Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

Bye America, I feel so free!

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The following is a translated portion of a German song. I replaced the word “woman” with “country”. Nothing is complete without a good song to go along with it!

[Intro]
This was by far the worst week
That I ever had in my entire life
I don’t know if I should stand up
I have no plan on what I should do
Because somehow everything is crappy
Never before was I so far down on the ground
Because I know that my entire savings are gone
And my country has betrayed me!
Uuah, Whatever!		 [Hook:]
Bye (bye), I feel so free (free)
I don’t want to go back home
And I don’t give a damn shit about tomorrow
I lift a glass and scream:
Bye (bye), I feel so free (free)
I don’t want to go back home
And I don’t give a damn shit about tomorrow
I lift a glass and scream

[Part 1:]
Now I am so free (free)
And I stand up again
I am alone and I scream
Go out again
Jump in the nikes, fly

Happy Anniversary Ambassador Jacobson – Thanks for introducing me to Canada Grandmas

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Today is October 18, 2013. Exactly two years ago today Ambassador Jacobson made his infamous Canadian Grandmas speech. I think we should pass and ask a question that Ronald Reagen might ask:

Are you better off today than you were two years ago?

What follows is one of many Ambassador Jacobson posts that appeared (November 21, 2011) on the RenounceUScitizenship blog.

What’s U.S. expat to do? Time for the IRS to generate trust!

Can the IRS be trusted?

“When I read all of this I was concerned. So last week I called the Commissioner of the United States Internal Revenue Service to see what we could do. I explained the problem to him.

The result is that both he and I are sympathetic to the concerns. We are going to work together to see if we can’t find a way to accommodate grandma — and others — here in Canada. But we have to figure out a way to do it without letting the person who is trying to evade taxes in the Cayman Islands off the hook.

My message on this one is to sit tight. We are not unreasonable. We are not unsympathetic. We are not irresponsible.”

Continue reading →

New Zealand FATCA IGA update: IRD deems Kiwis with U.S. Connections as “US taxpayers habitually resident in New Zealand!”

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For a country which has a history of resisting American imperialism, i.e., banning the U.S  Nuclear powered Navy from its ports, times have changed.

Today, New Zealand is moving steadily by stealth towards passive acceptance of a FATCA IGA.  It gets no media coverage, and has no visible, on the ground, opposition.  Nothing concerning the detrimental impacts of FATCA has broken out in public media, and I think it is fair to say, that Kiwis generally have no idea what is happening (not withstanding Osgood, Moby and Pukekonz comments on IBS).   Continue reading →

Gary Wright: Welcome to the IBS Wall of Shame #FATCA

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http://www.bissresearch.com/blog/fatca-the-end-of-the-beginning/105

FATCA is still with us. Looming over financial services like a great big Golden Eagle, it has been gliding on the hot air of dissension for a few years, but make no mistake the FATCA bird is going to swoop down soon.

Like all regulations which cause industry wide change, FATCA has been taking hits from various jurisdictions around the world, which is the normal response from the finance industry when it comes up against the requirement to invest in technology developments that do not have an obvious business benefit. The tactic is always to rebound back to the inflicting authorities with a myriad of reasons why the laws and rules cannot be implemented, in the hope and expectation that the authorities do not know enough about the market mechanisms or technology to know any different. This has certainly been the case with many regulations that the rest of the developed world has been forced to adhere too. Implementing a global regulation is always a tough call, but in the current economic environment one that had very little chance of being waved through unopposed.

However, the issues that the financial world has with FATCA should not dull the appetite for this regulatory requirement not to be enforced by the revenue authorities across all markets. Indeed the UK has been adopting FACTA like positions already and a UK version of FATCA will no doubt emerge sooner or later. Quite right too in my opinion.

In fact all financial markets worldwide should be made to comply with FATCA, as a kind of test model for a similar requirement to be introduced by their own revenue authority. It is in this way that a global net can be created enabling tax avoidance by the rich and criminal to be eradicated. It’s a small price to pay for financial services firms to buy into the FATCA type projects, which should be viewed as an international development not simply by the will of the USA.

I find it hard to understand the resentment that FATCA has engendered, when in truth it’s a vital piece of tax management that only jeopardises the criminal. The financial markets have to ensure that they are seen as strong and resilient by working with government tax authorities for the good of all.

Isn’t this a good PR job for the financial services industry to undertake for the benefit of society?

Nestmann – Why Have So Many Americans Considered #Expatriation?

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So, while the media sound bytes tell you that expatriation is all about tax, don’t believe it. Sure, that’s a part of it, but the reality is much more complex.

 

My own experience with expatriated clients backs this up.

 

  • One who had lived in Switzerland for more than 40 years gave up her U.S. citizenship only after all of the banks she dealt with there closed her accounts. They didn’t want to deal with all the reporting requirements the USA requires if they accept U.S. account-holders. It’s easier just to fire their American customers.
  • Another client received a letter from the bank that had issued a mortgage years earlier for her home in Germany. The letter threatened to cancel her mortgage unless she could prove she was no longer a U.S. citizen. Rather than face a huge balloon payment, she gave up her passport.
  • A Canadian client contacted me after receiving a bill from the IRS for $20,000, despite being (he thought) 100% compliant with all U.S. tax and reporting obligations. He’d even hired a big-name U.S. accounting firm to prepare his tax returns each year, at a cost of more than $5,000 annually. He never owed any U.S. tax because taxes in Canada are higher than in the USA, but he still got screwed. It appears a Canadian educational savings plan account he’d set up for his daughter was the problem. Under Canadian law, gains in the account are tax-deferred—but not under U.S. law. That led to a big tax bill—and his decision to expatriate.

