, his wife, a Frenchwoman, gave birth to their daughters while living in Switzerland. He found that there were quite literally tens of thousands of people in similar circumstances.

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The Inter-Governental Agreement between Canada and the United States (IGA), which will implement FATCA regulations in Canada, is sufficiently complex that it will take some time before Canadians come to grips with what rights our government has traded away and what safeguards are in place to protect, hopefully, the majority of us. While I am completely against the CRA trading the private banking account information of Canadian residents and citizens with the hostile government to our south run by President Obama and his band of merry thieves, who steal from the poor to give to the rich, I do believe that the vast majority of Canadian residents can protect themselves. We now have not only to navigate the treacherous waters of IRS threatening to fine us at multiples of our total financial wealth (up to 380%), we must also know how to deal with bank’s inquisition which will begin to question all Canadians: “Are you or have you ever been a US person?”

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I have read with interest the claims that this is a “good deal” because it provides “reciprocity” to the Canadian government.  This is not true, according to my investigations.  Anyone who believes this is true should check out a post by James George Jatras on his RepealFATCA.com website. Check out the links to the two letters at the top of that page.  Following is an excerpt from the article written by Mr Jatras in July 2013:

Without this new authority, on which the Congressman’s letter pronounces what amounts to a veto, Treasury cannot deliver on promises of “equivalent levels of reciprocal automatic exchange.”

And without imposing “equivalent levels of reciprocal automatic exchange” on domestic U.S. banks, credit unions, and other institutions, Treasury cannot pretend that IGAs are anything but a one-sided, extraterritorial diktat that foreign governments enforce FATCA to the detriment of their countries’ institutions, taxpayers, and consumers, and in violation of their sovereignty.

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Cross-posted from Allison Christians Canada-US Agreement Reached on FATCA Data Sharing
(used with permission)

Things have been exciting the past few days as a long-expected agreement on FATCA between Canada and the US was announced and Canada’s Department of Finance released a flurry of accompanying materials. The US Treasury has now added Canada to the list of jurisdictions deemed to have an agreement in effect. I will have more analysis soon but just wanted to provide some of the most useful links to get things up to speed.

First, here is the text of the intergovernmental agreement–it is not a signed copy unfortunately, which leaves a couple of technical questions unanswered for now. Here is the Press Release from the United States. Here is the Press Release from Canada, and here are explanatory notes to the agreement, a backgrounder”, and an FAQ.

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N.B.: This raises some very good points, but note that the IGA, as written, does not require proof of parents’ birthplace or citizenship.

Thanks to TomOn for writing the following post:

Theresa Tedesco writes for the Financial Post. Her column titled “Ottawa Had Little Choice in Signing Controversial Deal with US Taxman” appeared Friday, February 7, 2014 [and in the print edition as “US Tax Deal:  The New Reality” on Saturday, February 8th.]  It begins,

“On Canada Day and thereafter, Canadians or anyone else living in this country who walk into a bank to open up an account, invest in a mutual fund or buy life insurance will be required to prove that they are not American.”

Imagine the new reality.

(1) You show the bank a certificate of loss of nationality (CLN), or you tell them a story explaining why you are not American.

You pass if the bank accepts your CLN or story, but what if the bank doesn’t accept your story? The Canada/U.S. intergovernmental agreement (IGA) fails to say how your conflict with the bank will be resolved. Your financial Continue reading →

Toronto: March 20 and March 21
http://ccla.org/home/pathways2privacy/

March 20, 2014 | 6:00 – 8:30 pm. Public Panel Discussion & Privacy Fair Venue TBA.
March 21, 2014 | 8:30 am – 5:00 pm. Pathways to Privacy Symposium: …

W could meet for dinner prior on March 20 and/or lunch March 21