Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

CBC News: US FATCA Law Catches Unsuspecting Canadians in Its Crosshairs

Update January 16, 2014: Comments to this CBC News article are now closed.

I have sent a thank you to CBC reporters who interviewed me.

From: caroltapanila
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2014 9:03 AM
To: Amber Hildebrandt, CBC ; James Fitz-Morris
Cc: Prime Minister Stephen Harper ; Kevin.Shoom@fin.gc.ca ; Michelle.Rempel@parl.gc.ca ; Kevin.Shoom@fin.gc.ca
Subject: Another thank you for the awareness you’ve provided the Canadian public…

Amber and James,

I see that comments are closed for the CBC News article with so many comments. I thank the commenters who supported me and the persons who tried to answer questions and educate on what is happening with US FATCA law coming across our border. I hope that many now realize it is the US’s citizenship-based taxation that makes it possible for the US to leech funds from US Persons in Canada, their Canadian government and each Canadian taxpayer.

More and more will be underlined the absurdity and the unfairness of all of this but that will not be resolution. Some (like my for my son and others whose “foreign” identification will not show a US place of birth, MAY HE FORGIVE ME FOR HAVING SOLD HIM OUT, although his “foreign financial accounts” are identified in the Foreign Bank Account Reports that I’ve “complied with” and sent to the US). It will be that some can be more easily nabbed and put through the wringer of the injustice of FATCA combined with US citizenship-taxation than others. None of this will be equitable and none of it should be as US Person “ignorance” allows criminalization by the US.

With the coverage you have interviewed us for and CBC has provided, I hope that more in Canada have learned of the powerful club the US has with its citizenship-based taxation – and, in my family’s case, that a smaller segment ARE ENTRAPPED, no two ways about that. The US could do something about this. It appears they will not. I’m not holding my breath. And, I am in despair that the other governments of the world can not show some strength and solidarity in saying NO to FATCA that reaps so much collateral damage for their own people.

As has been said by others, and I agree, in regard to the “streamlined compliance”:

But why the hell SHOULD anyone have to? And if they don’t for whatever reason – whether they don’t qualify, or they don’t hear about until its too late, or they don’t want to – then all bets are off, and IRS can penalize them to their hearts content. Finance Minister Flaherty has expressed approval (given blessing to?) the Streamlined program.; this presumes that Canadians with a US status SHOULD make all efforts to become compliant with USA’s immoral citizenship based taxation laws.

I will support all US Persons in whatever choices they have to make for themselves and their families. Yes, we all have to make our own choices. We still hold out some hope that our Canadian government will say no to FATCA. We still want to know from our government if ALL Canadians have the same rights, no matter where they were born, their discrimination by “nationality”.

Even the thought of the US being able to tax gains in our very Canadian personal residence sales that Canada does not makes me want to scream.

So, again, I want to thank Gwen for helping get the CBC coverage better rolling and you two for so respectfully interviewing me. Because of you, there are others in Canada now aware and starting their own research so they can eventually make decisions for themselves and their own families. US Persons in Canada and around the world are so scattered. It is unfortunate that we are not one big US Person group that could go out in solidarity to express the outrage we feel about yet more US collateral damage, this time us!

We have all have a hurt of this betrayal that in no way will ever be erased. It is helping me to have spoken out.

Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity.

Carol Tapanila

PS: I would love the opportunity to reach the person who commented about her, in this instance profoundly disabled son, who will be affected. Above all, I am glad that I reached her in this story but I am unable to tell her that – unless she was able to sift through the many comments to see my tardy reply to her. Continue reading →

According to the latest news, Americans with Israeli bank accounts could face troubling tax season, the Swiss “Program” is now being forced upon Israel.  Citizens of Israel living in Israel are now being pressured or forced into OVDP so that their retirement savings can be cleaned up by attorneys and US money grabs.

Here are some interesting clippings from the article which ring a bell:

• The banks are revealing the data because they are participating in a special program with the U.S. Department of Justice in order to avoid criminal prosecution themselves
• Americans with Israeli bank accounts may be in for a financial nightmare in just several months if they haven’t filed their taxes properly.
• Americans are able to take advantage of the Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) for people who have violated the law.
• Americans with Israeli bank accounts really need to talk to an attorney
• OVDP is to give individuals who really did not know about the law a chance to make good, and to get people back into compliance and back into the system

National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson, is being ignored.

Remember all those infuriating comments to articles over the last couple years, where we tried to respond and explain to the ‘homelanders’ that ‘US slaves’  (err I mean ‘US persons’) living outside the USA, are not the tax evading, rich expats that the IRS, and the US media, often make make us out to be.

Well, here is another one, and judging by the misinformed comments, it desperately needs some Brockers to set the message straight, once again – yes I know it is getting very old!  And just when we are getting a lot of positive media attention.

Shadow Raider (and others like NotThatTara, badger, bubblebustin, Em, NotThatLisa) have referenced the US National Taxpayer Advocate Report to Congress, so here is my slow uptake to posting for IBS. IRSCompliant has posted at Maple Sandbox: Maple Sandbox re US Taxpayer Advocate Report to US Congress — with reference to NDP Murray Rankin Letter to Finance Minister James Flaherty

From Shadow Raider:

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson released her 2013 Report to Congress yesterday. As always, she included sections on international taxpayers and OVDP, and this time also one on FATCA.

As a bonus, Schubert posted there re US Chamber of Commerce, January 9, 2014: The Next Obamacare? FATCA Roll Out Flounders: US Chamber of Commerce Joins TAS in Dumping on FATCA

I quote from Schubert:

Unless our Finance Minister has taken leave of his senses, which I think extremely unlikely, I no longer think we’ll see a Canada-US IGA any time soon, if ever. With heavy-hitters like these in the US saying “wait a minute, what the hell are you doing and why?” why should Canada or any other country leap into an IGA with the US to sign onto something that seems to look like might actually get derailed or gutted PDQ.

Remember that previous US ambassador to Canada who, back in the Fall of 2011, advised everyone to “sit tight?” That’s starting to look like supremely good advice for many so-called US persons, especially “accidental” (I prefer “inadvertent” or “unwilling”) so-called Americans living in Canada (the parallels to Ted Cruz aka “border babies”). Let’s just wait and see how this train wreck is going to unfold now.

If I were one of that handful of countries that leapt into bed with the IRS via an IGA, or an FFI that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on compliance mechanisms, I think I’d start to feel a bit foolish (and very hard-done-by) right about now. And if I were a compliance maven with visions of fat fees from terrified offshore alleged Americans dancing in his/her head, I think I’d see those visions turning to mush.

We don’t want to count our chickens before they’re hatched, but maybe it’s time to take a deep breath, ignore the Chicken Littles in the compliance industry, “sit tight” and watch with fascination what seems more and more like a FATCA train wreck.

Nice news for a wintery Friday, anyway. Happy New Year, everyone.

May it be a happier New Year as we see more awareness of the disaster that FATCA will be, combined with US citizenship-based taxation. Let’s hope for change of the false equation being used to apprehend real tax evaders on the backs of all those who will be collateral damage, ruining so many non-aware families and individuals, leeching money from other sovereign country economies and not at all conducive to paying down US debt or enhancing how the US is seen by the rest of the world.

Thanks to Badger for digging this up.  She comments on a Must Read at Global News:

Global News, has an updated story on the rising US expatriation figures – and this is by the author Patrick Cain who compares the numbers in the Federal Register ‘name and shame’ list to the FBI numbers for those – (see specific category for ex-citizens) precluded from owning firearms.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1072303/over-3100-americans-renounced-citizenship-last-year-fbi/
January 10, 2014 9:30 am
More than 3,100 Americans renounced citizenship last year: FBI
By Patrick Cain

Cain references and links to the letter by constitutional lawyer Peter Hogg to the Finance Minister re his concerns about the serious issues with signing a FATCA IGA, and also notes yesterday’s release of Nina Olson IRS Taxpayer Advocate 2013 Report to Congress. The author provide a link to the report, and quotes the TAS: “……On Thursday, a report released by the U.S. National Taxpayer Advocate strongly criticized FATCA in a report to Congress, saying the costs exceed projected revenue, the law creates sovereigntyconflicts with other countries – using Canada as an example – and the IRS’s computer systems aren’t ready to handle such a complex project.

