With thanks to badger, who found this and passed it on.

The NDP now pressures the Liberals on FATCA IGA information turnover.
Here is some info on MP Pierre-Luc Dusseault, Critic for National Revenue (this guy is doing his job!). Perhaps we should thank him, communicate with him on an ongoing basis, etc. Contact info at bottom of post.
 

@PLDusseault Bravo 4 all your questions about the CRA turnover of CDNs' private financial info 2 IRS-Every CDN caught up in this thanks you!

— Patricia Moon (@nobledreamer16) January 23, 2016

Q-352 – January 21, 2016 – Mr. Dusseault (Sherbrooke) –
 
 
With respect to the September 2015 announcement of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that it would effectuate a transfer of information to the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS):
 

• (a) how many records has the CRA transferred to the IRS to date;

 

• (b) on what dates did information transfer occur and how many records were transferred on each date;

 

• (c) how many records of individuals have been transferred in total;

 

• (d) by what means were the records transferred;

 

• (e) how much did it cost the CRA to compile the records for transfer;

 

• (f) how much did it cost the CRA to complete the transfer;

 

• (g) how were the costs in

    (e) and (f) calculated and what is the breakdown of those costs;

 

• (h) who made the decision to transfer the records;

 

• (i) when was the decision made to transfer records;

 

• (j) when did the CRA become aware that the U.S. Treasury had extended the deadline for such transfer

 

• (k) how was the CRA made aware that the U.S. Treasury had extended the deadline;

 

• (l) what steps were taken to assess and respond to the notice of deadline extension in (j)

 

• (m) what was the policy reason for transferring records despite the deadline extension;

 

• (n) when is the next transfer of records scheduled to take place;

 

• (o) what analysis was conducted to assess whether the transfer of records during the   writ period for the 42nd General Election complied with the “Guidelines on the Conduct of   Ministers, Ministers of State, Exempt Staff and Public Servants During an Election”;

 

• (p) what records exist with respect to any analysis conducted in relation to (o);

 

• (q) was information concerning the transfer of records from the CRA to the IRS included in any  transition materials prepared for a potential change in government or the Ministers responsible for CRA and Foreign Affairs;

 

• (r) what documents exist in relation to (q) and what are their file numbers;

 

Continue reading →

UPDATE JANUARY 21, 2016
 
WHAT:Solving U.S. Citizenship Problems: Accidental Americans

WHEN: Saturday January 23, 2016, 2:00-4:00 pm EST

 
This meeting is being moved online/conference call via UberConference and will make it possible to participate from outside the Toronto area. Please pass the word!
 
REGISTRATION & ADMISSION: please register by submitting admission cost of $20.00 CAD via Paypal to: information@cbtlawsuit.ca

Please note you do not have to be a member of Paypal in order to pay/register.

Once registration is complete we will email you the details of how to log in, etc.
 

Generally, an Accidental American is:
Continue reading →

 
Barbara has spotted it from Huffington Post and John Richardson has already written about it at citizenshipsolutions.ca.
 
The following is a cross-post to Brock from citizenshipsolutions.ca
 

Cruz Bill Eases Revocations of U.S. Citizenship Without Due Process https://t.co/L1tcQUXUsZ via @HuffPostPol

— Citizenship Lawyer (@ExpatriationLaw) January 20, 2016

 
By the time I had received this fascinating “hot off the press” information from a U.S. law firm, I had read the article referenced in the above tweet. The article is written by David Bier who is an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. It has generated interesting discussion at Keith Redmond’s  “American Expatriates Facebook Group“.Yes, it’s true, Canadian born, U.S. presidential candidate Ted Cruz, has introduced a bill threatening people with the loss of U.S. citizenship (notwithstanding that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that U.S. citizenship belongs to the citizen and NOT to the government). It is clear that Senator Cruz, hearkening back to the days of the Viet Nam era and before, is of the view that U.S. citizens remain citizens only as long as Congress allows them to. The purpose of the revocation of citizenship is to provide a mechanism to keep them out of the United States. This is is a form of “border control” – a “Cruz concern” as evidenced by the following @SenTedCruz tweet:
 

Border security is national security. We must take basic steps to protect American citizens https://t.co/vvZx2y4vg7 https://t.co/3qhMSIfAHN

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 20, 2016

 
The article in the Huffington Post is remarkably well researched and provides a reasonable overview of the issue.
 
