Dear Senator Schumer:
ACA’s Jackie Bugnion and J. Richard Harvey debate FATCA for two nights this week
Unfortionately I don’t know if there will be any way to see the event afterwards but here are the details:
Event in Geneva:
http://www.aca.ch/SCFAS_Fatca_2012_Invite_GE_Final.pdf
Event in Zurich
Debate: FATCA- The worldwide end of Bank Secrecy?
Anyone in Switzerland planning to attend and report back to IBS?
Amy Webster a dual Swiss-US Citizen, tells her FATCA Fallout banking story.
Amy Webster, a communications specialist who lives in Morges, Switzerland shared her FATCA fallout story recently on the Genevalunch blog. The link to her story was in one of the comments posted here on Isaac Brock. I have been in contact with her via email, and obtained her kind permission to also cross post it here for additional visibility. She said, “By all means, my story has gone public, so please feel free to do what you wish with it, as long as it can help our cause!” Her story follows: Continue reading
Hurry, Hurry — Become a ‘US Person’ with Investment Property in Arizona, while the Getting is Good
Form Nation is stuck on stupid: IRS sends Petros a bill
I published a letter that I sent with my 2009 tax, which was late because of sheer frustration about what to do. In the letter, I explained that I had relinquished my US citizenship. Yet the IRS seems to think that I do not qualify for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. If you will recall, they sent me a threatening letter asking for more information, to which I replied about a month ago, possibly with insufficient time for them to take it into account (though I don’t see how they could not have received it before June 12, as it was sent in early May). The original 2555, filled out by my cheap tax preparer (no longer qualified according to the new rules), did not include the dates of my residence abroad. Thus, I amended that form and resent it. This shows the problem of finding a good tax preparer. If one is cheap, he will make mistakes. If a tax preparer makes no mistakes, expect to pay over a thousand dollars for a simple return. In any case, I will appeal this decision within the 60 days.
Bounty Hunter
Plenty of Brockers will be old enough to remember Steve McQueen trekking his way through the weekly TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive as bounty hunter Josh Randall toting a sawed-off rifle. So American. No doubt a childhood hero of the Dubya flyboy who famously went MIA in Texas airspace during the Vietnam era — already on his way to accomplishing his mission!
Today zuludogm mentioned in passing that some British banks are incorporating IRS snitch activity into their business planning as a new profit center.
Continue reading
How Obama lost the left (and Americans Abroad) – Interesting analysis
@aaforobama How @barackobama lost the left http://t.co/2sBjbevZ Former pres Carter, Clinton, and others see Romney as having the right stuff
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) June 23, 2012
Look forward to hearing about how Obama lost the independents (which elected Obama to begin with).
Retroactivity and Carlton
A poke around in the FAQs at the admirable website of http://www.renunciationguide.com/ brought up this tidbit that never seems to have surfaced or been kicked around at Brock — memory of nothing on the topic has further tested out against a no-result word search on “Carlton”:
An interesting question would be whether the IRS would attempt to retroactively apply the potential Congressional law change. Retroactive law is against the constitutions of most countries of the world. Nonetheless, in a 1994 case, U.S. vs. Carlton, the U.S. Supreme Court held in an unanimous decision that changes in tax law — and only tax law — can be applied retroactively if the law has a rational legislative purpose and is not arbitrary, and the period of retroactivity is not excessive. These criteria are extremely broad; as Justice Scalia wrote in a concurring opinion, the Court’s vague criteria effectively “guarantee[] that all retroactive tax laws will henceforth be valid.”
Comments from Domestic US Financial industry on “DATCA” (Hint: they hate it)
I found some rather interesting industry comment letters on the US Department of Treasury FINCEN website related to one of the rulemakings they have outstanding regarding their intent to impose sometype of FATCA recipriciocity on Domestic US Banks. (Note: There idea of recipriciocity is still nothing compared to what they are demanding of foreign banks under FATCA). I find it remarkable the extent to which the US Banking industry is opposed to even these limited new regulations(They aren’t even being asked yet to collect citizenship information from their domestic US customers. I can’t wait to see their response when that is proposed).
http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;dct=PS;rpp=25;po=0;D=FINCEN-2012-0001