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This op-ed, written for a major Canadian publication, relates the story of 2 people, and also mentions that the Finance Minister has been moved to start writing

This op-ed, written for a major Canadian publication, relates the story of 2 people, and also mentions that the Finance Minister has been moved to start writing to U.S. newspapers over the issue. So, I am extremely skeptical of your 10,000-to-1 estimate on the matter. It would make sense for the IRS right now to follow the RIAA's playbook -- send out a lot of letters and see who bites. It would also be irresponsible in every way to realize that you're part of such a list and yet still ignore it because you don't expect the IRS to actually ever do anything about it. I've got extended family that uses that approach to life, and it bites them in the ass all the time. -- On a personal level, I've noticed that you seem to be the antithesis of an alarmist, whatever that is. When another round of "PayPal screwed me!" posts and articles comes around, you seem to show up with at least one or two comments along the lines of, "Hey, I use PayPal, it's never been a problem for me, it shouldn't be a problem for you either"; shortly after the Fukushima incident, you leveraged your intimate knowledge of Japanese culture to powerfully downplay the seriousness of the matter, except that it turned out that you were wrong, and the facilities did have problems before the incident, and it did turn into a serious disaster. I didn't notice any comments from you once that news started coming 'round. So, all this is just to say that I think you have a different approach in your thinking than a lot of people in matters like this. Whereas a lot of people try to anticipate problems and minimize their future impact, you seem comfortable with waiting to see if they actually become problems and then dealing with them at that point. And, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it does mean that your opinion on things like IRS penalties may not be to everyone's benefit.

fleitz 15y ago
For all intents and purposes it's the same in Canada. If you have any significant ties to Canada you pay Canadian income tax if you're a citizen. A significant tie could be as simple as owning a motorcycle, a corporation, or still having a Canadian bank account.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  Not true - I'm a Canadian expat working in the US and I've had to deal with this myself. It really comes down to this: - Canadian residents always pay tax to Canada on all income, no matter where it is made. - Canadian non-residents do not pay tax on international income. - Residency is determined by: A) How much time you have spent outside of the country. If you have spent the majority of the year (6 months + 1 day) outside the country, you can claim non-residency. If you have spent the majority of the year in Canada, fat chance. B) "Significant ties" to Canada. This seems draconian, but is actually not really. You can have a driver's license, space in a storage unit, or bank accounts and still easily make the claim of non-residency. Hell, I have a friend who owns a rental property in Toronto and still makes it. - In any case, the whole process is much easier and less burdensome than the American equivalent. The first year you believe you qualify as a non-resident, you file a form with the CRA (Canadian equivalent of IRS) with your blank tax return (stating all income is international). Once you do that, you no longer have to do it ever again. I do not have to get my non-residency status constantly recertified. It's all pretty simple. At the end of the day, if you live in Canada you pay tax on money you make - anywhere - and if you live outside of it you're basically just off the hook.
tptacek 15y ago
I hate to be "guy sticking up for Patrick all the time" (it's a consequence of the way I read HN these days; see profile), but: I disagree with him on lots of things, and it's when we disagree that I appreciate his presence on HN the most. In fact, the most sickening comments on this site tend to be from people who share my general worldview. We should hope to have 100 people who share Patrick's habit of moderating HN's Internet-bred tendency towards hyperventilation. I'd also like to point out that you focused on just one aspect of his comment, diverting attention from the actual practical information he conveyed. I worked out of Calgary for a couple years; I just got an accountant to deal with all the tax stuff. That works too.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Of course. I put extra time into writing that comment to minimize the chances that it would come across as rude or impolitic. Clearly I should have spent a little more time on it. Look, I'm a pretty mercurial dude, and I know that, so I appreciate in general people that can take a little of the huff and puff out of situations. I appreciate patio11 specifically because he's a valuable member of HN, who contributes often, and can be considered an expert on a variety of topics. That said, he -- like everyone here -- isn't above criticism. I wouldn't have even bothered to comment except that his comment was the top in the thread, and based on my experiences, ignoring stuff like this because it probably won't actually matter isn't a good idea -- even if it's true. I find it distasteful that I've had to defend myself on this. This will be my last comment on this matter.
steve-howard 15y ago
That's the nature of opinions, though; they're not supposed to be for your benefit, they just give you something to consider. I have a tendency to agree with the kind of people that downplay panic, simply because they seem more focused on what has happened than on the worst that might possibly happen. When "swine flu" broke out, we had the people that told us that it was deadly and dangerous, then we had the people that told us it was worth being careful but not worth being petrified. You bring up the RIAA and I think that's a good choice of analogy for anti-alarmism -- when you're that unlucky individual who does get hit with a lawsuit, you're pretty screwed and the problem is pretty bad. However, I have known a lot of filesharers (I am in college after all), and not one actual lawsuit victim. It's not analogous to the scale of, say, a nuclear accident or $250,000 in tax penalties, but I think it's still reasonable to consider the odds of actually getting hit before freaking out.
- tsotha 15y ago
  I have a tendency to agree with the kind of people that downplay panic, simply because they seem more focused on what has happened than on the worst that might possibly happen. But that's the problem - the worst that could possibly happen is very possible. Basically what it means is you can't go to the US, because in theory you could be met at the airport and thrown into jail. The fact that you're a little fish won't matter to the IRS. They're just filling out forms. Of course you can take your chances, but for most people the risk of getting jailed for tax evasion outweighs any possible positive outcome from a trip to the states. Over the last decade the US Congress turned US citizens into subjects. The only reason there isn't a great hue and cry is voters in the US don't know. The federal legal code has gotten so large and arcane even the lawyers don't know it outside their own narrow specialty.
patio11 15y ago
Is there a set of future outcomes you would accept which would make my statement sound mostly factually accurate? Like, hypothetically, "We revisit this a year later, and it turns out the IRS has levied penalties against under 100 people for failure to declare accounts, and the overwhelming majority of them were doing something quirky with their international structuring as opposed to being regular Americans tripped up by the law." If there is not a set of future results which makes "you should be worried about this" the wrong choice, then this conversation is boring to me. With regards to the Japanese disaster in March, if I were to point to something I said in the immediate aftermath which was subsequently disproved by events unfolding, I would have picked my guess of severity of the tsunami and adequacy of the response efforts. (Undershot by more than quite a bit, overestimated by a little.) Fukushima Daiichi turned out quite a bit worse than I thought it would, too, on the scale from "no problems" to "worst disaster we could possibly imagine." I have to mention because I'm persnickety about this one issue: it also turned out quite a bit less worse than a lot of people were betting. ( To put a fairly easily verifiable number on it, I would have at the time guessed probable deaths at "between zero and five", and there were people who made very consequential decisions based on estimates in the millions. It's kind of funny that they get to count their predictions in the win column if I can't, right?)
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  The short answer is, yes, I think we could come up with a test over some period of time where either you would turn out to be right or the alarmists would. But, we'd probably have to extend it out to the beginning of 2014, due to new rules taking effect (FATCA) and the speed we could expect from the IRS. Long timetables are a lot less interesting, unfortunately. I've done a brief amount of Googling for more information, and I can bring to the discussion a handful of links and at least one case of "regular Americans tripped up by the law", but since it's probably just you and I in this discussion at this point, I'll leave it up to you whether or not you want to pursue this anymore. Re: the Japanese disaster, you're right, other people were making wild fearsome predictions, like the end of support for nuclear power, and clearly that hasn't happened. And, it's not a matter of win or lose or right or wrong -- I just meant to establish that betting against bad outcomes doesn't always work out in your favor (the generic "you" here). I probably should not have used that as an example though.

