“Republicans Overseas Action releases White Paper on Territorial Tax Reform for Individuals.

Consistent with the proposals being considered for corporate tax reform, worldwide taxation for individuals should be replaced with a territorial system. A territorial system for individuals would:

· Promote the exports of U. S. goods and services;

· Increase the soft power and reach of the U.S.

· Encourage skilled immigration to the U.S.

· Discourage expatriation of U.S. Citizens and encourage repatriation of wealth from overseas

· Eliminate unfair double taxation of U.S. Citizens

· Enhance U.S. national security by removing the sharing of sensitive personal information with unfriendly countries

· Substantially reduce the size and cost of the IRS

We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please email them to Ms. XXX at xxxx for our consideration and addition. We will ask Congress to consider our Territorial Tax Reform proposal for individuals. Happy New Year to all 9 million overseas Americans.”

// // // //

https://www.facebook.com/republicansoverseas/posts/606042006246265
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Barbara posted the following, which she found posted by Heitor David Pinto on the American Expats FB site, as a comment on the general Lobby the New US Government thread.   I’m creating a new post for this as it’s particularly important to contact the House Ways and Means Committee right away!

“Congressman George Holding (R-NC13), member of the Ways and Means Committee, supports residence-based taxation and is trying to include it within the upcoming tax reform. Other members of the committee also agree with the idea in general, but are just not motivated to spend the time to study the subject and write a bill. I received this information from the congressman’s assistant.

It would be helpful if many people contacted the other members of the committee to show them the importance of the subject. I suggest giving personal examples of the problems and mentioning the solution (residence-based taxation). I know that many of you have already done this multiple times, but now there is someone supportive within the committee, apparently for the first time ever. For efficiency, I recommend contacting directly the assistants specifically assigned to taxes. The link below is a list with their names and email addresses (it will change slightly later this month). Thank you for your help

Contact list here as Google spreadsheet:
Current Finance Committee and Ways & Means Committee contact list “

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Canadian Federal Court FATCA IGA lawsuit SUMMARY:

— PLAINTIFFS argue that throwing Canadians under the CRA-IRS bus, because they are deemed by United States or local bank teller to be “U.S. tax-persons”, violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and the Sovereignty of our country.

— PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU (his representatives, the Attorney General and the Revenue Minister) argues that the United States is a mighty, powerful nation that must be feared: EVEN IF throwing a few million Canadian families under the bus “technically” violates Canada’s Charter and Sovereignty, it is ok, even praiseworthy, to do so — because of the economic sanction the United States “promises” to impose if Canada does not give up its once proud sovereignty.

— This is a new update with some timelines from the Canadian Federal Court showing what has to be done before we know the Charter-Constitutional trial date (taking place next year). In part, there will be motions and responses related to differences of opinions as to what documents and information have to be provided prior to trial.

We can’t provide or speculate on what will be in the Government Motion until the motion is formally received by the Registry Office:

“Order dated 22-DEC-2016 rendered by Roger Lafrenière, Esq., Prothonotary Matter considered with personal appearance

The Court’s decision is with regard to Case Management Conference [recently held by the parties to move the litigation forward]

Result:

Court Orders:

1. D [The Defendants — Attorney General and Revenue Minister] are granted leave to s/f [serve/file] their motion in writing for production of documents and particulars.

2. P [The Plaintiffs — Kazia, Ginny, and Gwen] shall s/f their responding motion record within 28 days from the date of service of the D motion referred to in paragraph 1 above

3. P are granted leave to bring their motion for summary trial [the Charter-Constitutional trial]. P are dispensed from s/f a motion record at this stage and shall instead s/f a notice of motion and contemporaneously serve their affidavit evidence [e.g. testimonies from our Witnesses and Expert Witnesses].

4. The timeline for the D to file a response to the P motion for summary trial is suspended until further order

5. Any further affs, docs, or particulars, and anything else req’d by any order resulting from the D’s motion referred to in para 1 above shall be produced by the Ps to the Ds within 30 days of such order

6. The parties shall make best efforts to schedule the Ds examinations for discovery of the Ps within 45 days of satisfaction of the requirements, if any, described in para 5 above

7. The parties shall requisition a CMC [Case Management Conference] as soon as possible following completion of the steps set out in para 5 and 6 above in order to, among other things: A) fix a timetable for completion of the steps leading to the hearing of the P motion for summary trial; and B) schedule the hearing of the P motion for summary trial.

Filed on 22-DEC-2016 copies sent to parties”

Sorry again for the slow pace.

— I noticed on Brock a recent comment that “Brock is populated with anonymouses who toe the curb.” but confirm that our Witnesses (as well as our Plaintiffs) have all been willing to “out themselves” publicly.

Stephen Kish

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The following is posted by me (calgary411) on behalf of its author, JCDoubleTaxed:

*******************

Most people do not have a twitter account. Twitter users tend to be politicians, press, opinion leaders, and celebrities. Joining Twitter will be a perfect New Year’s Resolution. It is easy and once accomplished you may enjoy the gratification of a resolution accomplished.

I shared the plan for this post with @wisecroneknows who commented:

“Just posting comments on IBS/FB isn’t screaming at the world to fix this…. they should not be frightened…. legislation is being drawn up now… shouldn’t wait for the inauguration. Even if they don’t actually tweet they can just simply like and RT. (AND…If I can do it anyone can).”

Twitter allows account names different from your real name. You might choose a Twitter name and profile picture related to highlighting the injustices of CBT and FATCA.

Twitter should be viewed as part of a range of means to communicate with politicians, press, opinion leaders and other US Persons overseas. Twitter is also useful for early notice on articles related to CBT so as to better get in early on comment sections.

On Twitter, hasthtag “#FATCA” is popular among Brockers. If you are new to Twitter you might search #FATCA to see what others are tweeting. People include hashtags when they want to send a tweet to a topic that others search for, such as #FATCA.

Addresses are included to send a tweet to particular people or groups. For example, a tweet with @SenWarren @RonWyden @SenSchumer will send the tweet to these three.

Some question if people really read tweets to them. Some politicians have staff manage their tweets for them. Some get so many tweets that “cut through” is a very slight possibility. So if one tweets @POTUS, for example, they may also include a hashtag or another address to increase the possibilities of getting noticed.

If you like what someone is tweeting then click on their address in a tweet and click follow. Their tweets will then show on your Twitter Home page. You might search a Twitter address for tweets to “retweet” (RT). Retweeting, or clicking on the arrows icon at the bottom of a tweet, is the same as sending the tweet from your account. Clicking on the heart icon or “liking” a tweet boosts the tweet further, as does both retweeting and liking other tweets and your own tweets. If two Twitter users follow each other they may send private messages to each other.

When others retweet or like a Tweet then this helps the tweets stay noticeable longer. Usually the more retweets and likes in the shortest time frame the better. Based on this information, we might create an amplified voice if we gathered at a particular day and time each week for tweeting about CBT injustices. How about:

each Wednesday @ 10 a.m., or earlier that day, (Ottawa/Washington D.C./ EST) from Wednesday 18 January. A program called TweetDeck may be used to schedule tweets.

If you search for a person or organisation then the first page that shows is the tweets, retweets, and likes by that person/organisation. Search again on that page and a “Top” tab and page appears of the most popular tweets to that person/organisation. The “Latest” tab and page is the most recent tweets to that person/organisation and those tweets with relatively fewer retweets/likes.

Good news is that for the hashtag #FATCA those in opposition to FATCA are crowding out the compliance organisations and those favouring FATCA. Usually the #FATCA “Top” page is full of tweets in opposition to FATCA and tweets against CBT that include “#FATCA.” Anyone wanting to use Twitter to do some research on #FATCA will mainly see tweets from US persons overseas in opposition to FATCA/CBT.

While Twitter only allows 140 characters there are a few tricks to expand on your message and give your tweet more impact. You may include in your tweet the URL of a news article and then such a tweet usually highlights a picture from that article and a snippet of what the article is about. Tweeting a jpg picture that you have added text to can amplify your message (I use the free software Gimp for that). An easier way is to use Word to type a message, and bold and enlarge it, then use a screen capture tool to draw a rectangle around your message and cut it into a jpg that may be attached to your tweet as a photo.

You may create your own collection of twitter images and urls of articles that you may tweet in future. You may click on a twitter image you like in a tweet and drag the picture to your desktop while holding down the mouse button.

More Brockers on Twitter and tweeting will mean greater highlighting of CBT injustices.

Don’t forget an important objective is to grow our community. Include urls of Isaac Brock Society posts, CitizenshipTaxation.ca posts, and related Facebook Groups in tweets and comments on articles.

