Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

Fascinating 1923 report of League of Nations on citizenship-based taxation of interest to #americansabroad http://t.co/06uUZdAN

— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 11, 2013

What I found most interesting about the Isaac Brock Society is that the comments are usually every bit as interesting as the posts (in some cases better). Citizenship-based taxation is such an important issue and is the “root of the problem”. Thanks to Shadow Raider for a fascinating comment that needs to be elevated to a post of its own.

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Below from a commenter on Victoria’s blog:

Reading this post reminds me of a few years back when the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was created by the United States requiring passports to cross the border.  Many border babies, Canadians who were born in the United States because the nearest hospital was in a border states like Michigan, Maine, or North Dakota were in for a rude awakening.  In some cases mom and dad were also border babies (there are whole towns in Canada that are physically on the border), and some found that they were not Canadian Citizens, even though they had lived in Canada, and even voted for decades.

I work at H&R Block in Canada and I suppose I am a bit like bankers will soon be.  As soon as someone shows me a US passport, or a document that shows their birthplace in the United States I have to stop preparing their tax return and send it over to the US Tax Specialists, who charge an extra 2-3 hundred dollars, even when these people owe nothing in taxes.  I have occasionally had people swear they will renounce before they will file, and I tell them they can’t renounce until after they have filled.

In Canada the conservative government recently changed our citizenship law so that the second generation born abroad are not Canadian Citizens, but this has problems too.  Many Canadians were born elsewhere but grew up in Canada.  There are examples of people who were born abroad to Canadian parents, came to live in Canada when they were a year old and happen to be living in Belgium when they have a child.  In some cases these people’s children are now born stateless.  These are the cases where some show of attachment should come into play.  Its a nightmare for these parents.  While the new law allows for easy naturalization of these babies, they first have to physically arrive in Canada which is difficult when the child is stateless and qualified for no national passport.  Then these parents have to wait for their children’s files to be procsses.  Currently there is an enormous backlog and it can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years to process a citizenship request.

I responded back saying what H&R Block Canada is doing completely outrageous and the CEO and Senior Management of H&R Block Canada should be less worried about spending time in US Club Fed and instead be worried about spending hard time at the Kingston Ontario Penetentary for violations of the Canadian Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act.

France is all a’flutter over the news that the beloved actor Gérard Depardieu was seeking (and apparently has now obtained) a second passport.

“Je suis un citoyen du monde,” he has declared and that is the reason he is giving for accepting a Russian passport.  He vigorously denies that his actions are linked to tax matters in France though few people believe him since he has been highly critical of the French government’s tax policies and not too long ago he left the Hexagon for Belgium which provoked a perfect storm of criticism and angst.  Look here for a superb editorial about the language that French politicians have been using to describe him (tax evader, ingrate, deserter – terms that many of us here hear quite often).  The conclusion of the author of the piece?  These politicians are unconscious defenders of slavery, says Bertrand Lemennicier, who act ” s’ils étaient propriétaires de nos corps et de nos vies.” (as if they owned our bodies and our lives.)

And Depardieu was having none of it.  His  open letter to the President and Prime Minister is something to read and I invite you to do so.  He certainly came out swinging and was not in the slightest bit apologetic – apoplectic is more like it.  A few choice bits that I enjoyed greatly:

“Je n’ai pas à justifier les raisons de mon choix, qui sont nombreuses et intimes.” (I do not have justify the reasons for my choices which are many and private.)

“Je n’ai jamais tué personne, je ne pense pas avoir démérité, j’ai payé 145 millions d’euros d’impôts en quarante-cinq ans, je fais travailler 80 personnes dans des entreprises qui ont été créées pour eux et qui sont gérées par eux.” (I never killed anyone, I don’t think I was ever a bad guy, I paid 145 million Euros in taxes over 45 years, I provide work for 80 people in companies that were created for and are managed by them.)

And he ends his missive by asking the French President and his Prime Minister, “Who in the hell are you to judge me?”

Good question and I applaud him for having the courage and the audacity to ask it.  As Depardieu so rightly points out those who leave their countries of origin – who choose to live, marry, raise families and work on distant shores- should never have to justify their choices to anyone.  We have that right – the right to leave the place where we accidentally found ourselves at one point in time and to go wherever we are welcome.  This is true of all of us whatever category of migrant we happen to be in – whether we are film stars or farmhands.  And the only proper response in my view to attempts by states and their homeland citizens to prevent people from leaving their territories (policies against emigration) or punishing them for it (exit taxes and citizenship-based taxation) or trying to shame them into staying is outrage.

Reader Suki sent me the following email.

Hello Peter,

Check out this link, http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/05/1402821/rep-steve-king-opens-new-congress-with-unconstitutional-bill-to-end-birthright-citizenship/.

“It’s the first week of the 113th Congress, and one House member is already trying to stop children born in the United States to undocumented parents — whom he calls “anchor babies” — from gaining citizenship.”

King’s bill is clearly racist, but what a different perspective I have on this issue now.  If I could have prevented my son (born in Tampa) from becoming a US citizen, I would have…

Cheers,

Suki

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