 

The fact is, more than 7 million Americans now live abroad. Many of them can no longer hold bank accounts, qualify for a mortgage, or set up a tax-deferred account for retirement or their children’s education.

 

U.S. tax law has some expatriates waiving the American flag

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By Henry ChuOctober 7, 2013, 7:00 a.m.

COLOGNE, Germany — Genevieve Besser knows that many people would kill to have what she’s thinking of giving up. It’s been her birthright for 52 years, something she’s cherished and taken pride in.

But being a U.S. citizen, she says, now seems more a penalty than a privilege. For 25 years, the New York native has lived here in western Germany with her German husband, whom she met when he was a student in the U.S. and whom she willingly, if warily, followed back to his homeland.

“I said we’ll go, we’ll try it, but we have to keep my American citizenship and the kids have to have American citizenship,” says Besser, a onetime member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, adding bitterly, “and now I’m thinking of renouncing it.”

More at the Los Angeles Times

China Calls on the World to “deAmericanise”

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Interesting article at the Post today talks about a Chinese officials calling on a “befuddled world” to “deAmericanise” in the wake of the IMF’s dire warning about another 2008 downturn should the US government default on its trillions of dollars of debt later this week.  (Please read the complete editorial with commentary at Zerohedge:  China’s Official Press Agency Calls For New Reserve Currency, And New World Order).

And you know what? It’s about time.

It’s past time really.

With FATCA looming and the US financial sector effectively holding everyone in the world hostage to their lunacy, why aren’t more countries working harder to find ways to exclude the United States and begin buying and selling in a currency other than the ubiquitous US dollar?

Sure, the US has held the monopoly and much that is money passes through their empire and greedy hands, but in terms of importance, dumping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and moving to isolate America is probably more important to the survival of the people on planet Earth than figuring out how to minimize global warming.

It’s day 14 of the stand-off in Washington D.C. and despite the furious spinning of the media, none of the players in question are looking anything other than pre-schoolish  and really, really wrong in terms of what they are doing. It would serve them and the misguided who voted for them (again) right if the default occurs on the 17th, but why should everyone else in the world suffer along with them?

And meanwhile in Canada? Harper is getting ready to set the population free … from cable tv bundling. Way to go, Prime Minister. Though it’s not quite fiddling while Ottawa burns, it’s close enough.

Brother of CIBC Bank Board Member is an “Accidental American”

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Donald Le Pan, Accidental American

(Source: Wikipedia) Don LePan (born 1954 in Washington, DC) is widely known as a book publisher; he is the founder and president of the academic publishing house Broadview Press. He is also a painter and the author or editor of several books, most notably the dystopian novel Animals.

LePan grew up in Ontario, living variously in Ottawa, Kingston, and Toronto. He received a BA in English Literature from Carleton University in Ottawa and an MA in Renaissance Studies from the University of Sussex, where he studied under A.D. Nuttall; his research on Shakespeare’s plots became the basis for a monograph (The Birth of Expectation). He worked for some years in the 1970s and 1980s for the Canadian branch of Oxford University Press (where he was manager of the College Department from 1979-1982), and from 1982-1985 as a secondary school teacher in rural Zimbabwe with the development agency WUSC. In 1985 he returned to Canada to found Broadview Press, a book publisher in the humanities and social sciences. By 2010 Broadview had grown to a company with annual revenues of over $3 million and a staff of 25.[1] Though modest in size, the publishing house is held in high regard, particularly as a publisher of anthologies and literary editions; in 2004 LePan was awarded an honorary doctorate by Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario for his contribution to academic publishing.[2]

LePan’s father, Douglas LePan, was well-known as a poet and academic; his brother, Nicholas Le Pan, is well-known as a Canadian civil servant (he is a former head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions).

 

Nicholas LePan (Canadian citizen and brother of Donald LePan)

Mr. Nicholas D. Le Pan is an Independent Director of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, since February 2008. Mr. Le Pan is a Corporate Director with experience in financial services matters. Mr. Le Pan served as Superintendent of Financial Institutions for Canada from 2001 to 2006 and as Deputy Superintendent, Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada (OSFI) from 2000 to 2001. From 1997 to 2000, Mr. Le Pan acted as Deputy Superintendent (Supervision) where his duties included oversight of the supervision programs for banks and other deposit-taking institutions. Mr. Le Pan has been in international and Canadian regulatory coordination efforts, including representation as Chairman of the Basel Accord Implementation Group and Vice Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He is also Chair of the Canadian Public Accountability Board, which oversees auditors of public companies, and Chair of the Independent Review Committee of Brandes Investment Funds. Mr. Le Pan holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Economics from Carleton University and a Master of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Toronto.