Thank you for your email. While it is unfortunate you are not renewing your membership we respect your decision — however there is one point of misinformation. We have spoken on FATCA in the past. This year we retained a major Canadian law firm to research this issue for us — we do not intervene or weigh in on every single civil liberties issue — but when we feel we can contribute effectively the first step is to ensure we have the best research. on FATCA we outsourced the research to ensure we had a complete picture of all the issues on both sides of the border. We had expected this research earlier this year , and have received replies from the firm that we will get the memo this fall. I am not sharing this information with you to change your mind, only to let you know that we have not ‘chosen not to address’ the issue.

We want to move quickly on the Constitutional-Charter trial and are now seeking Witnesses.

Witnesses will provide affidavits describing the harm caused to them by the FATCA IGA enabling legislation and will, like Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen, disclose their names publicly.

If you believe that you have the characteristics of a Canadian who has been somehow harmed by this FATCA legislation, are interested in helping out by becoming a Witness in our lawsuit, and are willing to have your affidavit statements and name go public, send me an email through our ADCS site.

You need to assume that your Witness affidavit and name when made public will find its way to the U.S. IRS and to unpleasant people who will insist that you are not paying your fair share.

Without limiting ourselves to this category, we are especially seeking IRS non-compliant Canadians who have a reportable account, are likely to be turned over by their bank to CRA/IRS because they have a U.S. taint or have already been turned over, and because of their situation, would suffer significant harm (financial and other) if they decided to enter the United States IRS system. For example consider the situation of innocent Tina.

You might have a US taint and own a personal banking account or be responsible for a company, entity, or executor account. Perhaps you have have suffered medical or financial harm, or have had to change, with much difficulty, your behaviour (e.g., divorce, removal of name as Director or as signing authority on account) so as not to harm others in your family or company. You might be responsible as a guardian for a US person who has no possibility of escape. Chances are that most of you with U.S. taint reading this post are IRS non-compliant and refuse to become compliant to a foreign government, notwithstanding FATCA, a PR exercise of the U.S. IRS. The list of possible harms is endless.

We do not want to proceed with the Charter trial without the Witnesses we feel will give us the best chance of success in Federal Court.

We hope that out of the 1,000,000 plus Canadians affected by the FATCA IGA enabling legislation we are contesting — a handful, like Ginny and Gwen, will come forward, take that risk, and go public as Witnesses in our litigation.

Yes, we have a new Liberal Government, but that Canadian FATCA compliance law is still on the books.

It would be a shame if our litigation were compromised because we could not find a few brave Canadians willing to confront publicly the Government that promises to do them harm.

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Some of you have been sending suggestions to the new Liberal Government Attorney General, Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, about our lawsuit against the FATCA IGA enabling legislation inherited from the Conservative Government.

A practical problem is that a “gatekeeper” for the AG has been forwarding the emails to the Minister of Finance, and it is not clear whether the AG actually receives the email.

My suggestion is that when you receive this response (see below) you resend the email and explain to the gatekeeper that you really do want the AG to receive the email.

You can explain that 1) the AG’s office is involved in a lawsuit related to the issues you are raising in your email and 2) it is the AG, in the role of Minister of Justice, who has the mandate to ensure that Canada’s legislation (including the FATCA IGA enabling legislation) passes Constitutional/Charter muster — also an issue you are raising.

Here is an email that some have received:

“Dear [XXXXXX]:

On behalf of the Honourable Jody Wilson‑Raybould, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, I acknowledge receipt of your correspondence of [XXXXXXXX], concerning the intergovernmental agreement between Canada and the United States under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

Matters related to FATCA fall within the purview of the Honourable William Francis Morneau, Minister of Finance. I have therefore taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your correspondence to Minister Morneau for his information and consideration.

Thank you for writing.

Yours sincerely,

[XXXXXXXX]

Here is what I am thinking of submitting to my bank manager. Please note one small change that I made from Stephen Kish’s template highlighted in boldface:

Dear bank manager,

I am a customer at your bank and have several personal and business accounts, as a well as self-serve trading accounts at your discount brokerage.

I understand that on September 30, 2015 Canada CRA turned over private banking information on 155,000 accounts to the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Your bank also provided some of this information.

Please tell me whether your bank passed on any of my banking information to CRA for the subsequent transfer of the data to the IRS. I think it is very possible as I was born in the United States and may have presented my US passport as a form of identification when I opened some of the accounts.

I need this information in writing by ASAP so that I can prepare my family for the impact of having the IRS know everything about our bank accounts..

If you are unable to comply with my request, would you please kindly provide your reasons?

Thank you and always a pleasure,

Petros

Some of you may wonder whether your private banking information was sent by your bank to Canada CRA, for subsequent turnover to the United States Internal Revenue Service — because you have some U.S. indicia.

For the few who are willing to do this, I ask that you make the above very specific request to your bank officer (see draft letter below). If your bank refuses to provide you with this information, or makes it difficult, get the name of the individual you spoke to and write down what was said and when. Best would be a refusal in writing.

I am looking for a single brave soul willing do this, which would find its way into an affidavit for our litigation.

I personally think that it is outrageous that “our” banks do not automatically notify a person if they have been reported to the CRA arm of IRS — but that is another issue.

Here is a draft letter that you could send to your bank customer service representative or simply provide this message by phone to the rep. Do NOT spend any time going to another official at the bank. A draft:

“Local Bank officer,

I am a customer at your bank and have [ ] bank accounts.

