A Little More About Treasury’s Disallowment of SCE

Great article by Helen Burggraf regarding Treasury’s denial of ACA’s SCE program.

Just a couple of thoughts………

US officials reportedly felt that the potential risk of expat Americans using their “same-country” bank accounts to avoid their US tax obligations was ultimately too great to be able to grant them such an exemption – in spite of the inconvenience this would result in, as it already has, for many of the estimated 8.7 million American expats across the globe.

The stupidity of this comment by Treasury officials is beyond belief. Americans abroad do not use “foreign” bank accounts as a way to avoid their U.S. tax obligations. They also are not “foreign” but their local bank down the street whereby they can cash their cheques, pay bills and so on. Obviously, accounts used in this manner are not at all the same as wealthy people living in the U.S. using foreign banks to avoid taxation. This has been stated so many times over the last five years and yet it is STILL not understood. The government continues to use this as a way to keep up several misconceptions as a way to justify FATCA:

Americans who live in the U.S use foreign banks to avoid taxation are wealthy
creates the idea that

Americans who use foreign banks to avoid taxation are wealthy
this does not equal

Americans who live outside the US are wealthy and use foreign banks to avoid taxation.

K.I.S.S., doh, it’s not rocket science to see the difference here!

The key difference, is residence. We all know 99% of all countries on this planet, base taxation upon residence.

” The regulations say nothing about the problem of lock-out. They fix only on the un-quantified and un-weighted risk that what must be a relatively small population of US taxpayers residing in a foreign country and banking at their local bank might evade US tax.
The regulations do not say whether, and, if so, to what extent, Treasury Department took into consideration the widely-admitted fact that FATCA continues to put the community of 8 million Americans overseas at risk of lock-out from access to financial accounts needed for the management of basic living expenses, [including] paying bills, paying rent [and] receiving paychecks.

The Treasury Department has very little statistical information on the diaspora. That is why they have to resort to the fishing expedition that #FATCA is. There have been so many reports, letter-writing campaigns and so on, trying to communicate the problems. So the story has been told. Yet we see no meaningful feedback from the government, indicating what percentage of money they have supposedly collected comes from Homelanders, non-resident citizens, etc. In fact, it is rather amazing that Treasury has not actually said anything different that what they have always implied: Americans living abroad are tax cheats and criminals.

While many of us do not endorse SCE, I think we all respect the efforts of any expat organization that tries to rectify this situation.
And while the future actions of the newly-elected Administration and Congress may offer some hope, we should stay focussed on the fact that many years of concerted effort have failed to solve the situation. Litigation remains a hugely valuable option and may be our best hope.