Tag: IGA

How can they do that?

Have you opened a bank or investment account lately? Were you asked about other citizenships? Place of birth? Since mid-2014 Australian financial institutions have been ferreting out US Persons. At most institutions, every new account holder is asked these questions. And, if you are found to be a US Person, you must complete a form W-9 (or equivalent) disclosing your US connection and Social Security Number. This data will be sent to the ATO, who will forward it on to the IRS.

Think about that.

Private Australian financial information of Australian citizens and permanent residents is being sent to a foreign government.

How can they do that? Do they really have the authority to send private financial data to the IRS?
Continue reading “How can they do that?”

FOI Take 2

Just over a week ago, I received a message through this website from someone who had submitted an FOI request to the ATO. “Sam” expected that one of his accounts had been reported because the bank had identified him as a US Person and the balance was above the bank’s reporting threshold. The response from the ATO puzzled Sam, and it puzzled me as well. The ATO response stated that they needed to consult with a “foreign government” about whether Sam’s FATCA records were exempt from FOI under Section 33 of the FOI Act: Continue reading “FOI Take 2”

Strategy Document Feedback

Just before Christmas, Karen released our initial Steering Committee work on the group strategy for your feedback through the blog comments, our Facebook Group or Private Message.   Perhaps the timing was not the best given how frenetic things get for most of us over the holiday season? Continue reading “Strategy Document Feedback”

Strength in Numbers

Many Hands Make Light Work
Old English Proverb
♦
United we stand, divided we fall
Aesop
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There is always strength in numbers.  The more individuals or organisations that you can rally to your cause, the better
Mark Shields
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All for One and One for All!
Motto from the Three Musketeeers, by Alexandre Dumas
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I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow
Woodrow Wilson
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Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much
Helen Keller

With an estimated 200,000 persons of American origin living within Australia, one would think that the awareness would be greater of the significant threats imposed on them through the US Government’s harmful and unjust practices of extraterritorial taxation.   I’ve been baffled at how few actually understand the breadth of compliance expectations, costs and potential risks such reporting compliance penalties and double taxation but I also recognise that following years of minimal enforcement or education, many would have been able to stay blissfully ignorant of expectations imposed by a far far away country.

However, all this is changing now that the USG, with Australia’s full cooperation, has begun to enforce their extraterritorial Citizenship Based Taxation regime, aided and abetted by FATCA.  Stakeholders are starting to wake up to the material threats they face and are motivated to seek change.  This led to the recent formation of Let’s Fix the Tax Treaty! as an Australian focused advocacy group seeking to press the Australian Government for amendments to the Australia/US Tax Treaty and the FATCA IGA to eliminate discrimination against a subclass of Australian citizens that is also disadvantageous to all Australians

As a new, word-of-mouth grassroots initiative, it is pleasing to see that membership in our Facebook group has already reached over 125 members.  Nevertheless, current membership is a very small fraction of the impacted community and clearly our cause will be better served by greater membership representation.

Why does membership numbers matter?  Firstly, if we are seen to represent a large stakeholder group having aligned goals, we’ll have much greater creditability and a better opportunity to influence Australian policy and opinion makers.   Secondly, our advocacy group strategy (currently under development –look for blog posts on this soon) will flow onto specific activities that will require volunteer efforts to execute.  To successfully bring about change, we will all need to get involved.  Recently, a call went out for volunteers to serve on a Steering Committee (which remains open, hint, hint!) and there will be further calls for volunteer support as standing committees are formed to support targeted activities.   Thirdly, the more broad and diverse the skills and mindsets we can draw upon, the more successful our efforts are likely to be.

Who are the Stakeholders we need to attract?  Stakeholders consist of:

  • Australian residents of American origin, many of which are dual citizens;
  • Australian spouses of American citizens;
  • Australian citizens living in America who are now subject to US tax laws including potentially material (penalty) taxes on Superannuation and passive investments they established before moving to the US
  • Indirectly, all Australians who have to pay for FATCA systems, suffer money being unfairly diverted from their domestic economy into a foreign economy and tolerate a loss of Australian sovereignty as Australia domestic policies are undermined by a foreign power.

 

So if we accept that larger membership is desirable, what can we do about it?

  1. Spread the word to your network and ask them to do the same. Most of us know many impacted people so this is a great place to start.  To make this easier, I’ve previously posted a “model email” (look for it in the comments) that you are welcome to modify and personalise as your own.
  2. Let appropriate organisations know about our group. I’ll cross-post this in the a couple of relevant Facebook Groups I am a member of (Yanks Down Under and North American Expats in Adelaide and South Australia) please do this with other appropriate groups and please tell us about them in the comments.
  3. Media helps immensely. After the recent SMH article featuring our very own leader Karen Alpert, we saw a sharp uptick in FB membership requests and visits to our blog site.  We’ll be formally working the media angle further as the Steering Committee and group strategy gets rolled out but perhaps some of you already have connections or ideas here?  Please tell us about it in the comments.
  4. Finally, we are happy to take other ideas in the comments.

I think we should be targeting to grow this group to the 2,000 to 5,000 persons size, which seems to me both a reasonable and achievable target.  Of course, we recognise that numbers for numbers sake is not what we are here for and we will soon table an advocacy strategy and corresponding activity plan for your input and feedback.  Then it will be time to get involved!  Look for my next post soon on the benefits of having a well thought-out advocacy strategy.