I understand that on September 30, 2015 Canada CRA turned over private banking information on 155,000 accounts to the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Some of this bank account information was provided by your bank to CRA.

Please tell me whether your bank passed on any of my banking information to CRA for the subsequent transfer of the data to the IRS.

I need this information in writing by [date].

If you are unable to comply with my request, kindly provide your reasons.

Thank you,”

Makes no difference whether you have one dollar (below so-called threshold of today) in your account or $100,000, or whether you have or do not have any U.S. indicia. A refusal is a refusal. I personally have no account greater than $50k but did ask my own bank for this information.

Refusals from the banks might be helpful in the litigation. You can reach me through the ADCS website.

Assume that your name will be made public should this be part of our litigation.

See below December 1 2015 letter I sent to Canadian Bankers Association and their (not surprising) December 2 response:

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A Series of Posts to Explain the Anger and Vehemence Fueling the anti-FATCA, anti-IGA & anti-CBT Movement
 

Streamlined, as inadequate as it is, would not have come to be were it not for the blood spilled by these in OVDI. https://t.co/lgEJ1RQYnS

— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) November 23, 2015

Perspective:

This post was written approximately 3 months after the mass hysteria (there simply is no other word for it) of late Fall 2011. Brock was less than a month old. We had only just started to gather information, starting at the ExpatForum. Renunciation was a very scary topic only slightly less than the terror of imagining losing everything due to FBAR penalties. IMHO, FBAR will prove to be the number one issue that fueled the expat movement, hands-down.
 

An excerpt from January 5, 2012 post from the renounceuscitizenship WordPress Blog
 
PART I: The Players
 
UPDATED Thursday November 26
 
The Taxpayers Part 2 – Those who ventured into OVDP/OVDI
 
First Part of Post (from yesterday) is HERE
 

Do the drudgery……do your own research
LCU’s……Life Credit Units
minnows…..little guys
whales…big guys
CCW……… Complain Comply & Warn
OVDP……..Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Program
DATCA… Domestic Account Tax compliance Act
GATCA….Global Account Tax Compliance Act

As usxcanada recently said, anyone who cannot guess right away who the above terms come from, needs to learn some Brock History!

After a much-earned vacation from years of FUBAR expat life, “Just_Me” (Marvin van Horn) may not be posting and tweeting much anymore but those of us who were lucky enough to have “known” him cannot help but smile. He was nothing short of a human dynamo, completely wound up in communicating our plight to everyone and anyone.I remember wondering if he ever slept; he would be online when I first got up in the morning and seemingly still there when I would get to bed in the wee hours of the next morning. He was omnipresent! It didn’t seem to matter whether he was in the U.S., sailing on his boat or at home in New Zealand. Marvin was the reason I learned Twitter. Marvin was the reason I joined LinkedIn groups. He taught me how to make a link. He was the reason many of us knew about the Taxpayer Advocate. He educated us about how horrible it was, to enter OVDP. Above all, he was a true example of what a real person is; he was not bitter in spite of an absolutely miserable experience; “took responsibility” for not being aware of filing; tried to do the “right thing” putting himself at great peril. He devoted himself to the “cause” and refused to let it ruin his life. I cannot recall ever hearing anyone having a bad thing to say about him.

To the best of my recollection, Marvin had been posting on Jack Townsend’s blog and when Peter read his comments, he invited him to become an author at Brock. For Marvin, the 2009 OVDP program was an 851- day process. I have taken excerpts from a couple of his posts to try and capture his story: OVDI drudgery for minnows and Letters to Shulman or a case sudy of OVDP communication attempts with the IRS
 

Just_Me writes:

Rightfully or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that joining the OVDP was my only option. My logic was probably flawed, but it went like this…

Prior to the moment I heard about the IRS program on NPR during the family visit back to the Seattle area, I didn’t know that a FBAR existed or understand foreign income reporting requirements. Those considerations never enter your mind when you are sailing the Pacific in a small yacht, or gardening in NZ. Maybe that represented some due diligence failure on my part for not staying fully aware of all the complex tax rules and reporting requirements even for my simple existence. I had never visited the IRS.gov web site in my life.

From that moment in late September, 2009, until I submitted my letter in October 12th there was a very stressed and compressed journey. First I had to convince my wife this was something that we could not ignore and had to do. There was the scramble for knowledge. I had to search out attorneys, and CPAs for a cram course of discovery of what my obligations were. There were returns to amend, and the almost unfathomable foreign tax credit form 1116 to complete that the CPA couldn’t even do correctly. There was a long distance bank record compilation effort that was extremely difficult to do in the time frame I had. There was the embarrassment of your predicament which meant you didn’t want family and friends to know. Then came the very hard, emotional and lonely decision which ended with you walking into the Seattle IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) division offices feeling like a criminal. I did all that, because I had reluctantly came to the conclusion, that once I was aware of my failures and aware of the IRS program, I had knowledge and could not escape it.

I KNEW! Therefore, now, I had to do the right thing.

So, what was the choice given my knowledge? To me, None! I had to enter the OVDP. My big mistake was assuming that the IRS would realize that I was a Minnow and not subject me to the harsh 20% penalties. I naively thought my appeals to Shulman would result in logic and reason prevailing. They would do the right thing, and not treat me as a Whale. How wrong I was!!
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