Snowbirds may become an extinct species, at least within the borders of the United States. Few outsiders know this but Canadians live in igloos year round. Snowbirds are Canadians who seek warmer climate, especially during their retirement years. They have been a significant boon to the real estate markets in Southern states, especially Florida, but one should not forget places like my Dad’s trailer park in San Benito where numerous Winter Texans can play year-round golf and outdoor tennis. Mostly, they spend their enormous retirement wealth that it took many years working in Canada to earn. Expect the snowbirds to start flying further south, to places like Cayman Islands, Mexico, or Costa Rica, anywhere outside the reach of the IRS taxman.
Al Lewis: Welcome to the Isaac Brock Hall of *Shame*/FAME (UPDATED)
Editors Note: Al Lewis has now written an excellent article telling the our side of the story. Thanks, Al (and welcome to the Isaac Brock Hall of Fame!).
Al Lewis tries to shame former Americans in this hit piece at marketwatch.com a subsidiary of the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps you should have spoke with at least one person who ever renounced his or her citizenship. Shame on YOU, Mr. Lewis and shame on your editor for allowing you to publish. That just makes you a bigot with a platform. It is to the shame of the brain-dead media that such pieces of journalistic refuse can even see the light of day. Please, next time you want to write a screed that punishes a class of people for their actions, do your homework, like the young, promising Reuter’s journalist, Atossa Abrahamian, who actually spoke with numerous people who had renounced or were planning to renounce their citizenship.
ACA has just issued the April 2012 News Update.
For those of you who are not members of ACA, and not on their email list, I wanted to alert you to the April edition of the ACA News Update for some interesting new information. The top item on the list is this:
ACA Participates in Meeting with Departments of IRS, Treasury,Financial Crimes Enforcement Agency (FINCen) and the Office for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes (TFFC) Continue reading
The Pale King
Especially since my attention unnecessarily spiralled into the vortex of the latter stages of 2011 OVDI, I have been wanting to read The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Even without the IRS theme, I would have gravitated in that direction because (1) the book is a sizeable unfinished novel (2) the author committed suicide.
New Zealand Bankers Association on FATCA
Good comments:
Violation of NZ Human Rights Law
Violation of NZ Privacy Law
No Ability under NZ law to withold tax
Cannot comply with FATCA under NZ law
Suggest “Intergovernmental Agreement” (I am getting tired of this)
http://bsmlegal.com/PDFs/NZBA.pdf
There is an insert in the middle from the Australian Bankers Association
Over half-a-million hits and counting!
In case you haven’t noticed, our ticker surpassed 500,000 hits some time last evening! Not bad for a blog that just started on December 12th. Here’s to everyone who has contributed and/or dropped-by since that time. Cheers!
Go back to Canada, you hoser
Vancouver pastor Samuel Lee identified as man hassled by rude Seattle residents
It used to be that Canadians were more of a curiosity to Americans than anything else, but as the US loses ground and Canada manages to keep afloat, we may see more of this if only on a more subtle level. Those in US tourism know what’s at stake here, but as the average person there flounders it will be harder for those people to see the forest for the trees.
US taxman's long Arm Threatens Costly Kiwi Headaches
This isn’t much, but it is the first popular media story on FATCA that I have seen in NZ. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any opportunity for Kiwis to provide comment feedback. I have sent an email to the Editor to see if contact with the journalist is possible, and see if additional news reporting is in the offing. They have barely cracked a window open on the story, but as I found out when I did a search for FATCA on the Seattle Times today, there was nothing there either! So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on my Kiwi friends. They now know more than Seattlites do! Thanks to Moby for drawing my attention to it.
Your U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: hard at work Enforcing Crime
By any reasonable estimate, there’s millions of U.S. persons living overseas, while only 400,000 FBARs get filed per year — but in 2011, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) had the audacity to pretend they were getting nearly 100% compliance. The surprisingly-humourous Federal Register has the full story: “Amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act Regulations — Reports of Foreign Financial Accounts”. 36 Federal Register 37: 10234–10246, 24 February 2011. Relevant section begins at page ten thousand, two hundred and forty-four:
One More Free
Well today one of my children was able to renounce U.S. citizenship. The monkey of U.S. citizenship is now off the back of one more Canadian citizen.