See for example:
Continue reading →

UPDATE WEDNESDAY JANUARY 20,2016

 
A listener responds to CBC’s call for people to tell their stories; Veronique Shinder:
 
http://www.cbc.ca/player/AudioMobile/All%2Bin%2Ba%2BDay/ID/2682331846/”
 
 
Original broadcast:John Richardson on Tuesday, January 19, 2016
http://mp3.cbc.ca/radio/CBC_Radio_VMS/80/883/ottallinaday_20160119_20484_uploaded.mp3
 
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2682218188
 

Please tune into to hear Alan Neal, host of “All in a Day” interview (CBC radio) with John Richardson this afternoon at:
 

5:45 PM Atlantic
4:45 PM Eastern
3:45 PM Central
2:45 PM Mountain
1:45 PM Pacific

5:45 AM AWST Perth West Australia
8:15 AM ACDT Adelaide South Australia
8:45 AM AEDT Melbourne & Sydney New South Wales
7:45 AM AEST Brisbane Queensland

NB: Hope the Australia times are converted properly….

I am listening right now – HERE.
 
or go here:
http://www.cbc.ca/allinaday

under the first menu bar – upper Right Hand Corner- Box: LIVE Click on “Listen Live”

PLEASE: Anyone who is knows how/is able to record this, please do so since there will be limited time to listen to the replay version. Thanks!

JC has spotted this.  Allison Christians welcomes comments on her work in progress.

Bubblebustin says:

Allison supports incremental changes, as she’s convinced that the US is incapable of going right to RBT. I believe that if US legislators are capable of seeing how it should make it easy for people like Tina to exit the system, it will realize that there’s something really wrong in preferring taxpayers over citizens.

DRAFT Abstract: Uncle Sam Wants … Who? A Global Perspective on Citizenship Taxation Allison Christians McGill University – Faculty of Law January 18, 2016

Monday, January 18, 2016

A recent method of combatting propaganda has been to create fact checking sites. Every time a politician or media hack opens his fat mouth, countless people run to the internet to find someone who has fact-checked things on that topic.

Would it not be smart to fact check the common propaganda out there? Shouldn’t it be searchable as factchecking?

Perhaps it would be a good idea for any writers to pick a single narrow topic and present a fact-checking answer. The title of the post should indicate that it is a fact-checker. Then, when any hack spouts off, people can use their search engines and land on Isaac Brock and receive a properly-researched fact check.

Many of the Brock researchers are capable of this. There are also a number of writers available who are capable of taking up previous research and summarizing it and making it public-reading-friendly.

Pick a narrow topic and summarize the REAL facts. For example: “All expats are rich” or “People are leaving America to avoid taxation”. Take only one topic, manage your time, and publish.

Just make the title search-friendly, focusing upon the media myth or media propaganda, and include such things in the title and body as Fact Check, FactCheck, #FactCheck, and such.

You may choose a generic topic, or pick a particular current propaganda piece and address it. One day, there might be a base of generic writings which can be used as references for any specific media or political hack that spouts nonsense.

Take a look at the approaches of

http://www.snopes.com/

http://www.politifact.com/

http://www.factcheck.org/

and the others.

IS ANYBODY GAME?

As Deutsche Welle noted, earlier this week the United Nations Population Division released their report on international migrant stocks for 2015, based on a hodgepodge of sometimes-reliable national-level statistics on either the citizenship of local residents (thus undercounting dual citizens) or their birthplace (thus undercounting Americans born in other countries). Most countries’ figures were based on birthplace.

These statistics put the size of the American diaspora at about 2.8 million, an increase of 320 thousand since five years ago. The State Department, whose estimates attempt to capture children of American emigrants as well as naturalised immigrants who returned to their place of birth or moved to other countries, claimed in 2014 that about 7.6 million Americans live outside of the Homeland, whereas in 2006 they stated that the number was 4 million.

Why are all these hundreds of thousands or millions leaving? Well, a recent article from the Homeland (thanks to Tom Alciere for posting it) made a rather audacious claim, probably because the author is confused about the difference between leaving the country and renouncing citizenship.

Tax laws main reason for US citizens’ decision to move abroad …

When it comes to tax rates, the US is no safe haven. It’s 22.7 percent tax rates makes it the eighth (!) highest in the world. Mexico’s tax rate is 9.5 percent. Few countries can compete with the US when it comes to the notion that the last person entitled to your hard earned money is you. The IRS has it down to a science …

Why would anyone in their right mind willingly leave the US? The most common reasons are tax laws.

In reality, aside from Mexico and Ecuador, all of the countries reporting the largest increases in their U.S.-born/U.S. citizen population in the last five years have larger governments relative to the size of their economies and higher tax burdens than the United States. (As it turns out, most of the people moving to Mexico are kids, who don’t have much choice in the matter.)

This has obvious implications for U.S. diaspora tax policy: even if Washington eliminates the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, they are obligated by treaty to provide foreign tax credits to emigrants who are paying taxes in treaty countries, and most emigrants who actually have income are also likely to have plenty of FTCs. Thus, the only way Washington can get money out of the diaspora is by fining them, by inventing “income” out of thin air, or by deliberately making their tax system incompatible with that of other countries. And that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.

