A Series of Posts to Explain the Anger and Vehemence Fueling the anti-FATCA, anti-IGA & anti-CBT Movement
Streamlined, as inadequate as it is, would not have come to be were it not for the blood spilled by these in OVDI. https://t.co/lgEJ1RQYnS
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) November 23, 2015
Perspective:
This post was written approximately 3 months after the mass hysteria (there simply is no other word for it) of late Fall 2011. Brock was less than a month old. We had only just started to gather information, starting at the ExpatForum. Renunciation was a very scary topic only slightly less than the terror of imagining losing everything due to FBAR penalties. IMHO, FBAR will prove to be the number one issue that fueled the expat movement, hands-down.
An excerpt from January 5, 2012 post from the renounceuscitizenship WordPress Blog
PART I: The Players
UPDATED Thursday November 26
The Taxpayers Part 2 – Those who ventured into OVDP/OVDI
First Part of Post (from yesterday) is HERE
Do the drudgery……do your own research
LCU’s……Life Credit Units
minnows…..little guys
whales…big guys
CCW……… Complain Comply & Warn
OVDP……..Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Program
DATCA… Domestic Account Tax compliance Act
GATCA….Global Account Tax Compliance Act
As usxcanada recently said, anyone who cannot guess right away who the above terms come from, needs to learn some Brock History!
After a much-earned vacation from years of FUBAR expat life, “Just_Me” (Marvin van Horn) may not be posting and tweeting much anymore but those of us who were lucky enough to have “known” him cannot help but smile. He was nothing short of a human dynamo, completely wound up in communicating our plight to everyone and anyone.I remember wondering if he ever slept; he would be online when I first got up in the morning and seemingly still there when I would get to bed in the wee hours of the next morning. He was omnipresent! It didn’t seem to matter whether he was in the U.S., sailing on his boat or at home in New Zealand. Marvin was the reason I learned Twitter. Marvin was the reason I joined LinkedIn groups. He taught me how to make a link. He was the reason many of us knew about the Taxpayer Advocate. He educated us about how horrible it was, to enter OVDP. Above all, he was a true example of what a real person is; he was not bitter in spite of an absolutely miserable experience; “took responsibility” for not being aware of filing; tried to do the “right thing” putting himself at great peril. He devoted himself to the “cause” and refused to let it ruin his life. I cannot recall ever hearing anyone having a bad thing to say about him.
To the best of my recollection, Marvin had been posting on Jack Townsend’s blog and when Peter read his comments, he invited him to become an author at Brock. For Marvin, the 2009 OVDP program was an 851- day process. I have taken excerpts from a couple of his posts to try and capture his story: OVDI drudgery for minnows and Letters to Shulman or a case sudy of OVDP communication attempts with the IRS
Just_Me writes:
Rightfully or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that joining the OVDP was my only option. My logic was probably flawed, but it went like this…
Prior to the moment I heard about the IRS program on NPR during the family visit back to the Seattle area, I didn’t know that a FBAR existed or understand foreign income reporting requirements. Those considerations never enter your mind when you are sailing the Pacific in a small yacht, or gardening in NZ. Maybe that represented some due diligence failure on my part for not staying fully aware of all the complex tax rules and reporting requirements even for my simple existence. I had never visited the IRS.gov web site in my life.
From that moment in late September, 2009, until I submitted my letter in October 12th there was a very stressed and compressed journey. First I had to convince my wife this was something that we could not ignore and had to do. There was the scramble for knowledge. I had to search out attorneys, and CPAs for a cram course of discovery of what my obligations were. There were returns to amend, and the almost unfathomable foreign tax credit form 1116 to complete that the CPA couldn’t even do correctly. There was a long distance bank record compilation effort that was extremely difficult to do in the time frame I had. There was the embarrassment of your predicament which meant you didn’t want family and friends to know. Then came the very hard, emotional and lonely decision which ended with you walking into the Seattle IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) division offices feeling like a criminal. I did all that, because I had reluctantly came to the conclusion, that once I was aware of my failures and aware of the IRS program, I had knowledge and could not escape it.
I KNEW! Therefore, now, I had to do the right thing.
So, what was the choice given my knowledge? To me, None! I had to enter the OVDP. My big mistake was assuming that the IRS would realize that I was a Minnow and not subject me to the harsh 20% penalties. I naively thought my appeals to Shulman would result in logic and reason prevailing. They would do the right thing, and not treat me as a Whale. How wrong I was!!
Continue reading
Barbara raises an important question. How do we know what arguments Homelanders might respond to? We need (I think) to understand what is going inside the head of a Homelander. Why would a Homelander believe that those who live outside the United States should be subjected to U.S. taxation as though they live in the United States?
Therefore, the purpose of this post is to solicit your comments on the question of:
Why exactly do many (but NOT all) Homelanders believe that the U.S. should impose taxes on those who don’t live in the United States? What is their world view? What are the assumptions they are working with? Why do they believe that equality means that everybody should be subjected to the same rules?
There is often a difference between what people way and what their real motivation is
The question is NOT what they say. The question is why do they say what they say! In other words, what is their motivation? What is the “hidden issue” that they are not articulating?
Some possible suggestions …
– as citizens we all have an equal responsibility to support the U.S. government no matter where we live
– taxation is a punishment. Why should someone be able to escape punishment by leaving the country?
– what the f…? You think you are going to leave the USA and NOT pay any taxes? (In other words, I have the distinct impression that many Homelenaders don’t realize that Americans abroad pay higher taxes than they do, which is why you are generally better off with tax preparers in your country of residence)
My point is that:
In order to educate Homelanders and to address their arguments/responses we need to understand why they think/feel the way they do.
So, could you please comment on what is the motivation for Homelanders (those that do) to support the imposition of taxation on people who don’t live in the United States. Although, I am primarily interested in the thinking of “Everyday Homelanders”, you might find the following CBC Interview of Michael Kirsch interesting:
The interview referenced in the above tweet was the subject of a separate post on the Isaac Brock Society. See the comments as well.
Thanks very much.