Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

The US Treasury Loses Revenue with Citizenship Based Taxation

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submission - Copy

The Executive Branch budget says “I’ll gladly take your hamburger today, and maybe earn some revenue to pay back in 2020” —-it definitely won’t be paying back on Tuesday.

This submission was made by a guest and based upon many posts in Isaac Brock. Its author hopes to be called to witness or hopes that press might pick up the information that the U.S. govt is getting duped by their own bureaucracy into the exorbitant current costs of implementing extra-territorial taxation–in pursuit of rainbows and while fighting windmills. We also hope that the press will notice the quantity of our submissions.

Submission to Ways and Means

Please send in YOUR submission today. Two lines, 2 paragraphs, 2 pages—anything. Tell them that the consumption tax is great, the flat tax (as written) is disastrous, and that CBT must be eliminated immediately. You have the rest of today according to Washington D.C. (Eastern) time. Submission instructions are  in previous post.

 

An Extraordinary Debate in the Canadian Senate Part I: The day before #FATCA IGA Received Royal Assent

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Some might find it interesting that members of the Canadian Senate had concerns regarding the #FATCA IGA and one of them, Hon. Pierrette Ringuette, moved that Part V be deleted in its entirety. Ms Ringuette lives in a border town and perhaps we should be in touch with her. At the very least, along with Murray Rankin, Nathan Cullen and others, I now link the three Senators supporting a deletion of Part V of the IGA legislation with Canadian legislators who are worthy of their seats.

There are two issues raised in this material that I think need investigation. One is a comment of Hon. Joseph A Day:

I will refrain from talking about what transpired prior to Bill C-31 being received by this chamber and referred to our committee for consideration. It’s now back as a result of the consideration that took place.

I have yet to read all of the transcripts of that time period and have no idea what Mr. Day is referring to. Perhaps it has nothing to do with C-31 but if it does, it suggests something was not as it should have been. I think it probably does given her says “It’s now back.” Does anyone know?

And another by Senator Ringuette, speaking of a statement made by Privacy Commissioner Daniel Thierren:

But now that the Supreme Court has ruled that this information deserves a high level of privacy, the government needs to take C-13 and S-4 back to the drawing board, he said.

This is discussed below. I don’t remember any of this; perhaps I just never saw it and/or it seemed so hopeless given HOC clearly was going to pass C-31. However, now it seems very important.

The focus of this post is simply this last section of the debate (i.e., the portion beginning with Senator Ringuette); our general discussions have tended more toward the HOC FINA meetings and I think it is notable that there were strong objections within the Senate, to the #FATCA IGA legislation.
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Nine hundred thousand new FBAR filers since 2009, proving that FinCEN is grossly incompetent, can’t do basic math, and ignores comments from people who can

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As has been noted in various news articles (e.g. this one posted by Tom Alciere), the IRS is bragging about FinCEN receiving nearly 1.2 million FBARs last year:

“Taxpayers here and abroad need to take their offshore tax and filing obligations seriously,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “Improving offshore compliance has been a top priority of the IRS for several years, and we are seeing very positive results.” … In 2015, FinCen received a record high 1,163,229 FBARs, up more than 8 percent from the prior year. In fact, FBAR filings have grown on average by 17 percent per year during the last five years, according to FinCen data.

The growth just before that five year window was even more impressive: in 2011, the number of FBAR filers jumped to 618,134, according to an article by Brian Knowlton article in the New York Times, up by 124% from 276,386 in 2009, an annualised growth rate of nearly 50%. (For comparison, during the five period from 2008–2012, the IRS added 100,000 new Foreign Earned Income Exclusion users — with average incomes of about US$30k, meaning they don’t owe any U.S. tax unless Koskinen figures out some clever new way to extract money from them by imposing obscene fines on them for committing ordinary personal finance or inventing new forms of “income” out of thin air.)

Massive growth is exactly what Ms. Lucy Stensland Laederich of FAWCO told FinCEN to expect nearly six years ago, in response to FinCEN’s laughably low estimates in their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in February 2010 (75 FR 8844) of 400,000 FBAR filers:

First, however, you note in VI. that the estimated number of affected filing individuals and entities is 400,000. In view of State Department estimates of over 5 million private sector Americans abroad and the large number of Americans and other U.S. persons residing within the United States and maintaining bank accounts abroad, I suspect that your number is vastly underestimated.

Oddly enough, as recently as 2008, FinCEN estimated that they should be getting 13 million FBARs. But three years later, James H. Freis, Jr. of FinCEN responded to FAWCO by covering his ears, ignoring the massive growth in filer numbers right in front of his eyes, and pretending that the 400,000 forms he actually received meant that his agency was getting 100% compliance already (76 FR 10244):

FinCEN received one comment on the estimated number of filers. The commenter believed that the number of filers should be higher. The commenter stated that estimates of Americans living abroad may be as high as 5 million, and that approximately 2 million of those Americans might be affected by the FBAR rules. The commenter did not provide a verifiable source or methodology for arriving at those estimates. As stated above, the rule contained in this document addresses the FBAR rules that have been in existence since 1972. FinCEN’s estimate of the number of affected filing individuals and entities (400,000) is based on the number of FBARs annually filed in recent previous years.

See how much your comments matter to the U.S. government?

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Send letter now to HEARING Tax Proposals Ways/Means Submissions IMMEDIATE CALL to Action

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Please submit to Ways Means. One line. One paragraph. One page. One dissertation. Whatever.

ADDTIONAL NOTE: THE HEARING IS BASED UPON REDUCING IRS PAPERWORK and gives 2 means to potentially achieve that end. FOCUS YOUR COMMENTS UPON REDUCTION OF COMPLEXITY and cost savings in eliminating paperwork. Also, payment for services rendered such as the consumption tax they mention.

EXPRESS SUPPORT FOR CONSUMPTION TAXES and disgust for flat taxes which would devastate us.

Quantity of Responses should overwhelm the discussion. There should be no excuses for Ways Means to not address it.

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/boustany-announces-hearing-on-fundamental-tax-reform-proposals/

Public Submissions For Record
Please click here to submit a statement or letter for the record

WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Ways and Means Tax Policy Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-LA) announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled “Fundamental Tax Reform Proposals” on Tuesday, March 22nd at 2:30 PM in room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building. This will be the first in a series of hearings where members of both parties will have the opportunity to share, discuss, and promote their proposals for tax reform. The particular focus of this hearing will be legislative proposals presenting cash-flow and consumption-based approaches to taxation.

Upon announcing the hearing, Chairman Boustany said:

“Chairman Brady has laid out a strong vision and set of policy goals for making our broken tax code simpler, flatter, and fairer. Tax reform represents a crucial part of our party’s pro-growth agenda, and I am committed to accomplishing these goals by considering bold, new ideas and building consensus among our members. Next week’s discussion will give my Ways and Means colleagues and me the opportunity to take a closer look at the forward-thinking proposals for tax reform that our members have developed.”

Let’s recognize in advance that there are many on this site who are not willful U.S. citizens, but let’s hope that the repeal segment of readers can step up to the plate.

 

remember FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS: All submissions must include a list of all clients, persons and/or organizations on whose behalf the witness appears. The name, company, address, telephone, and fax numbers of each witness must be included in the body of the email. Please exclude any personal identifiable information in the attached submission.
If not, submission is dismissed.

From Elizabeth Thompson a new post at iPolitics — Round Three : March 17, 2016 (evening edition)

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Revenue minister could have to face committee on record sharing with IRS

…
NDP Revenue Critic Pierre-Luc Dusseault is asking Parliament’s Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee to hold hearings on the transfer and its impact for the privacy of Canadians. Among the people he wants the committee to call to testify are Lebouthillier and Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien.
…
A second transfer of records to the IRS is scheduled for September 30, 2016.

Wednesday, Lebouthillier defended the transfer of Canadian banking records to the IRS.

“Minister Lebouthillier wants to reassure Canadians that all exchanges of information are subject to strict confidentiality rules,” reads the e-mail sent by Lebouthillier’s office.

“The CRA ensures that tax cooperation with its foreign partners is done in a manner fully consistent with privacy rights in Canada. It is important to note that Canada and the United States have a long history of exchanging tax information in a fair and responsible manner, going back to 1942.”

Some of us will disagree — see the first comment from John Richardson.

Is the IRS blinking?

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Badger
Submitted on 2016/03/17 at 1:07 pm
IRS commissioner Koskinen: Congress approval needed for CRS
By: Helen Burggraf | 16 Mar 2016

http://www.internationalinvestment.net/regions/irs-commissioner-koskinen-congress-approval-needed-for-crs/

..”.Koskinen was quoted by various tax industry journals as saying that the reason the US hasn’t signed up to the CRS was because “we [the IRS] don’t have the legal authority to provide – on a reciprocal basis – the range of information the other countries are prepared to share with each other and with us..”…..
…
“…….According to LexisNexis.com, one of the publications to cover Koskinen’s remarks, there are “questions…about how much data the IRS can share about individual taxpayers under the existing statutory framework”.

But Koskinen insisted that the IRS was engaging in the OECD’s efforts to establish the reporting system, in spite of the fact that for now, it is not a signatory, nor likely to be for the foreseeable future…..”…….

..”.Some observers have suggested that the US, by remaining outside the CRS, would become a de facto tax haven, by virtue of the fact that its bilateral FATCA agreements don’t cover as many areas of information as the CRS will…”…..

…..”…the legislation that eventually became FATCA failed several times to make it through Congress, and, some critics say, might not have in 2010, had it not been buried inside a domestic jobs bill, the HIRE Act, and thus received little attention.”

AND, following this advice to post…

Deckard1138
Submitted on 2016/03/17 at 1:48 pm

This is a stunning admission by IRS commissioner Koskinen which has huge legal and diplomatic implications:

“…Koskinen was quoted by various tax industry journals as saying that the reason the US hasn’t signed up to the CRS was because “we [the IRS] don’t have the legal authority to provide – on a reciprocal basis – the range of information the other countries are prepared to share with each other and with us”…

I can’t wait to see the reaction from various IGA signatories, especially countries like India, which bet the farm – and their government’s entire reputations – on false FATCA reciprocity with the intent to recover “black money”. As we knew all along, they’ve been duped – and the IRS emperor has no clothes.

March 17, 2016 — Canada’s Minister of National Revenue (who we are suing) Defends FATCA Turnover of Bank Data — Reversing previous Liberal Party position and showing that Mr. Justin Trudeau misled Canadians with his pre-election statements

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FROM IPOLITICS.CA (YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS ON THE WEBSITE):

[Thanks to Elizabeth Thompson — who shows what it means to be an “investigative journalist”.]

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has reversed its position on the controversial transfer of Canadian banking information to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and is now supporting a deal that Trudeau and other Liberals once sharply criticized.

In a written response to a request from iPolitics for an interview, Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier defended the deal and the CRA’s decision to transfer 155,000 Canadian banking records to the IRS in September during the federal election campaign.

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Another Fantastic Article from ipolitics- The Canada Revenue Agency is rotten to the core. Time to clean house.

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The CRA is rotten to the core. Time to Clean House. by Alan Freeman Posted on March 16, 2016

A section just on us:

This week, we learned that the CRA turned over 155,000 banking records to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in the middle of last year’s federal election — without waiting for the outcome of a court challenge to this unprecedented sharing of taxpayer data, without hearing an opinion from the Privacy Commissioner. And the individuals involved have never been informed by the CRA of its action.

March 16 2016 Ipolitics.ca on Canadian Government and its FATCA Compliance Law: Lynne Swanson says “I’m furious. I feel totally betrayed”

Posted on by Posted in reductio ad absurdum 66 Comments

Posted on Ipolitics.ca You can add your comments at that website. The title of the article is “Revenue Canada quietly handed 155,000 Canadian banking records to IRS”

[Note that the journalist began article with point that our Canadian Government sent private bank info south before receiving privacy assessment from Office of Privacy Commissioner. Journalist failed to find Liberal Government MP willing to chat but did hunt down Liberal Senator who complained about actions of the Tories.]

The journalist, Elizabeth Thompson, comments on her own article: “The language is not misleading. A number of people I interviewed told me of their efforts to get comments from the new Liberal government since the election – from the same Liberal MPs who commented on this issue before the election. I’m trying once again today for an interview with the Revenue Minister (who has a lot less to do with the budget than the finance minister does) and I will keep trying.”]

THE ARTICLE:

“The Canada Revenue Agency quietly turned 155,000 banking records over to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service during last fall’s election, without waiting for an assessment from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner or the outcome of a court challenge to the controversial move.

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