Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

I found some interesting photos of a big FATCA compliance conference in Europe where as Steve Mopsick says all the best and brightest were sharpening their steakknives. However, apparently there was a “special” guest in the form of Member of European of Parliament Sophia In’t Veld a noted privacy rights activist in Europe(more like privacy rights pitbull). Now I have no idea what was discussed by any of the participants including Ms. In’t Veld however, in my opinion the pictures told a 1000 words. I will also acknowledge that I have direct knowledge of Ms In’t Veld’s concerns on FATCA and she could emmerge to be the EU’s Elizabeth May on this issue. Take a look at the pictures though:

Notice the physical distance between Ms. In’t Veld(with the curly hair to the left) and the three best and brightest FATCA compliance consulants to the right. Also note the male FCC consulant is not making eye contact despite the fact Ms. In’t Veld is trying to talk towards him.

Now you might say well this is just one angle. Well here is another.

There is definately a gap.

And notice when she is sitting it is to the side and at an angle and away from all the FCC consultants.

The Government is also engaged in negotiations with the U.S. for an
agreement to enhance information exchange under the Canada-United States
Tax Treaty. The agreement would include information exchange
provisions in support of the United States Foreign Account Tax Compliance
Act provisions.
Under the agreement, information exchange would be improved on a
reciprocal basis to facilitate tax compliance in both countries. The agreement
would reflect a commitment by Canada and the United States to work with
other partners on adapting the terms of the agreement to a common model
for automatic exchange of information. page 156

Eric has been doing a great job of finding information about the real number of Americans giving up their citizenship, so much so that in my last Overseas Exile post on this topic, I was amused to discover that he had (as usual) already found the information I was researching and posted it here with much more analysis than I had the time to do. So my apologies if this has already been posted here.

Interestingly, though, expatami posted a link to this FATCA discussion (pdf) posted by an investment firm in Switzerland. Near the top of page five is the following:

Of the almost 40,000 US citizens who are estimated to live in Switzerland, [Minus the over 900 of whom have renounced their US citizenship in 2012 alone according to Ambassador Beyer]

Can anyone help to verify those numbers? If true, that implies that over 2% of Americans living in Switzerland are giving up their US citizenship. If you consider that it takes 12 years of residency to get Swiss citizenship and renunciants are unlikely to renounce without another citizenship, than we have some shockingly high numbers here.

With those numbers correct (I’m suspicious) and were the renunciation rate constant around the world (a bad and, I assume, incorrect assumption), we would have had over 141,000 Americans abroad renouncing last year (assuming a 6.3 million world population of Americans abroad). I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that number, but if the above quoted numbers are correct, the Swiss would have to be renouncing at a rate of 150 times greater than the rest of Americans abroad were the 932 number to be correct.

There is a now well-known newspaper report stating that over 400 Americans renounced in Switzerland in the first 9 months of 2012.

Enough signatures have been collected for an initiative to force a vote to ensure that the Swiss National Bank:
1. Stops selling gold reserves.
2. Keeps 20% of its assets in gold (currently 10%).
3. Repatriates gold held abroad (including in the US).

Swissinfo Article in English

Gold Initiative Website (German)

The Swiss People’s Party (UDC/SVP), the Christian Democrats (PDC), and the Liberal-Radical Party (PLR) are in the process of writing an initiative to anchor bank secrecy in the Constitution, with some exceptions for criminal investigations.

RTS Article in French

FATCA isn’t even being enforced, and yet American Semites are already being reported as getting kicked out of American banks left and right.  At the going rate, this is going to become one heck of a lot worse once reciprocity starts to require American banks to export the financial data of Semites based on their national origin, and it certainly won’t be limited to Israel.  Unfortunately, American Semites won’t be able to protect themselves with banking secrecy this time.

Arab Americans have been increasingly targeted with account closures… “This is just not an isolated problem. We believe it is happening to hundreds if not thousands of Arab Americans,” Ayad said.

More

I called the Arab-American Civil Rights League (1-313-633-0890) to ask if they had heard anything about FATCA and the bank account issues it has been causing for Americans living abroad.  Yet, sadly, they hadn’t heard anything about it and so tried my best to introduce the topic.