“[The] IRS has not acted upon advice it has received from some well-informed stakeholders,” Nina Olsen warned in the report. “FATCA carries with it the potential for substantial resource burdens and significant due process concerns.””

Cross-posted from the Flophouse.  I finally got around to reviewing Robert Morris’ book on FATCA which I read before Christmas.  Here’s what I think.  Would be very interested in knowing your take on it as well.

****************************

At last a book about the beast, FATCA.

I read Robert Morris’ FATCA and the New Birth of American Empire in one sitting a few weeks ago and I just posted a review up on Amazon.

It’s not long and it’s not an expensive book but it is for you?  The disclaimer at the beginning is very helpful because Morris clarifies that he is not speaking to Americans abroad in his essay.  If you are one of these “US Persons”  he has no advice to offer though he points out that what’s happening to them (us) is a darn shame.  I immediately disagreed with him on two points however in that introduction:  he says Americans living outside the U.S. have power (which is nonsense) and that media outlets are willing to shine the spotlight on our stories (yes, but only very recently and after much effort by folks like Marvin,Peter and Lynne).

“This essay will focus on everyone else.”  So his words are meant for those not directly in the line of fire – all those who think they are safe and that this business does not concern them because they are not US citizens or don’t have connections to the United States.

Continue reading →

A fascinating article from Russia’s KM.RU by Valentin Katasonov. It goes a long way towards explaining the contradictory signals emanating from Russia regarding support for FATCA.  Mr. Katasonov outlines the relationships between some rather strange bedfellows – or perhaps they’re not so strange at all.

Here is the original Russian-language version:

FATCA: о чьих интересах хлопочут российские власти?

And here is the imperfect, yet reasonably intelligible Google Translation version:

FATCA: whose interests are fussing about the Russian authorities?

IRS wants to make agents out of banks and other financial institutions of the world

Abbreviation FATCA increasingly common in the Russian media. So short is called American law, the full name of which – «Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act». Translated – “On the Foreign Account Tax Compliance.”

FATCA as a tool for the construction of Pax Americana

The law was signed by U.S. President more March 18, 2010. Then began its gradual enactment. The next year, he should enter into force in its entirety. It belongs to a new generation of American laws, which can be called extraterritorial. These are the laws that apply to a number of other countries, and sometimes even the whole world. These are laws that help build Washington Pax Americana.

FATCA law was passed under the pretext that the U.S. Treasury regularly loses a large amount of taxes to withhold individuals and legal entities the U.S., bringing their income and assets outside of U.S. jurisdiction. The American tax system is set up so that individuals and legal entities must pay U.S. taxes regardless of where the income and asset allocation. Only on departure of U.S. citizens and companies in the offshore, according to some estimates, the U.S. federal budget annually loses about $ 100 billion. And how much he loses by U.S. citizens and companies in other jurisdictions, no one believed. For many years, even decades, Washington tried to fight tax deviators located outside the country, but the effect was short.

Act FATCA, according to its initiators, should put an end to such deviators once and for all.How? And just doing some banks and other financial institutions all over the world by the American Tax Service (IRS – Internal Revenue Service). Financial and banking organizations must transmit to IRS information about their customers with U.S. origin or having a business (commercial) due to natural and legal persons U.S.. In the list of customers, among others, and included persons who are holders of U.S. green card. If necessary, such agents should engage even the recovery of taxes from such customers in favor of the United States.

We are witnessing a unique alignment of the global system, “head” which is the U.S. agency, and all financial and banking organizations formally sovereign states coming under the administrative control of this department. Those who refuse to Uncle Sam’s invitation to become part of this system, are automatically “outcasts.” Against such financial and banking institutions, Washington will impose sanctions in the form of withholding 30% of the funds that such organizations will conduct through the U.S. banking system. And since the modern world financial and banking system is based on the dollar, it’s hard to imagine a bank that would not exercised dollar transaction. All such transactions pass through the correspondent accounts of non-US banks in U.S. banks. One gets the impression that the fight against tax deviators Washington – just an excuse to enactment. Home, unpublicized goal FATCA – build a global financial system, the individual “cells” which is not only economically, but also administratively subordinated to official Washington and of the financial oligarchy, whose service is formal authority USA.

Continue reading →