Friday, April 4, 2014

FATCA & NZ: The Disgrace; The Bullying; The Loss Of Our Freedoms; The Gutlessness & Avarice of Politicians #Privacy



Had a disagreement with our Privacy Commissioner last night over that modern US neo-colonialism known as FATCA - Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act - under which all New Zealand (Western) financial institutions must report to IRS details of every account, deposit, etc held by US citizens, including joint accounts held with Kiwis - and thus, I presume, the information of those Kiwis - so same citizens, even if they've never lived in US, nor intend to, can be hunted, tracked and taxed under a citizen based tax only two big brother states in the world pursue: US and Eritrea. I’ll summarise after this tweet exchange:






























These are the facts spelled out. The supply by New Zealand financial institutions – every damned one of them, including every bank - of the requested information to IRS would rightly contravene the most sacrosanct provisions of our privacy legislation. Thus, under a cynical work-around IGA between US and New Zealand governments, which allows them to avoid the political fallout of breaching that privacy legislation and creating second class citizens in New Zealand, these same financial institutions now simply provide that information to the IRD which can legally, albeit immorally, send it to IRS given our privacy provisions do not cover IRD; and this because our rights, freedoms, and privacy have been thrown on the pyre of totalitarian history by our gutless politicians in worship of the almighty thieving tax take and the cult of redistribution. As I've previously written, in the name of the tax take, innocent taxpayers have less rights before the IRD than murderers or rapists before the law; even the burden of proof turned against the them. And to rub in our colonial subjugation at the hands of an out of control US, the cost of FATCA - which Kiwis take not one gain from, it's simply about feeding tax to Obama - is borne by Kiwi taxpayers and bank account holders, not the US government.


Do you understand how many levels of evil this is wrong on? Starting with why our Privacy Commissioner has no purview over a department that doesn't have to, and daily doesn't, pay any heed to your privacy at all. Don't worry that ACC just mistakenly faxed your address to ten other people, IRD can lift the records of every transaction you have made through every bank this year and you won't even know about it; they can raid you without warrant or call you to an interrogation you have no rights of refusal, when you have done nothing wrong. The Privacy Commissioner's job is tokenism.


And how was the privacy invasion and cost of FATCA forced on us? A very good man from KPMG confirms it: bullying.














So we take a principled stand and don’t allow US warships into our harbours to protect us, but when the magic word tax is mentioned, politicians go all starry eyed and agree to hand over private information about any individual in this country to the US tax surveillance state. Got it.


In a later post I'll write on why FATCA is not even constitutional in the US, but in the meantime I reckon Obamamarx would be better advised worrying about Putin and his obvious plans for Balkin, and Finnish, domination by force, than forcefully destroying the freedoms, and hence lives of US citizens around the world, many of whom never plan to live in the US and are now trying to give their passports back. And while talking about all things fascist and the US:






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