The Stamp Act of 1765; an act of Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a “revenue tax” on the Thirteen Colonies was the spark in the tinder that lit off the Revolutionary War of 1775. Colonists objected to the act that taxed their colonies without representation in Parliament. Petitions were given to Parliament and roundly ignored, prompting an outburst in response to the accusations from Charles Townsend of being ungrateful, “and now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from heavy weight of the burden which we lie under?” This provoked a reply from Colonel Isaac Barré which read: “They planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted ‘em in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s earth. …
They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of ‘em. As soon as you began to care about ‘em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over 'em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon 'em; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them … .
They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument … The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated; but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more.”
Yet two hundred and thirty five years later, America would invoke their own “stamp act” – named the Hire Act, ratified by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, which embedded within lay the controversial Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) – a timebomb of epic proportions with severe ramifications for the colonists of today, American expatriates who lived in countries abroad. These Americans abroad were either dual citizens or citizens of one country born to an American abroad carrying a Trojan horse citizenship which existed solely to decimate their “foreign” bank accounts considered local to those “Americans” who lived in those countries and worked there.
Under the guise of rooting out tax-cheats (while vilifying hard-working Americans abroad) with their own version of Charles Townsend’s venomous, scurrilous accusations of “look at what we have done for you, we protect you under our nuclear umbrella…and you have the benefits (which no one can actually quantify) of being an American…so pay your fair share”, they set about to scrape up every single rotten cent of “taxation without representation” as their English fore-rulers did before them. In fact, the United States of America is embarking on the same road as their English forebears did 235 years prior. In fact a popular slogan in pre-Revolutionary War Boston was the phrase coined by James Otis: “taxation without representation is tyranny” later shortened to “No Taxation Without Representation”. In fact the very essence of the Revolutionary War was rebellion against citizenship taxation.
Americans Abroad of modern times have taken up that cry. Because one after the other, our spineless governments have capitulated under threats of 30% penalties/sanctions (U.S. payors making payments to non-compliant foreign financial institutions are required to "deduct and withhold from such payment a tax equal to 30 percent of the amount of such payment".) levied against their financial institutions. These are tactics comparable to La Familia protectionist rackets. This financial levy has caused the rest of the world to institute laws to permit the otherwise illegal act of defying their own Banking Privacy Acts. In fact Canada rewrote its own Banking Privacy Law to make it legal for FATCA to stick their tentacles into the Canadian banking system.
FATCA is economic warfare. Allowing a foreign country to siphon revenue from a nation’s revenue stream is capitulation to economic warfare. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]. So any national leader who signed the United States Internal Revenue Service’s Inter-Governmental Agreement (henceforth referred to as IGA) is now defined as a traitor to their country and subject to prosecution under each nation’s treason statutes.
Citizenship taxation is only practiced by two countries. The first being the third world country of Eritrea; the second being the United States of America. The second nation hypocritically vilified the first for its practice of levying 2% taxes against their expatriates.
The United States is a hypocrite when it comes to citizenship taxation. Its inception was based on protest against citizenship taxation (taxation without representation) – its reasons for making war against Great Britain; the US’s progenitor. Yet it subjects its own citizens abroad (in the same situation as the 13 Colonies) to the same kind of taxation as it fled from two hundred and thirty five years ago. It must be said that Isaac Barré’s words ring true today as it did then: “They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of ‘em. As soon as you began to care about ‘em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over 'em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon 'em; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them …”
We, who have toiled to create our own fortune, paying taxes to the land within which we reside, to the foreign nations in which we toil, have been preyed upon by the Internal Revenue Service, for our meagre wealth; while those lying within the borders of our native land scream hypocritically for our heads and our wealth.
Samuel Adams stated: "For if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & every thing we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves – It strikes our British Privileges, which as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our Fellow Subjects who are Natives of Britain: If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves."
Samuel Adams charges that we are tributary slaves with the implementation of taxation without representation. The representation being where expats currently live; yet no matter how expats are allowed to vote in the states from which they originated, they are never represented. The politicians represent those who reside within the state and curry the bonus votes of expats from those states whilst ignoring them. So no, there is no representation in any sense of the word.
And if there is no representation, there should be no tax or there should be open rebellion.
My family has chosen the latter: We choose to pay taxes to no-one except the leaders of the land in which we reside in and deem to be protected by. As a Canadian born citizen of Canada married to an American Abroad, I should have expected protection for my wife and my accidental American citizen progeny who were born here in Canada. Yet our treasonous leaders in government capitulated and threw one million plus dual citizens of Canada with US ties under the bus. And the United States has exhibited supreme hypocrisy in initiating the same kind of taxation for which they vilified Great Britain for two hundred and thirty five years previous.
Your CLN Is Your Proof of Purchase
Think of it this way. Pretend you go to a store and buy a camera. You hand over the money and the cashier puts the camera in a bag and you walk out. The camera is yours.
