Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

I received a regular email from Logos Bible Software offering a sweepstakes for a Doctor of Ministry scholarship worth several thousands of dollars.  However, on the rule page it states:

Logos Sweepstakes (the “Sweepstakes”) is open only to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia over the age of 18 with access to the Internet at all times during the Sweepstakes and subsequent prize-award period unless otherwise specified by Logos.

It seems to me that if the United States expects it citizens abroad to pay their “fair share” of taxes, that there should be laws against discriminating against them in this manner.  If they want our money, we should have rights.

I wonder if anyone else has seen rules like this in other sweepstakes or contests.

We have set it up so that all subscribers at isaacbrocksociety.com will continue to receive a notice each time there is a new post at the isaacbrocksociety.ca.

At 2:30 pm, we will end the ability to make new posts and comments at isaacbrocksociety.com.  Every current author will also receive an email presently with a password to login to the new site at this page:  https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/wp-admin/

Good luck to us all.

UPDATE:  Mission accomplished at 3:00 pm.  All authors should have received an email with login information.  If anyone has not received their email, please send me a message:

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This is an open thread to talk about how you cope with generalized anxiety.  I’m one of those people who is anxious about everything all the time.  But when business is good (like before 2008!) I keep myself busy so the anxiety has an outlet and I’m able to cope.  These days business is slow as molasses and I obsess so much I think I’m going nuts.

Here’s what I’ve been doing but it doesn’t seem to work anymore:

– I take Ativan and Remeron every day.  It helps but not as much as it used to.

– I play games on my Playbook at bedtime.

– I watch taped TV shows (I’m now having nightmares about things I see in the shows!)

– I often watch Fox News hoping all the people responsible for FATCA get voted out of office (yes I live in a fantasy world).

Some people drink to relax but that’s not an option for me, I’d turn it into an olympic sport.

Little things can help some people to cope with anxiety.  What do you do that helps?

I have been looking for this for a long time but there was a series of meeting back in 2000 between official in then Canadian Finance Minister’s Paul Martin’s Office and US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers over US Canada cross border migration. I was led to believe there was a joint statement by both the US and Canada at the time but most of the statement is quoted from Paul Martin.  (The press release is rather interesting fodder as to whether the current government of Canada is any better on these issues than the previous).

Interesting Passage:

For individuals, the changes will ensure the appropriate tax treatment of an emigrant’s gains. Specifically, where one country’s tax rules treat an individual as having disposed of a property immediately before the individual emigrates to the other country, the individual will be able to choose to be treated under the other country’s rules as also having disposed of and reacquired the property at its fair market value.

In most cases, this will mean that no tax is payable in the destination country on any pre-emigration gain. Where tax is payable in the destination country – for example, where the property in question is real estate situated in that country – the new rule will ensure appropriate tax crediting.

What I understand this to be is there is no negative effects as a matter a Canadian tax policy for a someone resident in Canada who renounces there US citizenship and has to pay exit tax.(The US Treasury going all the way back to 1995 had been pushing the “HEART” style exit tax as a preferred policy). My biggest disappointment is there seems to be no remarks or specific commitments from anyone in the US government at the time.

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071122060211/http://www.fin.gc.ca/news00/00-068e.html