Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 4 of 11 (Year 2017)
You can access all years at this link: Media and Blog Articles – Links for All Years
If clicking on a comment link brings you to the wrong comment, click here to get on the most recent page of comments.(alternatively, to reach the most recent comment page, go to the url in the bar at the top of your browser and delete everything after http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/media-and-blog-articles-open-for-comments-part-4-of-4)
Media and Blog Articles
EmBee suggested that it would be good if there was a thread for new articles, so that people would be aware of where to comment. So, I created this permanent page. I’ll make a permanent list of links posted here and keep adding to it, but not deleting, so we’ll end up having sort of a “bibliography” of FATCA/CBT articles. [Note: Some articles are not open for comments]
For more articles on FATCA, enter FATCA into Google then click on the link “more news for fatca” just below the most recent featured article.
Notes:
From JC: To see #FATCA on Twitter for latest breaking news. JC finds that is quite a good source and there even are some international articles that one may read using Google Translate. Others may help certain tweets and articles remain in elevated position by retweeting them.
From Badger: On an important archival note, please use the Internet Archive Wayback machine https://archive.org/web/ (see bottom right ‘Save Page Now’ box to enter URLs of webpages you want saved for posterity, and try to save backup copies of articles and other items of interest in some other form – such as a datastick or external drive. Some important and very significant webpages and the fulltexts of articles are no longer available (although some can be retrieved if someone using the Wayback machine saved them).
Be sure to read the comment stream for this thread — there are usually very recent articles mentioned there that aren’t on this list yet.
2017.12.28
It’s time to address the double standard about tax havens, Angela Wrights, Macleans, Canada.
The US Is Becoming the World’s New Tax Haven, The Editors, Bloomberg View, US.
2017.12.21
Rep. Dina Titus Supports Americans Abroad Tax Reform, Democrats Abroad, US.
Now That The GOP Tax Bill Is Approved, The IRS Gets Busy, Brian Naylor, NPR, US.
2017.12.20
Taxpayers will have to wait to find out how they fare under new legislation , Renae Merle and Aaron Gregg, Denver Post (reprint from Washington Post), US.
U.S. Shareholders –Take Action by December 31, KPMG.
2017.12.18
Have You Ever Felt Sorry for the I.R.S? Now Might Be the Time, Patricia Cohen, New York Times, US.
2017.12.12
EU finance ministers issue warning to Trump over tax reforms, RTÉ, Ireland.
2017.12.11
Banque: les consequences étonnantes de l’accord FATCA, Edouard Lederer, Les Echos, France.
2017.12.10
As Australia ousts MPs with dual citizenship, Canada’s Parliament embraces many in its ranks, Kathleen Harris, Canada. (mentions MP who “assumed his U.S. citizenship was automatically rescinded because he did not meet several requirements for continued citizenship. [But when travelling to Washington] was told he was ineligible to enter the U.S. on a Canadian passport because he was a U.S. citizen. He was . . . allowed in on a one-time basis . . . it cost him $3,000 to later sort out the administrative requirements.”)
2017.12.09
The American Diaspora: Outreach and Organization, Victoria Ferauge, The Franco-American Flophouse, Japan.
2017.12.08
Foreign-owned banks to be hit by US tax rules, Financial Times, UK.
Trump Tax Plan Worries Europe, Christian Reiermann, Der Spiegel, Germany.
For articles earlier in 2017, click here.
Further to the PIA for FATCA aka ‘Enhanced Financial Account Information Reporting’ (our backstabbing home government obscures its collusion with a foreign law imposed by a foreign government via extortion by referring to it by the intentionally opaque euphemism ‘Enhanced Financial Account Information Reporting’) , here’s the one for the Common Reporting Standard (CRS);
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/protecting-your-privacy/privacy-impact-assessment/common-reporting-standard-ita-part-xix.html?wbdisable=true
According to the NY Times, if the House tax bill passes without amendment (unlikely), US-compliant graduate students would be hit hard.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opinion/house-tax-bill-graduate-students.html?referer=https://www.google.co.uk/
The Senate version apparently does not include the provision to tax graduate student tuition waivers.
https://eos.org/articles/divergent-republican-tax-plans-blur-future-for-grad-students
Closing all those reprehensible “loopholes” in order to make the imaginary-money sums add up so that the tax cuts for Mnuchin, Trump, & pals can be “deemed” paid for. What crooks they are.
If not grad students, someone else will have to be screwed, otherwise the mystical pretend tax reform cannot be deemed to have materialized.
Grad students were already screwed if they had a fellowship with research or teaching commitments, which the US considers income against which only a small tuition amount can be deducted. (So taxing tuition waivers would at least level the playing field.)
US-citizen students outside the US are and were well advised not to be compliant.
