Here is the only reason why Ted Cruz's citizenship is interesting.

It is not whether he's natural born and therefore eligible for the presidency. It is that Ted Cruz has suggested that he did not even realize he might be a Canadian citizen until the Dallas Morning News suggested it to him and asked a few experts on Canadian citizenship law to confirm that Canada, like the US, like many, many countries, confers birthright citizenship on people born in the territory whether they request it, or want it, or not.

This is interesting because this is all happening during America's ongoing roundup of every person on the planet who may be a US citizen because they were born in the US or by birthright through their lineage, for the purpose of imposing draconian penalties for failure to file tax returns and asset information reports under the US citizenship-based tax regime. This is the only tax regime in the world that treats lineage alone as a justification to impose worldwide taxation. Ted Cruz's expressed thoughtlessness about his own dual citizenship, coupled with his breezy intention to simply get rid of the unwanted extra citizenship, beautifully illustrates the major problem with citizenship-based taxation and why no other country on the planet would try to enforce such a system.

The US is right now imposing enormous penalties and unleashing general chaos on people living in other countries with US citizenship, both by newly enforcing long-ignored rules and by layering on top of these rules a new and more draconian layer of enforcement. The chaos comes in the form of fear-inducing, devilishly complicated and duplicative paperwork, and penalties, most of all penalties, and it is being piled on to millions of people around the world, many of whom, like Cruz, are very possibly only beginning to understanding that citizenship status is mostly conferred upon rather than chosen by individuals.

Ted Cruz should consider himself very lucky, because the citizenship he claims he didn't realize he had doesn't carry any punishment for his failure to recognize it. Moreover renouncing, if he really intends to follow through on that promise, will be relatively simple, cheap, and painless other than the cost to his US political career, if any.

Not so if he had lived his life in Canada with his current apparent dual status. US citizens abroad now understand that discovering ties to the US means discovering a world of obligations and consequences flowing from citizenship that you were expected to know and obey. Ignorance of the law being no excuse, the punishments range from the merely ridiculous--many times any tax that would have ever been due--to the infuriating: life savings wiped out and many future tax savings sponsored by your home government, such as in education or health savings plans, treated as offshore trusts and therefore confiscated by the US. Moreover there is no ready escape hatch for the newly discovered and unwanted US citizenship: five years of full tax reporting compliance must be documented, appointments must be made with officials, fees must be remitted, interviews must be conducted, and in some cases exit taxes must be paid. If some in Congress get their way, renunciation could even mean life-time banishment from the US someday soon.

In the grand scheme of things Ted Cruz's citizenship is a non-story. But for what it illustrates about citizenship-based taxation, it could be the story of the century.

Latest IRS Statistics of Income on Individual Tax Returns

The IRS has issued its latest SOI reports, including the 2011 Individual Income Tax Returns (Publication 1304). These are always interesting. This year's data shows that 145 million individual income tax returns were filed in 2011, about 108M showing a taxable income amount, and 95M showing income tax, for total revenues of just over $1 trillion from the individual income tax. Some highlights:

• salary or wage income: 119M returns, $6T
• unemployment comp: 13M returns, $92B
• social security benefits: 25M returns, $490B
• foreign earned income (i.e. residents of other countries): 445K returns, $28B
• gambling earnings: 1.9M returns, $26B

The IRS also issued 2010 Corporation Research Credit Tables, derived from Form 6765, Credit for Increasing Research Activities, and 2010 Corporation Depreciation Data, derived from Form 4562, Depreciation and Amortization.

How To Chart Good

Having seen all too many charts that have been labored over in vain by students, academics, and practitioners alike, this resonates.

Irony: it's often difficult to communicate with charts, yet this one does a beautiful job.

Corporate tax transparency: Australia's work in progress

Australia is working on transparency and information sharing, and is seeking feedback by April 24 (this Wednesday):

On 4 February 2013, the Assistant Treasurer announced the Government’s intention to improve the transparency of Australia’s business tax system and that the Government would consider the views of the community in assessing what changes are appropriate. 

The Government seeks your feedback and comments on the issues outlined in this discussion paper. As this paper provides details about how these proposals could be legislated, you may wish to comment on law design as well as policy design issues in your submission. It would assist the consultation process if those stakeholders who have any concerns with the proposals could provide practical examples in their submissions demonstrating the implications of these proposals and how any alternative approaches could operate.

Highlights from the discussion paper:

On 4 February 2013, the Assistant Treasurer announced the Government’s intention to improve the transparency of Australia’s business tax system with a view to introducing necessary legislation later this year. ... 

This paper outlines three proposals that could give effect to this announcement. ...These proposals could complement existing corporate disclosure requirements and enhance the administration and regulation of Australia’s tax system and capital markets. ...

• Transparency of tax payable by large and multinational businesses. 

– The objective of this proposal is to enable the public to better understand the corporate tax system and engage in tax policy debates, as well as to discourage aggressive tax minimisation practices by large corporate entities. 

• Publishing aggregate collections for each Commonwealth tax. 

– The objective of this proposal is to enable better public disclosure of aggregate tax revenue collections, even when the identity of particular entities could potentially be deduced. 

• Enhanced information sharing between Government agencies. 

– The objective of this proposal is to build on existing information sharing arrangements and enable greater information sharing between the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and the Department of the Treasury with respect to foreign acquisition and investment decisions affecting Australia.