fleitz 15y ago

For all intents and purposes it's the same in Canada. If you have any significant ties to Canada you pay Canadian income tax if you're a citizen. A significant tie could be as simple as owning a motorcycle, a corporation, or still having a Canadian bank account.

potatolicious 15y ago
Not true - I'm a Canadian expat working in the US and I've had to deal with this myself. It really comes down to this: - Canadian residents always pay tax to Canada on all income, no matter where it is made. - Canadian non-residents do not pay tax on international income. - Residency is determined by: A) How much time you have spent outside of the country. If you have spent the majority of the year (6 months + 1 day) outside the country, you can claim non-residency. If you have spent the majority of the year in Canada, fat chance. B) "Significant ties" to Canada. This seems draconian, but is actually not really. You can have a driver's license, space in a storage unit, or bank accounts and still easily make the claim of non-residency. Hell, I have a friend who owns a rental property in Toronto and still makes it. - In any case, the whole process is much easier and less burdensome than the American equivalent. The first year you believe you qualify as a non-resident, you file a form with the CRA (Canadian equivalent of IRS) with your blank tax return (stating all income is international). Once you do that, you no longer have to do it ever again. I do not have to get my non-residency status constantly recertified. It's all pretty simple. At the end of the day, if you live in Canada you pay tax on money you make - anywhere - and if you live outside of it you're basically just off the hook.

