The Glade 4.0

Tub boat?

IRS debuts online registration for firms ahead of FATCA law

WASHINGTON | Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:15pm EDT


(Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service on Monday launched an online registration program for the hundreds of thousands of financial firms around the world that must comply with a U.S. anti-tax evasion law or risk being shut out of financial markets.

Starting the registration process, which is accessible on the IRS website, was one of the last steps the tax agency needed to take before the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), enacted in 2010, takes effect in July 2014 with steep penalties for firms that do not comply.

FATCA requires foreign banks, investment funds and insurance companies to report to the IRS Americans' offshore accounts worth more than $50,000. It was enacted after a Swiss banking scandal showed U.S. taxpayers hid substantial fortunes overseas.

Foreign financial institutions that fail to comply with FATCA face a 30-percent withholding tax on their U.S. source income, a penalty that could effectively freeze them out of U.S. financial markets.

To register in compliance with the law, a firm gives the IRS its name, mailing address, any branch offices and other basic information.

The IRS will start approving firms' registrations in 2014. Firms must register by April 25, 2014, to avoid FATCA's withholding penalties. In June 2014, the IRS will publish online a list of all the firms complying with FATCA.

The IRS will start collecting the firms' customer account information in 2015.

The fact that the registration process started on schedule was a victory for the IRS, which has struggled to meet its own deadlines to implement FATCA, tax lawyers said on Monday.

The U.S. Treasury Department last month postponed the start of FATCA to July 2014 from January 2014.

Before the registration process was finalized, firms did not know what information they would need to tell the IRS, making it difficult to prepare their internal systems, said Michael Silva, a partner at law firm DLA Piper.

"We finally have something tangible to put our teeth into," Silva said.

However, some challenges remain, Silva said. Foreign firms will need to register in English, an added headache for some, he said.

Additionally, it is unclear whether U.S. companies that have lending businesses abroad will need to comply with FATCA, Silva said. Many manufacturers have lending operations abroad to sell tractors, for example, and other products on credit.

(Reporting by Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Howard Goller and Ken Wills)

Send a SWAT Team to Check Water Quality? Sure, Why Not?

Scott Shackford|Sep. 4, 2013 6:30 pm



There are so many possible jokes about the Environmental Protection Agency sending a SWAT team — for purely bureaucratic purposes — to an Alaskan gold mining community bearing the name “Chicken” that one scarcely knows where to begin.

No doubt it wasn’t amusing for the miners there, though. And they’re up in arms about the way the feds have treated them in the pursuit of possible Clean Water Act violations. The Alaska Dispatch explains:


When agents with the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force surged out of the wilderness around the remote community of Chicken wearing body armor and jackets emblazoned with POLICE in big, bold letters, local placer miners didn’t quite know what to think.

Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water? Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated.

Others wonder if the actions of the agents put everyone at risk. When your family business involves collecting gold far from nowhere, unusual behavior can be taken as a sign someone might be trying to stage a robbery. How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?

Miners suggest it might have been better all around if officials had just shown up at the door — as they used to do — and said they wanted to check the water.

Chicken is a small roost, boasting all of 17 full-time residents and lots of seasonal mine workers, according to the Dispatch. The EPA wouldn’t explain why it has suddenly shifted to an armed team to check for Clean Water Act violations. According to the Dispatch, one Senate staffer was told the EPA sent an armed team because they were told by Alaska State Troopers there was “rampant drug and human trafficking” in the area. A spokesperson for the troopers denies they told the EPA any such thing.

Hat tip to Radley Balko. Apparently he has a book or something out about this sort of behavior.

How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Exactly. The hard line gun-toting conservatives weren't given the chance. That's why the EPA needs to send the SWAT team to enforce the Clean Water Act.

How so, Hop? If you did want to rob a remote mining camp, looking like police would be a good way to do it.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Or, maybe it's just another example of a blog or agenda site taking one side's word for how things actually happened.

According to the Dispatch, one Senate staffer was told the EPA sent an armed team because they were told by Alaska State Troopers there was “rampant drug and human trafficking” in the area. A spokesperson for the troopers denies they told the EPA any such thing.

is all about not trying to get the other side's story... and that story not checking out?

How so, Hop? If you did want to rob a remote mining camp, looking like police would be a good way to do it.

The world would certainly be a better place if all criminals were that stupid.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

...and it wouldn't be easier for you to "just shoot them all and take what you want at your leisure" if they thought you were a SWAT team made up of Federal Agents?

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

(CNN) -- An Ohio man who has been legally dead since 1994 will remain so in the eyes of the law after losing his complaint to overturn his death filing, according to authorities.

Donald Miller, 61, testified Monday that he disappeared in 1986 after losing his job, leaving behind a wife, two children and thousands of dollars of unpaid child support, according to James Hammer, the attorney for Miller's ex-wife, Robin Miller. He was declared legally dead eight years later.

Donald Miller said he returned to Ohio "around 2005" with no knowledge of his legal death, and that he had hoped to reestablish his Social Security number.

A legal statute in Ohio prevents changes to death rulings once three years have passed, Hammer told CNN, and Judge Allan Davis ruled accordingly in Hancock County Probate Court.

"In over 40 years, I've never come across a case like this," the judge told CNN.

"In the end though, because of the statute, it was a pretty open-and-shut case."

Hammer recounts that at the time of Donald Miller's legal death in 1994, he owed Robin Miller around $25,000 in child support, a matter which could have been complicated had the judge ruled in Donald Miller's favor on Monday. Following the 1994 ruling, Hammer said, Robin Miller began receiving Social Security death benefits to support her two children.

"There could have been the possibility that my client would have to pay back what she received from Social Security," Hammer said.

"We certainly did not want to open that door, so we're satisfied with the outcome."

Despite her relief at the court's ruling, Hammer says his client has no ill will toward her ex-husband.

Donald Miller's attorney was not immediately available for comment Wednesday. He still has 30 days to appeal the court's ruling, according Judge Davis.

Dr. Ben Carson was audited by the IRS following his prayer breakfast speech in front of the President challenging the ACA.

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/3/irs-targeted-dr-ben-carson-after-prayer-breakfast-/

Not sure what to make of this one.

'Ere, 'e says 'e's not dead.

I'm on the mend!

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin