Interesting Reading below:
http://www.gao.gov/assets/210/209508.pdf
Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad
One more American in Taiwan picks the green passport over the blue one
Update, 24 April 2014: As it turns out, Adam Geller of the Associated Press has finally overturned my prediction that you’d never see Davis’ story in the U.S. media; he interviewed Davis for his story “More renounce U.S. citizenship, but deny stereotype”:
When the team’s owner suggested last year that he join Taiwan’s national team, Davis says he found little motivation to keep his U.S. citizenship. “When you think about who I am as a black guy in the U.S., I didn’t have opportunities,” he says. “You get discriminated against over there in the South. Here everyone is so nice. They invite you into their homes, they’re so hospitable. … There’s no crime, no guns. I can’t help but love this place.”
Geller’s story also contains other familiar names. I’m very happy to see that my initial prediction turned out to be wrong, and that the Isaac Brock Society is succeeding in drawing media attention to the real diversity of motivations among people who decide to stop being U.S. citizens.
Here’s another story you’ll never see in the U.S. media about an American planning to renounce U.S. citizenship to naturalise elsewhere: Quincy Davis, a Los Angeles native & Tulane University graduate who left the U.S. in 2006 to join a basketball team in Cyprus, and now plays in Taiwan. Davis applied to naturalise as a Taiwanese citizen last month so he can represent his adopted home in international competitions; United Daily News reported last week that his application is still in progress. After the jump I’ve translated a longer article from earlier last month about his reasons for naturalising in Taiwan, and the issues he faced.
Davis’s case falls somewhere in between the NBC Nightly News myth of “wealthy traitors fleeing the country to avoid the estate tax” and the more common reality of ordinary people who have lived in other countries for decades and are happy to give up U.S. citizenship to become full members of their societies. Davis is certainly well-off, but nowhere near as well-off as the Homelanders who are moving to Puerto Rico and — unlike actual emigrants — thereafter enjoy a complete exemption from capital gains tax on U.S. assets. And moreover, like nearly everyone else who comes to the decision to give up U.S. citizenship, he left the U.S. as a young adult in the course of pursuing success, put down roots elsewhere, and has a dream to keep chasing after he’s no longer a U.S. citizen.
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Has John #Templeton or the US government with #FATCA (and its other wars) done more to help mankind?
Templeton one of greatest philanthropists in history renounced US citizenship and used his wealth to help mankind! http://t.co/FAhB5lmjk2
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) June 23, 2013
The article referenced in the above tweet comes from Sovereign Man and is titled:
US Senate to retroactively punish runaway tax slaves.
Surely, the citizens of the “land of the free” could not be slaves! Surely this thought is “crimethink“!
It’s a “fun article” and makes the following point:
Confirmed case of former long-term green card holder not appearing in Federal Register
As we’ve reported previously, since around 2006 or so there have been dozens of newspaper reports and many more internet comments about people who renounced U.S. citizenship but never showed up in the Federal Register. However, the Federal Register is not supposed to include just ex-citizens, but certain ex-permanent residents as well: those who held their green cards for eight out of the past fifteen years.
Up until now, the only ex-green card holders I’d heard of weren’t within the scope of the “name-and-shame list”, either because they’d given up their green cards before the list existed (like Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou) or didn’t hold them for long enough (e.g. Constitutional Court judge Chen Be-yue). However, in early 2010, Korea.com reported that 2PM member Ok Taec-yeon had given up a long-held U.S. green card so that he could serve in the South Korean army.
Another Korean-language report states that Ok, who was born in Busan, immigrated to Massachusetts with his family at age 12, which would be some time around 2000; it also has a picture of an old yearbook confirming that “Ok Taec-yeon” is his real name and the same spelling he’s been using all his life, so there’s not much possibility he slipped through in the Federal Register list under a different name — no one surnamed “Ok” has ever appeared in the “name-and-shame list”.
The more money your state gets in federal aid, the more likely you are to think Americans abroad are un-American
Inspired by a recent TaxProf Blog post showing the percentage of each U.S. state’s general revenue which consisted of intergovernmental revenue (primarily federal transfers) in 2011, I went and re-did the same calculation for each U.S. census region based on 2004 budget data, and graphed it against the proportion of native-born GSS respondents that year who lived in that region as teenagers (GSS question REG16) and stated that it was “very important” to live in America most of your life in order to be considered “truly American” (GSS question AMLIVED). As you can see from the graph, the two variables are somewhat correlated, with an R2 of 0.23.
(Edit: Because I made a data entry error, an earlier version of this post left out the South Atlantic region, which is a major outlier — far more anti-emigrant than their low proportion of federal aid would otherwise predict. Without them in the mix, the R2 would be 0.60).
USAs to Move on US Persons in Canada
German Pirate Party opposes US Germany IGA and US “QI” Program: UPDATED with an authorized translation
Pirate Party calls FATCA and Qualified Intermediary program “blackmail”.
http://www.piraten-nds.de/2013/06/03/2329/
At 30.5 Christopher (Chris) Carlson made a short presentation on FATCA on our pirate pulse event. If you could not be there and you are interested in the subject, we hereby provide for you (PDF) its films available.
Direct candidate in WK 42
CC-BY
Also has a follow Christian Szymanek, Direct candidate in WK 42, summarized the issue (Editor’s note: The following translation was commissioned by the author, and made by Dr. C. N. Carlson):
FATCA – America’s Taxes
The land of unlimited possibilities has come up with a new instrument for enforcing its interests in Europe. FATCA – the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act – compels foreign banks to report customer data to the IRS.
This measure purports to combat tax evasion and actually sounds plausible at first glance. The problems show up when it comes to how the law actually works.
Beginning several years ago, the US has levied a 30% tax on US stocks and bonds held by foreign banks. In order to ransom themselves from this tax European banks must sign an agreement turning them into weirdly named “qualified intermediaries”. As part of this agreement, the banks are obliged to report customer financial data to the US. This is done via the afore-mentioned intermediary: a bank staffer working with a catalogue of secret criteria hands over certain kinds of financial data to unknown third parties, in this case the IRS.
In 2009, the German bank lobby’s brief and futile protest against this extortion ended. As of last year, most German banks had become “qualified intermediaries” and are now conducting the data hunt for Americans among their customers.
So far, so good: all very secretive and using dubious methods, but perhaps you’re thinking, “let them check what their citizens have in German accounts. It’s not my problem, I’m not an American.” Well …
But the search criteria are not limited to US citizens, but to “US persons”. By 2015 the banks must identify all US persons and report their financial data to the US.
By “US person” the USA means not only US citizens and Green Card holders, but also persons born in the US regardless of their nationality. Former exchange students are affected as well as real estate owners, people with business in the US and others.
That’s right: “others”. The US reserves to itself the right to change the definition of “US persons” at any time and for any (or no) reason. It suffices for instance to have stayed there for more than 30 days in a row.
If you’re unwilling to make a declaration to your bank on whether or not you might be a “US person” – or if you refuse to permit your bank to report on you to the IRS, then your bank is obliged to close your account or to refuse to open one or you. You also have to pay an obligatory 30% tax on all dividends and interest income, just to make it easier for the customer to decide to submit. The American FATCA law and American privacy protection standards are thus to apply in Germany – in terms of international law a very dubious proposition. And what does the Federal government do? On May 13th, 2013 we signed the FATCA treaty with the US.
The embassy Facebook page says: Ambassador Murphy signed a treaty to combat tax evasion (FATCA) with representatives of the German Federal government today. Both countries commit to an automatic mutual exchange of information. The treaty will clamp down on the possibility of utilizing foreign financial institutions and services to evade taxes. Together we are sending a signal on behalf of more transparency and tax honesty.
The term “reporting German financial institution” occurs 20 times in the treaty text, the term “reporting US financial institution” occurs only twice, both times only in the term definition, not in the text body. Obviously someone is trying to suggest that this treaty is in the interest of both partners. In fact, a “reporting US financial institution” is postulated which then has no further function in the treaty.
Thus, one cannot say there is a “mutual” exchange, since – as I understand it – the data transfer is strictly one way, nor is the term “transparency” appropriate in the context of this strange mish-mash of secrecy and qualified intermediaries.
This treaty is the opposite of a fair deal: All the disadvantages are on the German side and all the advantages are on the US side. The distinction between German bank customers as so-called US persons and non-US persons, whereby the US persons are to be spied upon and invidiously penalized, appears to be a clear violation of the Constitutional commandment of equal treatment.
The FATCA treaty is one of the last official acts of the US ambassador in Berlin Philip D. Murphy, a former long-time investment banker for Goldman Sachs, the bank which helped Greece hide the truth about its budget problems. Former Goldman Sachs staffers hold a frighteningly large number of leadership positions in Europe and the US. ECB Head Mario Draghi is one of them, as is also Henry Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary and bailer-out of banks during the Bush Administration.
Just imagine for a moment what Goldman Sachs’ investors could do with an unlimited amount of highly confidential European bank data.
For these reasons I call on the German government not to ratify the FATCA treaty.
Christian Szymanek
Pirate Party direct candidate for the German Federal Diet, city of Hannover / 2nd electoral district
(Post originally published at Isaac Brock Society on June 4, 2013)
The Protect American Investment Act by Senator Pat Roberts
http://www.roberts.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=0bc26938-590c-4d20-b573-86f2b31841dd
I couldn’t copy and past the text but read and have a good laugh.
The General Social Survey and Americans abroad: “true Americans live in America”
1996 seemed to be a pretty good year to be an American abroad. The U.S. was at the height of its global prestige. The State Department had several years earlier ended its policy of automatically revoking U.S. citizenship from Americans who naturalised elsewhere. And there was little motivation to give up the blue passport anyway: ordinary diaspora wage-earners with non-U.S. retirement accounts and mutual funds ignored all the international financial reporting forms created under the Nixon administration’s Bank Secrecy Act or the Reagan administration’s Tax Reform Act — and the IRS had no complaint because it knew that none of this paperwork could possibly generate more revenue than it would cost to process in the first place.
Yet this benign neglect of Americans abroad was by no means an expression of support. Homelanders were hostile to the idea of an American diaspora: in a national survey, nearly three-quarters of people in the U.S. thought that “living in America for most of your life” was an important part of being “truly American”. This widespread societal consensus on the territorial nature of Americanness was even supported, and supported quite strongly, by a surprising group: native-born Americans who had lived abroad for five years or longer, among whom 85% agreed with this proposition. And over the next decade, this view would only strengthen.
Switzerland voted against joining OVDI (Lex USA)
Rejecting US threats, the National Counsil tossed “Lex USA”. The big question now is if the US will follow through with its threats of destroying 18 banks, and how many innocent people will be harmed in the process. Yesterday, Postfinance expressed great fear that it might be the target of US wrath since it is one of the last banks which still accepts US clients living in Switzerland. My best guess is that the US needs to use Switzerland as a scape goat to scare the world into joining FATCA, since FATCA would otherwise fail.
The general view in Switzerland seems to be that if some banks did wrong, then they should be held responsible for their actions without the parliament being involved, while those in favor of Lex USA generally feared the American blackmail.
A lot of commentary that I have read so far in the US seemed to lean more in favor of Switzerland. There were a few calls for war, kicking Swiss out of the US or prohibiting Americans living in Switzerland from having a local bank account, but otherwise many individuals showed an interested in respecting personal privacy and resisting foreign powers.
The votes can be seen here.
This new American chocolate which does not melt is a bit like #LexUSA, containing inside secret materials.
— Marie P Bender (@mariebender) June 19, 2013