Now pretend that you buy the camera, but the cashier puts a receipt in the shopping bag, along with the camera.
Does the receipt make a difference as to whether you, standing on the sidewalk, are the owner of the camera? No. It is merely a proof of purchase, so that if needed in the future (e.g., you want to return the camera and get a refund), you can prove to someone else that you are the owner.
A Certificate of Loss of Nationality is like that receipt. It is an acknowledgment from the U.S. government that you stopped being a U.S. citizen, just like the receipt from the camera store is an acknowledgment that you bought a camera.
Plainly put, getting the Certificate of Loss of Nationality doesn’t make you a noncitizen. Not getting the Certificate of Loss of Nationality does not mean you remain a citizen.
Standing in front of the Consular official and swearing the oath makes you a noncitizen.
However, what the State Department thinks (you are relinquished your nationality) and what the IRS thinks (we’re not sure whether you are an “expatriate” or not) is where we get confusion.
You know, Phil ol’ boy, this is the first time that I’ve ever heard of a “un-servicing” having to be paid for. I guess it’s really true that the United States thinks that US citizens are all slaves. I guess we have to pay for an acknowledgement that the United States decided that they are kind enough to let us go quietly rather than a flaming AGM-65 Maverick up the wazoo. But in this case if you’re comparing the loss of nationality to the purchase of a camera… you are absolutely nuts.
In the first case, all I’m left with is a receipt in my hand and no product other than a kick in the ass and a “see you later, traitor”. Not much for customer service, are they?
In your comparison: let’s see if I go to The Camera Store in Calgary, AB for example and say to Chris or Evelyn, “Hey, I wanna buy a Nikon D5 (y’know. The latest and greatest), I have product in my hand, a brand-new Nikon D5 which I can take to shoot landscapes, hockey (Canada’s greatest sport) and all that. And on top of that, I get a cheery smile from Chris and Evelyn and a “thank you for your business.” I think I prefer that customer service over the US Department of Immigration which hasn’t done shit for me except take my wife’s hard-earned money.
With the CLN, that’s all I get…and nothing else. If I was getting some benefits, Medicare, US infrastructure and education for all that tax-money that we are supposed to pay out to the United States, I’d be more apt to agree with you that the CLN was actually a receipt for “services rendered”. But my wife got her post-secondary education in Canada – Canadian taxpayers helped pay for her education.
But we have to pay the United States for what? Wastrels who spend their time getting knocked up and then exclaiming that “Someone done need to pay for my kids.”? And entitled scumbags that want free money for doing nothing?
You know what; I’d rather not pay them a dime if supporting those in the States who want to do nothing is what my wife’s expat taxes have to do. So fuck your CLN and fuck your people who want others to pay for them.
And fuck your comparison of obtaining a CLN/receipt to a legal transaction of services/product rendered for cash paid. Because a CLN is nothing but highway robbery; essentially a comparison should be made for an acknowledgement of slave-ownership and the $2350 is the emancipation fee.
But unlike most of my “born-in-Canada” friends like me…who would have no connection to this sort of problem unless they married an American (I did and thus was hooked into the FATCA mess – I’m trying to extricate my spouse who still unlike me has no idea of just how vitriolic the land of her birth can be)… who continue unawares of the injustices of the donkey of a nation south of the border against those who would seek to leave.
I have lost absolute faith in the humanity of those of my countrymen who just say “shut up and pay the taxes”…or “lose your citizenship”. This coming from Canadians who don’t seem to get the problem that presents itself of my wife having to pay for taxes for services that she doesn’t receive and that would, in an instant of Canada revoking services, revolt on paying taxes – what hypocrisy!
On top of that she is expected by both Canadian government to pay taxes to a country (in whom she is a landed immigrant/permanent resident) who treats her like she doesn’t matter, that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms isn’t worth the paper that it is written on. Well, we use services here and our children go to school here in Canada so pay we will.
I WILL NOT pay a country whose services my wife does not receive. I will not pay for someone else to receive those benefits that my wife is supposedly “on the hook” for. In otherwords, the United States who has sent a bill to every single expatriate living outside of the United States.
The country that she lives in is Canada and she will only pay for the services that she receives from Canada where she works in. She will not pay the United States to allow someone ELSE to NOT work and collect welfare. She does not drive on US roads, She does not use the United States education system. She has paid into Canadian taxes and has made use of the Canadian education system of post-secondary education. So I won’t let her pay a single penny into the United States tax system and they can FUCKING WELL GO TO HELL!
Yeah, I should really save my energy, but nothing pisses me off more than the United States 99% leeching off of countless expat families who are making middle-class wages to minimum wage. What pisses me off even more is that those 99% think that they’re ENTITLED to those families’ money in return for nothing from the United States Government.
My question to them is: WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!!!