The American Citizens Abroad Global Foundation has launched its educational program with a forum/debate on the merits of Citizenship-based taxation vs. Residence-based taxation.
This is a full day event, sponsored and organized by the ACA (American Citizens Abroad), that will be held at the University of Toronto on May 2nd. Registration and Information
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‘This is the first public debate — worldwide — devoted to this important topic.’
Added, May 3rd: from Professor Allison Christians’ Tax, Society & Culture blog: Tax, Society & Culture, Allison Christians, Marco G.: “FATCA non-delay delay”
The below notice will require some very close reading by a great number of people.
-Notice 2014-33; 2014-21 IRB 1
Originally announced, AGAIN, on a Friday, when it will get lost in the weekend news.
Reuters, May 2, 2014: Foreign banks get transition period on U.S. tax evasion law
From “innocente” and George:
US Treasury and the mythical Bob Stack blinked today, “U.S. Treasury gives relief to banks for anti-tax evasion law”…
from Jim Jatras:
Interesting news today!
Treasury seems to want to have its cake and eat it too: delay FATCA yet again (since it clearly would be a mess on July1) without appearing to do so. It’s a transparent sign of weakness, stalling for time to get more unconstitutional pseudo-treaties signed. It might actually make things worse. Who knows.
from Just Me:
This is akin to declaring all the IGAs non complete as being a done deal, and so added to the count.
and reply back …
I think this is aimed more an individual FFIs being able to take more time to comply, so as to drive more countries into IGAs – which is the only way they can really enforce this. That’s the paradox: foreign governments (like Canada’s) sign IGAs because their banks are terrified of FATCA, but if they didn’t sign them, FATCA would collapse and there’d be nothing to be scared of.
There’s one born every minute . . .
As Blaze pointed out on Sandbox, and as I don’t at the moment see elsewhere here on Brock, the House of Commons Finance Committee met today from 3:30 through 5:30 today. Most of the second half of the meeting was taken up by the FATCA IGA, with questions of Finance officials (Shoom and Ernewein) mainly by the NDP, with softball lobs by Conservative members.
I’ll repeat here the comment I posted on Sandbox. I’m not going to subscribe to or respond to any replies to this; I just want to call everyone’s attention to the meeting, how to download a video clip of the entire meeting, and how important it is for Canadians affected by the IGA to watch, listen carefully, and reflect carefully.
The Q1 2014 Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate has been placed on public inspection for printing in the Federal Register for 2 May 2014, two days later than required by 26 USC § 6039G(d). This is the seventh quarter in a row in which the Internal Revenue Service has failed to publish their list of certain ex-Americans by the legally-mandated deadline, bringing their all-time compliance rate to a dismal 27.5%.
One famous name did appear: “Tina Turner”, in precisely that form — rather surprising, since as far as I know that’s not her civil name in the first place. However, contrary to my prediction last time, the overall rate of missing names does not seem to have come down as much as expected. We still have not seen one-quarter of the famous people known to have renounced in 2013: the names of Cuban intelligence officer René González, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines’ former U.N. Representative Camillo Gonsalves, and Pakistani politician Fauzia Kasuri are absent.
The IRS’ utter inability to publish a simple list of names in a complete and timely fashion just fills you with confidence that they’re going to be able handle all that FATCA data fairly and competently, right?
As always, congratulations to Canadian anthropologists and insurance agents, Thai schoolteachers, fresh Singaporean university graduates, and every other ordinary emigrant and accidental American whose name was included in a list which delusional politicians think covers only “a handful of the wealthiest of the wealthy”, and my sympathies to those who for whatever reason did not have their names included.
New Democrats are calling on the Conservatives to acknowledge the concerns with the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and agree to remove it from Budget Bill C-31.
“Despite broad opposition, the Conservatives are charging ahead with the implementation of this agreement,” said NDP National Revenue Critic Murray Rankin (Victoria). “Serious concerns remain about the potential violation of privacy and constitutional rights, as well as unknown costs to Canadians.”
Bill C-31 moves to implement the Canada-US intergovernmental agreement on the FATCA and also to grant the Minister of National Revenue sweeping powers to make any regulation necessary to carry out the agreement.
“How can the Conservatives justify burying this agreement – that could negatively affect 1 million people and that has nothing to do with the budget – inside a 359-page omnibus bill,” said NDP Finance Critic Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley).”There’s no excuse. FATCA must be removed from the budget so it can be properly scrutinized.”
http://www.ndp.ca/news/conservatives-must-remove-fatca-budget-bill
http://www.executive-magazine.com/business-finance/finance/fatca-answering-to-uncle-sam
An excellent article by Paul Cochrane, Middle East Correspondent for International News Services.
The word “sanctions” in relation to FATCA seems to be growing in common usage, and this story is no exception:
“If a country is not FATCA compliant it will be financially sanctioned in a new way, ‘the FATCA way’, and the readiness in the MENA is not sufficient in my opinion for a FATCA go-live situation,” said Camille Barkho, chief compliance officer at Lebanon and Gulf Bank.
The potential sanctioning of the Lebanese banking sector is a grave concern in Beirut, given the high degree of the economy’s reliance on banking.
The article also raises the issue of data privacy and security for US citizens in the Middle East:
More pressing in the immediate term is the issue of privacy and the safety of American citizens. “One thing the Treasury has not thought about is how do you protect US citizens? In a country like Lebanon, with Hezbollah and other US designated terrorist organizations, banks will identify US citizens, which could put them at risk,” said the BDL source.
Jim Jatras is also quoted in comments about the negative economic impacts of FATCA on the US:
Further questions may arise if there is a dawning realization about negative economic impacts on the US itself. “What happens when we start shorting payments on our Treasury bonds (TBs) by 30 percent? A sovereign holder is not subject to withholding, but for a private institution, what if the interest payment is done through SWIFT to a commercial bank that has not signed an IGA? Treasury will take the interest,” said Jim Jatras, Manager of RepealFATCA.com, which is lobbying against the law in Washington. “This is the kind of thing that could promote dumping TBs, and affect interest rates and the dollar as a global currency, which are issues nobody has thought out.”
Levin, McCain call for U.S. to refrain from FATCA negotiations with Russia
Without agreement, Russian banks face 30 percent tax on U.S. investments
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
WASHINGTON – Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., today urged the Obama administration to continue to refrain from further negotiations with Russia on compliance with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act until Russia ends its aggressive and destabilizing actions toward Ukraine.
We are working on the website to use for ADCS/ADSC fundraising for our legal challenge. We already have some quotes from Canadians across Canada.
We would also like to include quotes from our friends around the world. We have two quotes, but would like more.
If you live outside Canada and will contribute a quote of two or so sentences about how you feel about FATCA, please send it to Lynne Swanson at maplesandbox at yahoo dot ca by Friday May 2. Please also include a sentence on why you think the Canadian legal challenge is important.
If you use the french language, please provide your comment in french as well.
To protect your privacy, we will not use your real name, so please provide a suggested alias. Please also include your country.
If you are interested, you can also post your comment on Brock.
Thanks.
