People have posted and commented on their consulate visit experiences. This is very useful information, but has been difficult to access as it appears on various threads.  So, I have assembled them into a Directory of Consulate Reports, organised by location.  I expect to add more reviews over the next day or two as I continue to search past postings, and of course we’ll add new reviews as they arrive.

Keep ’em coming!  You can write your consulate visit story on this thread or any other thread (we’ll keep an eye out for them) and we’ll transfer them to the Directory.  Thanks to everybody for sharing your experiences! Continue reading →

Let Obama class warfare begin!

References Romney 2008 suggestion that the automakers should not be saved. We know who he thinks he is running against.

Check this out.

Toronto tempts bankers tense about Volcker rule

How can a country do so much to make one want to avoid it?

Roy Berg is a U.S. tax lawyer based in Calgary and has extensive experience representing Canadian residents with U.S. tax and filing obligations. He frequently contributes to the Isaac Brock forums and has recently given several educational presentations at various locations in Alberta. His firm, Moodys Tax Advisors (www.moodystax.com), recorded one of the presentations and has agreed to make it available free of charge to those who have an interest. Several Isaac Brock members have attended these presentations, the reviews of which are available on the various forums.

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I found an interesting video this evening describing the debacle of Margaret Thatcher’s famous poll tax back in 1990. I found a lot eerie similarities between Thatcher’s tax policies back then and what is going on today with US FATCA, FBAR, increased enforcement of citizenship based taxation et all especially the stubbornness of both Thatcher and the US political establishment.

This does give a pretty good visual overview of what a real tax revolt is like.

I wanted to post that a fairly prominent US tax law professor and new blogger Allison Christians is becoming the H. Heward Stikeman Chair in Tax Law at McGill University. From reading her blog she appears to be moderately pro FATCA although perhaps not as strongly as some other US tax profs I have seen out there(She is more pro information sharing citing the current US Canada agreement as an example). She has three blog posts I suggest you might want comment on. I have put links below:

http://taxpol.blogspot.com/2012/03/countries-dont-help-each-other-to-tax.html

She discusses the current US Canada information sharing arrangement in the above post and discusses DATCA

http://taxpol.blogspot.com/2012/03/international-tax-gangsters.html

General post on offshore evasion

http://taxpol.blogspot.com/2012/03/netherlands-to-share-more-tax-info-with.html

Discussion on the Netherlands joining the FATCA five agreement

Prof. Christians is almost certainly a US Person. Hopefully she will be enjoying filling out all those FBAR forms upon her arrival in Canada. Note: lets not get too nasty. Who knows Prof. Christians might be a Canadian citizen in a few years time.

Our own Ladybug sent me the following 1980 document from the US Consulate in Calgary.  It has this don’t-die-of-laughing-they-really-did-say-it line:  ” … a person who has already lost U.S. citizenship by that date [Oct. 10, 1978] may not have it restored.”  Oh that the rules were what they were.  Now, no matter whether you lost it back then or not, you have it whether you want it or not.  One line, however, is still all too true:  “Did you know … That U.S. laws, regulations and procedures are always changing, and what was true some years ago may not be true now?”

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