Crossposted from RenounceUScitizenship
RT @FATCA_Fallout Renouncing US Citizenship — Trend, Overreaction or self-defense? http://t.co/ew8MAaEE http://t.co/a6bCVbCu #FATCA
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) December 13, 2012
Nobledreamer’s comment to this article about renouncing U.S. citizenship is worth a post and that is exactly what this post is. One of best descriptions of the problem I have seen. It’s in language and a format that anybody can understand it. Thanks! Continue reading
As if federal citizenship-based taxation wasn’t bad enough, on the recently updated website of the Virginia Department of Taxation, we see a blatant attempt to scare people born in Virginia into paying taxes they don’t owe, by reiterating the falsehood that an American citizen by definition must be domiciled in one of the fifty states — since of course as we all know, no one ever checks out from the Hotel California Greatest Country on Earth™ besides a few rich ingrates fleeing the estate tax:
Virginia residents who travel outside the country, or take up temporary or permanent residence abroad, should be aware of the filing provisions discussed below. If you are a Virginia resident who accepts employment in another country or moves outside the United States for other reasons (including military orders), the fact that you are living abroad does not mean that you are no longer considered a Virginia resident for tax purposes. Unless you have established residency in another state, you will still be considered a domiciliary resident of Virginia, and will be required to file Virginia income tax returns.
A domiciliary resident of Virginia is one whose legal domicile in the technical sense is in Virginia. Unless an individual acquires a legal domicile in another state, he or she is still a Virginia resident. This applies even if the person is residing in another jurisdiction and may have been residing there for a number of years. The fact that a person has been absent from Virginia, whether in the foreign service of the United States or in the exercise of private enterprise, does not in any way cancel out their Virginia citizenship or legal domicile.
I just saw this news piece on Global News tonight. The only thing that I can do is to ask why is it that, the federal government hasn’t put the word out that “U.S. persons are a threat to the Canadian economy?” Canadians seem to be just as naive as the Americans are deceptive. No one seems to be listening to what the U.S. is doing loans-cash.net.
Americans aren’t allowed to emigrate in the true sense of the word. What is so difficult to comprehend about that message?
Today is the one-year birthday of the Isaac Brock Society.
On December 12, 2011, this website began as a group project by six Canadian participants at the Expat Forum, which was getting very sick of their uppity attitudes and the incessant discussion of renunciation of United States citizenship. Later, the Expat Forum showed utter disdain for that conversation by completely removing whole threads which had thousands of comments. Thus, our move to create this new forum where we may discuss these serious issues without censorship or censure-ship, displayed foresight and prudence.
As I write this post, the Isaac Brock Society has 1301 posts, and 33,865 comments; we have had approximately 1.4 million pageviews (a.k.a. “hits”): according to Google Analytics, 758,000 hits for isaacbrocksociety.ca, in addition to wordpress.com, 660,000 hits for isaacbrocksociety.com (we switched over in June). Google Analytics calculates that 52,542 unique visitors have graced our isaacbrocksociety.ca pages since the switchover in June.
This has been a group effort. Many thanks to the writers and commenters who have kept us up to date with the latest happenings, finding resources in multiple languages, including English, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Portugese, French, Spanish, and the special gobbledygook which is another name of IRS-speak or Kafkaesque, the language of the bureaucracy of the evil empire.
Last but not least, several Brockers have made contributions to keep this site going. I will be making a financial report soon, and I just want to thank everyone who has contributed.
@MopsickTaxLaw prognostications on plight of #americansabroad #FBAR #FATCA http://t.co/tB6GRTd5 – If he is right renounce US citizenship!
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) December 12, 2012
The above tweet links to a very blog post. As is usually the case, the comments are far more interesting. What follows is Mr. Mopsick’s collection of thoughts:
Any US citizens having trouble job hunting in Switzerland due to FBAR? Contact me for a swissinfo article @swissbusiness
— Clare O'Dea (@ClareODeaZ) December 11, 2012
I know there are a number of “Brockers” from Switzerland.
If you are NOT Twitter literate click here.
The U.S. is a world leader in forms, compliance and violating the sovereignty of other nations. This results in resentment, which leads to hatred of America, which leads to non-government sponsored violence (“terrorism”), which has led to U.S. retaliation, which is called the “War on Terror”.
Why do people hate America? Congressman Ron Paul put this very well by saying: Continue reading
I think the whole world should just go communist. Everybody can stay home, do nothing and complain about how people in other countries are not paying their fair share into some other country’s Treasury. All these politicians should be locked up in a hospital for crazy people! Instead of fixing problems, all they want to do is figure out ways to pick other countries’ pockets.