Australia's Treasury seeks to consider views from "the community"--not defined so no reason that can't mean the global community.  Address written submissions to: 

General Manager
Tax System Division
The Treasury
Langton Crescent
PARKES ACT 2600

TaxTransparency@treasury.gov.au

Thanks to Miranda Stewart for passing this along.

Obama admin taking the high road on FATCA reciprocity?

I have predicted that real FATCA reciprocity would not fly in the US once people began to understand what the details entailed, but I would like to be wrong about that, and I have argued that the best course forward for FATCA is real reciprocity coupled with adherence to residence-based taxation. Here's a sign from the Chicago Tribune that I could get at least one of my wishes:

Foreigners' accounts in U.S. banks eyed in tax crackdown

The Obama administration may soon ask Congress for the power to require more disclosure by U.S. banks of information about foreign clients' accounts to those clients' home governments, as part of a crackdown on tax evasion, sources said on Monday. 

In a move facing resistance from some in the U.S. banking industry, two tax industry sources said the administration was considering asking Congress in an upcoming White House budget proposal for the authority to require more disclosure from U.S. banks. 

...At the heart of FATCA is a law requiring more disclosure by non-U.S. banks of information about Americans' accounts to the Internal Revenue Service, with the goal of exposing Americans' efforts to dodge U.S. taxes through secret offshore accounts. 

As Treasury has implemented FATCA, some countries - possibly including France, Germany and China - were said to be driving a hard bargain. They have been saying that if their banks have to tell the IRS about Americans' secret accounts, then U.S. banks should have to reciprocate by disclosing more information about the U.S. accounts of French, German and Chinese nationals. 

...China has been publicly dismissive of FATCA, but it is talking with U.S. officials behind the scenes, sources said.

...France and Germany "have been asking for something more like full reciprocity," said Jonathan Jackel, a lawyer with the law firm of Burt Staples & Maner LLP in Washington, D.C. 

The story says that "The IRS this year started disclosing to some foreign governments information about bank interest payments earned by their citizens with U.S. bank accounts."--but I am not sure that that is true, given that the only country currently on the list for automatic info sharing on portfolio interest is Canada-and Canada was already on that list anyway.


The story quotes Itai Grinberg, who has to be the foremost expert on the legislation and really ought to be listened to on the underlying principles:

"The United States should be moving toward full reciprocity," said Georgetown Law School Professor Itai Grinberg, a former Treasury official, adding it would be "deeply hypocritical" of the United States to ask for U.S. taxpayer information "without offering some kind of reciprocity."

Progress, perhaps. But this is America, so here comes a lawsuit:

The Texas Bankers Association is considering a lawsuit against the government to stop accountholder information sharing with Mexico, said Eric Sandberg, the group's president.

Why, what s the problem?  Well, you see, it's financial privacy.

"We are concerned with Latin American countries like Mexico," said Fran Mordi, senior tax counsel at the American Bankers Association. "In the past, U.S. banks didn't report interest payments to non-resident aliens ... IRS is now saying you have to report that."

Translate how you will. I think it's a clear illustration of the state at war with itself over how to gain the maximum advantage from a combination of cooperation and competition with other states on taxation. Information sharing is going to benefit the US more in terms of dollars in the economy if it is one-way street that catches US shirkers but doesn't prevent taking advantage of other countries' ignorance about the location of their own taxpayers' resources. I think the mercenary state will prevail in the end--cooperate in principle, defect in practice--but I am very much hoping to be wrong.

Finnish Tax Research Project?

I am wondering if anyone is working on the corporate tax data published by Finland last month.  I can't read Finnish, so can't make anything of the charts or pdfs, but I assume someone somewhere is gleefully playing with this new data source--I think the first of its kind in all the world. If you're working on it, please contact me, I would really like to know about it.

Activists seek Canada Tax Gap Estimate

There is a movement afoot to get Canada to get on the "Tax Gap" bandwagon, and make an estimate about how much is lost in tax revenues to tax evasion. As far as I know only the US and the UK even try to estimate this, and the UK's estimate has been criticised as laughably low, while the US estimate is hampered by shoddy data. Still, it's an exercise worth undertaking I think. If the government won't do it, do we have some enterprising accountants or economists willing to give it a go in Canada?

OECD on information

Here are two new OECD reports of interest: one on automatic information exchange (they are sort of for it) and the other on confidentiality of tax info (they are really for it).

Do we need to know more about our public companies?

In a new Tax Notes Int'l column this week (pdf here), I discussed the media coverage of Apple/GE/Google etc and explored the appropriateness of tax confidentiality with a brief discussion of disclosure rules past and present, and the current call for broader disclosure via country by country reporting.

Economist: Don't cut the budget for data

Cuts on data collection and analysis are "penny wise, pound foolish" because "knowledge helps target government spending on those who need it most." Republican congress members, led by Daniel Webster of Florida, seek to cut the census-taking budget since “what really promotes business…is liberty, not demand for information.” Some Republicans suggest the census survey is unconstitutional, a position another Daniel Webster would have probably laughed at. The Economist concludes: "In 2008 Barack Obama quipped that his Republican foes seemed to “take pride in being ignorant”. In this area, congressional Republicans seem to feel that ignorance is bliss."