A certain person I know solved the problem by not reporting Canadian scholarships while studying in the US, only filing returns that included earnings from a part-time off-campus job.
Clarification to above. External fellowship that doesnt include a tuition waiver, those were disadvantageous.
http://www.ebf.eu/guidanceustreasury/
The European Banking Federation notes the updated guidance published recently by the United States Treasury clarifying how foreign banks need to act when they are unable to collect and report US Tax Identification Numbers (TIN) for existing customers with US indications.
The updated guidance is good news for people known as ‘accidental Americans,’ who are unable to comply fully with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) because they cannot provide their European banks with a US tax number. This is particularly problematic for people who for example left the US decades ago and never returned, or for people who were only born in the US and there stayed only for a very brief period.
Many of these customers do not have a TIN and often encounter difficulties and long delays before obtaining one. The problematic nature of the “accidental American” situation was already previously acknowledged by the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service.
Many European banks, defined as ‘Foreign Financial Institutions’ in the US, were concerned that by offering services to ‘accidental Americans’ they might be considered as being in significant non-compliance with the due diligence requirements of FATCA and related Intergovernmental Agreements (IGA). Banks feared they might be penalized with the application of a 30% FATCA withholding tax on all US payments made to them.
US Treasure Notice 2017-47[1] now has clarified that Foreign Financial Institutions in Model 1 IGA jurisdictions will not be systematically in significant non-compliance with an applicable IGA during 2017, 2018, and 2019 solely as a result of a failure to report U.S. TINs. In order to be relieved from the non-compliance status, the Foreign Financial Institution will have to report the account holder’s date of birth, make annual requests for the TIN, and search its electronic records for missing U.S. TINs before reporting information on 2017.
I suppose this validates my refusal to answer bank queries. The problem is now for a new account. I don’t know what to do regarding a new account for which I refuse to provide US information. This guideline appears to concern existing accounts only.
The guidance is good news for banks, not for Americans, be they accidental, incidental, dual or former.
It doesn’t change anything for us, but it relieves the banks of the threat of being treated as non-FATCA-compliant.
But it’s possible that banks could be more lenient when it comes to locking out non-cooperative US persons.
Possible, at any rate.
Maybe, in some banks in some countries. In some countries, including mine, onboarding of new accounts usually takes place online and doesn’t progress if the applicant declines to co-operate. Possibly a personal approach might be more fruitful. Hasn’t worked for me, so far, but could be different elsewhere.
RO’s FB has recently reported that TTFI is still being scored.
“Rick Adams, TTFI was not considered by Chairman Brady until RO launched a letter writing compaign to President Trump in support of tax reform and TTFI inclusion in late September and a petition to Congress for TTFI inclusion in October. After we delivered over 3,000 petitions to Chairman Brady’s office, the next day the Financial Times reported that the House Ways and Means Committee is seriously considering TTFI. The next step was for the Joint Committee on Taxation to score TTFI. We have been waiting the JCT’s official score even since. Chairman Brady can’t propose TTFI until it is scored per the House procedures.”
@plaxy
I think this is good news, but it might be mostly good news for existing accounts.
CBT is RBT:
https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/international-tax-systems-and-how-prepare-them
Oops. I misread “United States Virgin Islands” as “United States, Virgin Islands”. My mistake.
Canada is not listed at all in this article.
No. How very odd.
Interesting graph here:
https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog/sen-bernie-sanders-call-for-senate-investigation-of-the-offshore-paradise-papers-leak/
Indeed. Especially the way Asia rises as Switzerland plummets.
FATCA was meant to suck that money “back” to America. Instead, very sensibly, it went to Asia.
America is so being outsmarted at what it thought was its own game.
@ plaxy and WhatAmI
Canada is often overlooked. We’re used to it.
Hey…I’m in Alberta. Even our own Prime Minister has been known to overlook our province.
He copied it from Wikipedia on an ipad. Missed off Canada from the top when he tried to scroll down to pick up the second page of the list.
Not the sharpest tool in the box.
@WhatAmI, Plaxy
Also, no mention of Molvania.
Moderator / Administrator
This appears to be a letter signed by Brock. Since when does Brock do this. And, if so it should be a feature here on Brock. Significantly also signed by “RO” and “DA”
https://www.aaro.org/advocacy/taxation-isses/631-our-plea-to-congress-don-t-forget-overseas-americans-in-tax-reform
American Citizens Abroad (ACA)
Republicans Abroad (RO)
Democrats Abroad (DA)
Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO)
The Isaac Brock Society
Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO)
Jacqueline Bugnion, retired tax director of ACA
Please RT/Like.
This relates to informing all those entities united on the “plea” above that they have all joined a call for Residence Based Taxation.
https://twitter.com/JCDoubleTaxed/status/933098594764075010
RO’s statement re: the AARO letter: