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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.
The following is excerpted from a post at RenounceUScitizenship.
To put it simply: FATCA is an attempt by the US government to conscript other countries into its abusive behavior. As a country that believes in the rights of individuals Canada should NOT acquiesce in the immorality and abusiveness of US citizenship-based taxation!
But remember:
From the Irish Independent, Ireland’s largest circulation newspaper
December 6, 2012
IRELAND has signed an agreement with the United States to make it easier for Irish banks to hand over information on the financial affairs of US nationals living here, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said.
The agreement enables Irish banks to obey the rules imposed by US tax authorities under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or FATCA.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/deal-lets-banks-release-data-on-us-citizens-3317462.html
Michael Young (Twitter: @BeirutCalling), the opinion editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, has a new column exploring a relatively undiscussed problem with FATCA: its impact on the privacy and security of U.S. persons abroad, an issue of particular concern in the Middle East.
However, there is one aspect of FATCA that has not been sufficiently examined, but that remains potentially hazardous. The American government is effectively asking foreign institutions to prepare detailed data bases of American citizens, with no guidelines explaining how this information must be protected. For a country obsessed with the security of its citizens in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, such behavior is paradoxical, indeed astonishing.
Foreign financial institutions will effectively become vast repositories of information on Americans—including what they earn, the sources of their income, what they spend, where they live, who their family members are, and so on. In their zeal to implicitly label Americans living abroad as tax cheats requiring monitoring, the sponsors of FATCA have shown utter indifference to the safety of their citizens.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Jim DeMint will step down from his position as junior senator from South Carolina to become the head of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
For those of you not familiar with his name, DeMint deserves credit as one of a small number of Republicans who fought back against Chuck Grassley (R-IA)’s midnight sneak attack on U.S. persons abroad in the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005. In the aftermath of that bill, DeMint realised the contents of the so-called “Tax Increase Prevention” he had voted for, and sponsored two bills to undo Grassley’s obsessive handiwork and make the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion unlimited: S.3496 in 2006 and S.1140 in 2007. Unfortunately, those both went to the Senate Committee on Finance, where they were left to die by the Committee’s chairman … Chuck Grassley.
At the Heritage Foundation, DeMint will replace Edwin Feulner, who has also on occasion spoken out against taxation of U.S. Persons abroad.
Editors note: The Progressive Canadian Party has now sent out its official press release. Let’s pull out the stops for this event–show the media and our politicians that they must not tolerate FATCA. Email your MPs and the media. Use your facebook and twitter accounts. And above all, show up for the meeting if at all possible. Speakers will include Jim Jatras of Squire Sanders and Professor Allison Christians, H. Heward Stikeman Chair in Tax Law at the McGill University Faculty of Law. One fringe benefit will be that you can meet other brockers in the area (including Petros–yes, I will be participating). Thanks to everyone in advance.
__________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A Fact Finding Forum on US Tax Grab in Canada
“The American government is attempting to tax permanent residents of Canada whom they deem to be U.S. citizens.” said Sinclair Stevens, Leader of the Progressive Canadian Party. “This contravenes Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and must be challenged.”
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) was signed into law by President Obama on March 18th, 2010. Originally to come into effect the 1st of January, 2013, it has been postponed one year. Briefly, it attempts to catch ‘U.S. persons’ (which includes, by their definition, a very large number of Canadian citizens) living abroad who are not paying income tax to the U.S.A. It by-passes the usual inter-governmental agreements and imposes the reporting of income and personal information on financial institutions in all other countries directly to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service … and that for no remuneration.
“Financial institutions which refuse to cooperate in this gathering of personal financial information are threatened with an enormous penalty – a 30% with-holding tax on all income on investments coming from the US to their clients. Can you spell ‘extortion’?” Stevens continued, “This expands the impact of FATCA from just ‘US persons’ living here to all Canadians who have investments in the US and may well force Canadian banks to increase their banking charges for all their clients.”
“In addition, to recouping unpaid income tax back several years it imposes very large penalties for non-reporting on such deemed ‘U.S. persons’.” Mr. Stevens added.
Finance Canada has posted a notice on their website soliciting comments on FATCA. The Progressive Canadian Party (PC Party on the ballot) will be making a submission.
So that the submission can be as complete as possible the PC Party is convening a fact finding forum at the University of Toronto on Saturday afternoon, December 15th – doors open at 10:00 for an 11:00am start. (see directions below). We have invited ‘expert witnesses’ from the legal and financial fields to provide further details on this international “extortion” attempt and to discuss suggestions from the audience for possible corrective actions including legislation.
“All Canadians, even those who have only a bank account, should be concerned and are invited to attend and participate in the discussions with our ‘expert witnesses’, Mr. Stevens said. “The press are particularly welcome and should see this as a convenient opportunity to get comment from both experts and concerned Canadians.”
Further information on the forum, including the speakers who have accepted our invitation, will be available shortly on our website http://progressivecanadian.ca/ .
The forum will be held in Room VC115 of Victoria College, 91* Charles Street West,
[*accessed via a one-way street between 89 (Burwash Hall) and 93 (Isabel Bader Theatre) – drop off only].
For both parking and travelling by subway the target is Museum Station on Queen’s Park. Parking is accessed on southbound Queen’s Park just after the subway station. After parking you should cross Queen’s Park via the subway station. On exiting the station you will be facing Emmanuel College and will have to go around either end to Victoria College which is exactly behind it.