tptacek 15y ago

I hate to be "guy sticking up for Patrick all the time" (it's a consequence of the way I read HN these days; see profile), but: I disagree with him on lots of things, and it's when we disagree that I appreciate his presence on HN the most. In fact, the most sickening comments on this site tend to be from people who share my general worldview. We should hope to have 100 people who share Patrick's habit of moderating HN's Internet-bred tendency towards hyperventilation. I'd also like to point out that you focused on just one aspect of his comment, diverting attention from the actual practical information he conveyed. I worked out of Calgary for a couple years; I just got an accountant to deal with all the tax stuff. That works too.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
Of course. I put extra time into writing that comment to minimize the chances that it would come across as rude or impolitic. Clearly I should have spent a little more time on it. Look, I'm a pretty mercurial dude, and I know that, so I appreciate in general people that can take a little of the huff and puff out of situations. I appreciate patio11 specifically because he's a valuable member of HN, who contributes often, and can be considered an expert on a variety of topics. That said, he -- like everyone here -- isn't above criticism. I wouldn't have even bothered to comment except that his comment was the top in the thread, and based on my experiences, ignoring stuff like this because it probably won't actually matter isn't a good idea -- even if it's true. I find it distasteful that I've had to defend myself on this. This will be my last comment on this matter.

steve-howard 15y ago

That's the nature of opinions, though; they're not supposed to be for your benefit, they just give you something to consider. I have a tendency to agree with the kind of people that downplay panic, simply because they seem more focused on what has happened than on the worst that might possibly happen. When "swine flu" broke out, we had the people that told us that it was deadly and dangerous, then we had the people that told us it was worth being careful but not worth being petrified. You bring up the RIAA and I think that's a good choice of analogy for anti-alarmism -- when you're that unlucky individual who does get hit with a lawsuit, you're pretty screwed and the problem is pretty bad. However, I have known a lot of filesharers (I am in college after all), and not one actual lawsuit victim. It's not analogous to the scale of, say, a nuclear accident or $250,000 in tax penalties, but I think it's still reasonable to consider the odds of actually getting hit before freaking out.

tsotha 15y ago
I have a tendency to agree with the kind of people that downplay panic, simply because they seem more focused on what has happened than on the worst that might possibly happen. But that's the problem - the worst that could possibly happen is very possible. Basically what it means is you can't go to the US, because in theory you could be met at the airport and thrown into jail. The fact that you're a little fish won't matter to the IRS. They're just filling out forms. Of course you can take your chances, but for most people the risk of getting jailed for tax evasion outweighs any possible positive outcome from a trip to the states. Over the last decade the US Congress turned US citizens into subjects. The only reason there isn't a great hue and cry is voters in the US don't know. The federal legal code has gotten so large and arcane even the lawyers don't know it outside their own narrow specialty.

patio11 15y ago

Is there a set of future outcomes you would accept which would make my statement sound mostly factually accurate? Like, hypothetically, "We revisit this a year later, and it turns out the IRS has levied penalties against under 100 people for failure to declare accounts, and the overwhelming majority of them were doing something quirky with their international structuring as opposed to being regular Americans tripped up by the law." If there is not a set of future results which makes "you should be worried about this" the wrong choice, then this conversation is boring to me. With regards to the Japanese disaster in March, if I were to point to something I said in the immediate aftermath which was subsequently disproved by events unfolding, I would have picked my guess of severity of the tsunami and adequacy of the response efforts. (Undershot by more than quite a bit, overestimated by a little.) Fukushima Daiichi turned out quite a bit worse than I thought it would, too, on the scale from "no problems" to "worst disaster we could possibly imagine." I have to mention because I'm persnickety about this one issue: it also turned out quite a bit less worse than a lot of people were betting. ( To put a fairly easily verifiable number on it, I would have at the time guessed probable deaths at "between zero and five", and there were people who made very consequential decisions based on estimates in the millions. It's kind of funny that they get to count their predictions in the win column if I can't, right?)

thaumaturgy 15y ago
The short answer is, yes, I think we could come up with a test over some period of time where either you would turn out to be right or the alarmists would. But, we'd probably have to extend it out to the beginning of 2014, due to new rules taking effect (FATCA) and the speed we could expect from the IRS. Long timetables are a lot less interesting, unfortunately. I've done a brief amount of Googling for more information, and I can bring to the discussion a handful of links and at least one case of "regular Americans tripped up by the law", but since it's probably just you and I in this discussion at this point, I'll leave it up to you whether or not you want to pursue this anymore. Re: the Japanese disaster, you're right, other people were making wild fearsome predictions, like the end of support for nuclear power, and clearly that hasn't happened. And, it's not a matter of win or lose or right or wrong -- I just meant to establish that betting against bad outcomes doesn't always work out in your favor (the generic "you" here). I probably should not have used that as an example though.