Happy New Years!
@JCDoubleTaxed

cross posted from citizenshipsolutions

An introduction to “tax residency” …

Most people equate residency with physical presence. They assume that where you are physically presence determines where you live. They further assume that where you live is where you pay your taxes. Conclusion: The country where you live is the country where you must be “tax resident”. Not necessarily!

There is no necessary correlation between where one lives and where one is a “tax resident”. In fact, “residency for tax purposes” may be only minimally related to “residency for immigration (where you live) purposes”. It is possible for people to live in only one country and be a tax resident of multiple countries. The most obvious example is “U.S. citizens residing outside the United States”.

The concept of “tax residency” is fundamental to all systems of taxation. The fundamental question, at the root of all tax systems is:

“what kind of connection to a country is required to assume tax jurisdiction over an “individual”, over “property” or over an “entity”?”

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This is an update on our Canadian FATCA IGA lawsuit — just to let you know that the lawsuit is alive and is moving forward, slowly.

Today our litigators and the Government attorneys met with a Case Management Judge to resolve differences.

The good news is that we now have permission from the Case Management Judge to file a motion for the Charter-Constitutional trial and provide our evidence in support of the motion. Government will also file a motion, for which we have 28 days to respond, on an issue in which there is disagreement between our side and Government.

Once that Government motion and our response is sorted out, there will be another Case Management Conference to resolve remaining issues prior to trial and to schedule the hearing.

— I am sorry, but we do not yet have a trial date in 2017, and I will keep you informed on developments.

Thank you for your patience. By now, we all know that litigation against Government does not move quickly.

Finally, I want to thank the brave Plaintiffs and Witnesses for their courage: They make our lawsuit possible.

Stephen

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Given the trend of governments requiring their citizens and residents to report nearly everything (even Russia has now begun to require duals to register their 2nd citizenship), it’s amazing no one has come forth with a requirement to file a SpouseBar. Think of the normal approach the U.S. takes to anything foreign. “Alien.” Most countries have more benign terms in use for their non-citizen residents. “Permanent resident.” “Landed immigrant.” “Alien”- as if there were no similarities between an American and a human being that just happens to be from another country. “Foreigners” – being seen as some form of animal, wild, untamable, unworthy of freely mixing with the Homelanders but somehow, needing to be contained. And what are the three aspects the US always takes toward something foreign?

• First, the US hates anything FOREIGN.
• Second, the US hates anything regarding DEFERRAL.(Remember, “if you see the word foreign, the word penalty, is sure to follow”
• Third, the US hates LEAKAGE (for anything to get outside the US tax system)

After all, without a reporting requirement, that door undoubtedly opens far and wide to tax evasion. And certainly, the richer a couple is, the greater the risk of not meeting that noble goal of “paying ones fair share.”

The citizens of no other country have that privilege. Understand these disclosures are necessary to preserve freedoms of #Americansabroad https://t.co/7DLeRGqFov

— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) November 24, 2016

Keeping this in mind, President-Elect Trump has finalized the main appointments that will make up his cabinet. We looked at how many FBAR marriages there are currently (and still examining earlier unions). After all, some of these people are among the richest in the world. While there is a disturbing amount of physical abuse (allegedly in some cases) committed on the part of the males, so far we have found two couples that include an “alien spouse.” First of course, is President-Elect Donald J Trump. And then, of course, just as we had TurboTaxTimmy, our new Treasury Secretary may have some tax issues he is not taking care of.

Most expats have come across the issues of the gift and estate taxes, if for no other reason when trying to figure out what the value of an asset is (gift tax) vs how it is to be taxed (estate tax). Then there is the issue of an expat trying to get under the 2 million asset-test by gifting.

Just to remind, the relevant issue here is:

• an annual exclusion amount per donee per year There is no limit on the number of people that can be gifted to. There is no gift tax involved and no need to report
• US citizens and domiciliaries can also “gift split,” allowing married donors to exclude up to twice the annual exclusion amount per donee per year. Gift splitting is not permitted if either spouse is a non-US domiciliary and of course, there is IRS Form 709 to file. After all, we’re still talking about Form Crime
• An unlimited amount can be gifted to a spouse who is a US citizen
• There is an annual exclusion for gifts to non-US citizen spouses

So how will these rules affect our incoming members of the executive branch?
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