Continue reading →

Thank you, USCitizenAbroad, for once again bringing this subject forward as many, including those like me, who struggle with real black and white clarity on this as we read this subject quoted in articles intended to reel us into *US tax and reporting compliance* for  the child born outside the US to two US parents or just one US parent (biological mother or father and why there is, in this day, the differences for that distinction) with the requisite facts.   We see that it is even an issue of contention between US Republican candidates, Senator Cruz and Donald Trump and follow with interest what will happen in that realm.

(i.e., my legal advice was that my children were US citizens from their first breath and that’s all there is to it and, from posts past from me, I failed to get anyone at the Department of State to state clearly that that deemed acquisition of US citizenship has to be claimed.  Nothing in my being will make me accept this seeming injustice especially as one of my children also has a developmental disability and would not be allowed to renounce that *deemed acquired US citizenship and all of its consequences*.  I maintain my son is Canadian and I want his Canadian government to guarantee that he and others like him have the same rights — *A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian*.)

I’m putting your comment into a separate post for better visibility for those who will weigh in, as you say:

Again, I renew my request for comments on this issue.

PART 1:

(From USCitizenAbroad comment at *Media and Blog Articles* refer to full post for detail)

With respect to issue of “derivative citizenship” which started with the comment here:

https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/media-and-blog-articles-open-for-comments-part-3-of-3/comment-page-8/#comment-7076684

My personal view is that people born outside the United States must consider their situations very very carefully. This is an issue that has been “popping up” on this blog for a number of years. One aspect to the question is this:

Can the U.S. deem somebody to be a U.S. citizen or (in the FATCA, FBAR and CBT world) forcibly impose U.S. citizenship on a person born outside the USA?

In July 2015, Eric wrote an interesting post that raised this issue. It’s worth a reread. The comment that I wrote to that post was:

https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2015/07/10/2nd-circuit-retroactively-extends-jus-sanguinis-citizenship-to-us-emigrant-fathers-out-of-wedlock-kid/comment-page-1/#comment-6285662

Can the U.S. “deem” people “born outside the U.S.” to be U.S. citizens?

@Eric

Fantastic post and fantastic comments. Thank you for this. I see this decision as being more narrow than some of the comments to your post suggest. To cut to the chase, I believe that the significance of this decision depends on whether the U.S. can “deem” people born outside the United States to be U.S. citizens.

With that question in mind …
Continue reading →

BC Doc says…

@JC says

“@Calgary411 I suggest for consideration that blog from Rachel Heller for an IBS feature.

As part of renunciation, one must sign a statement that they have not done it under duress ! I suppose US goverment duress is not to be considered!”

+1 JC. Many of those who renounce or relinquish are doing so with a metaphorical Smith and Wesson revolver held to their temple by the USG.

I will use myself as an example. I am a naturalized Canadian citizen here for over two decades. I have Irish citizenship via my parents and grandparents. Their is no disincentive which has forced me to give it up. My Irish passport sits in a lock box and generally gathers dust save for the odd trip to Europe. I was a US citizen by birth– Boston will always be my home town. Given that I still have family in the US and right of return was my birthright, even though I had no intention of living their again, Citizenship Based Taxation combined with FATCA made retaining my US citizenship untenable. The result? US citizenship destruction, under duress.

Good for Rachel for throwing a wrench in the US citizenship destruction machine.

From Rachel’s Ruminations, January 8, 2016, *THE IRONY OF RENOUNCING UNDER DURESS*

When Americans renounce their citizenship, as I did, we are required to sign a form called “Statement of Understanding Concerning the Consequences and Ramifications of Relinquishment or Renunciation of U.S. Citizenship” (Form DS-4081) that includes the following:

I am exercising my right of renunciation/relinquishment freely and voluntarily without force, compulsion or undue influence placed upon me by any person.

…

Renouncing Under Duress

‘Under duress” means that you were somehow forced or pressured to renounce citizenship, and I agree that no one should be forced. However, many people who have renounced recently, or are planning to renounce, state that they have to do so: they are forced into it by circumstances.

For some, it’s a matter of being unable to find a bank to do business with because the banks don’t want the expense of complying with the new FATCA disclosure rules.

For some, renunciation is necessary because otherwise, according to their adopted country’s IGA with the US, they’ll be double-taxed on sales of property or pension payments.

For some, including me, it’s a matter of the cost of paying an accountant and dealing with a resentful non-US spouse who ends up handing his financial information over to the US government.

You could, then, interpret our reasons for renouncing as being an example of acting “under duress,” except the pressure comes from the US government itself!