France Taxes America: The Robin Hood Tax
The precedent here is outrageous. France is taxing Americans who hold French shares. And the example is likely to spread throughout the world. This is the beginning of a global attempt to tax the United States and make individual Americans liable for tax payments which will raise money for Third World dictators.
The UN and the European Union have long lusted after the American tax base and have wanted to find ways to get their hands on it. Now, France has led the way.
Hello everybody. I have just happened on a resource this is “new” (at least for me). It is a site called OpenParliament.ca.
What this site allows you to do is search what various members of Parliament have said about specific issues. One can also search keywords. These issues include: IRS, FBAR, FATCA, etc.
For example: http://openparliament.ca/search/?q=IRS
Here is something interesting – Scott Michel (Washington lawyer who seems to be fairly well connected and has been mentioned many times on this blog) testifying before the Canadian Finance Committee in 2011 on FBAR, Voluntary Disclosure, UBS, etc.
http://openparliament.ca/search/?q=IRS+Person:+%22Scott+D.+Michel%22
You can see that this site is a “Treasure Trove” of information.
Now, here is what I am proposing. At the top of this board is an announcement about FATCA Fact Finding Forum in Toronto on Dec. 15. The purpose appears to be to help the Progressive Canadian Party prepare a submission to the Government on FATCA. I think the submission might be better and more interesting if one knew, what the Government has known about all of these issues to date.
Therefore, I urge somebody to take the lead in researching this site and summarizing exactly what has been discussed before. I think the Scott Michel stuff would be of particular interest. It goes back to 2011 and clearly means that the Government of Canada was well aware of the purpose of the FBAR Fundraiser. Also Prof. Art Cockfield of Queen’s law school has (I believe testified before this committee).
Proposed Isaac Brock Society objective: To summarize all of this information and present the summary at the FATCA Fact Finding Conference to the Progressive Canadian Party. (At a minimum, I believe that Petros is attending).
There are at least two ways to compile this information.
1. OpenParliament.ca
Search with the appropriate key words: FBAR, FATCA, IRS, Voluntary disclsoure, Geithner, etc.
2. Google Search “Member Name” IRS or “Member Name” FBAR
After reading Badgers comments about Ralph Goodale, I searched “Ralph Goodale IRS” and here is what popped up:
http://www.ralphgoodale.ca/blog/fighting-the-long-arm-of-the-u-s-tax-man/
(Same article that Badger found but on his personal blog.)
This should be done for every member of Parliament.
I will of course work on this too. But, this does seem to me to be a project that would be better done as a group with a clear leader. Would somebody volunteer to lead this effort?
The conference is next Saturday and I believe that this summary is something that would be an important contribution to the discussion.
I would suggest calling it:
“FATCA and the FBAR Fundraiser: What did the government know and when did they know it?
This needs to be completed and tied up with a blue ribbon by this Thursday at the latest.
In a 76-page tour de force, international tax lawyer and University of London School of Law Ph.D. candidate Bernard Schneider takes on the U.S.’ unique practise of taxing people who do not live in the country nor receive any benefits from it. His paper, published in the Virginia Tax Review in October, was posted on SSRN yesterday. A sample quote:
The worldwide taxation of nonresidents can also be seen as a form of tax imperialism – the United States is overriding the incentives that foreign countries have put in place to attract U.S. taxpayers and investment. A foreign country’s decision to impose a lower tax rate than the United States reflects its judgment on how to tax and may even be specifically designed to attract foreign labor or capital. To the extent that the United States arrogates to itself the right to tax the difference between the foreign country’s effective tax rate and its own, even when its citizens reside in that foreign country, the United States is breaching inter-nation equity.
Schneider goes into copious detail to demolish every one of the myths and lies that Homelanders have come up with to justify extracting tribute from U.S. Persons abroad. Unlike many previous papers on the topic, he not only discusses the issue of tax owed (which is typically dismissed by Homelanders with snide and uninformed comments about the “great tax breaks” we get), he also covers the difficulties of compliance — such as the significant costs of filing Form 8621 under PFIC rules which apply to non-U.S. retirement plans — and goes on to bring up the issue of green card holders abroad, who face the same tax issues as citizens but without even having a vote, a U.S. passport, or a guaranteed right to return to the United States.
Interestingly, Schneider also takes the time to dismiss one of the popular but logically weak arguments in support of the FEIE, that U.S. citizens abroad deserve “tax breaks” because they are helping the U.S. economy. He concludes his paper with a detailed proposal for the U.S. to adopt a departure tax system similar to Canada’s.
Bernard Scheider. “The End of Taxation without End: A New Tax Regime for U.S. Expatriates”. 32 Virginia Tax Review 1, 2012.
