I guess one lesson from this is that running out of .COM domain names is not a bad thing, because it reduces the grip the American empire has on the internet.
The US government is so powerful, they are the only country that enforces a draconian global taxation scheme on any citizen or person who has ever held a US green card, even after they permanently leave the country. The US treasury will withhold the ability to transact in US Dollars from any country that does not report the holdings of US-adjacent persons every single year.
If you think you're out of reach of a country that treats their own citizens as criminals by default the minute they leave the country, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.
That's not quite true. If you _return_ your green card ("abandon it"), you no longer have to pay taxes. This makes sense as a parallel to being a US citizen, who would pay taxes even if they lived abroad.
I'm not saying it's right, but we need to be accurate.
[1] In this context, including foreign businesses that file a U.S. tax return. [2] Note that for FATCA purposes, if a person is a US taxpayer for any portion of the year, they are subject to FATCA compliance purposes for that tax year no matter how much of that year was actually spent as a US taxpayer. However, if they are not a US taxpayer at the end of the year, they would not be subject to FATCA compliance for the following year.
FATCA does not apply once you are no longer a US taxpayer. Moreover, the FATCA regime has been copied by so many other countries (including the EU) that there is now a global version of FATCA called CRS (and the procedural system for implementing CRS is known as AEOI).
FATCA is now considered the least burdensome implementation of CRS, which has been implemented by all OECD countries, China, India, and Brazil.
If a bank is turning you down because you answered "YES" to the FATCA question, the problem isn't FATCA. The bank is trying to avoid an audit and it's a huge red flag not to do business with them.
Banks are run by people and they are private businesses. Humans don't follow laws like computers follow instruction, we are flawed creatures. Businesses will mitigate risks wherever possible, and refuse to work with customers who carry added risk all the time.
While in theory this shouldn't be causing people trouble and preventing people from getting locked out of the banking system or forcing them into unfair agreements, in reality, it is.
It turns out government regulation has unintended consequences. Just because it's "wrong" for them to interpret the regulation in this way, doesn't change the fact that many many established, legitimate banks are doing it "wrong." Nor does it help the people suffering the consequences to point your finger back at the wording of the regulation and say "Ackshually..."
If a foreign bank won't open an account for you because you were once American, the problem is that the bank has something to hide. Full stop. End of story.
Sounds like what a totalitarian king would do.
"In vain they change from a single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude." - Edmund Burke, 1756.
The USA can, and does, tax non-citizens. Many countries tax non-citizens. Go out and buy a foreign stock-they will tax you on earnings or dividends. Go visit a country and pay the local sales tax.
It's quite easy to argue that handing over such power to a single government is in fact a large tax on every non-US citizen.
Sure smells a lot like levying tax on non-citizens living in other countries.
I did not see that in his comment. He said tax. You are making a pretty big leap.
Your comment is wrong too and here is the IRS link on when nonresident aliens have to file American taxes. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/taxa...
No, that's exactly what I meant. It's implied from context that I am talking about taxation of people living in other countries. The bit I was directly replying to from root post:
> The US government is so powerful, they are the only country that enforces a draconian global taxation scheme on any citizen or person who has ever held a US green card, even after they permanently leave the country.
So I replied:
"USA can't tax non-citizens. Revoke citizenship if you really ..."
[1] https://www.expatriationattorneys.com/tinkov-conceal-foreign...
N.B.: you have to pay to revoke citizenship.
So, legally speaking, you not only lose citizenship but also the right to ever step foot on American soil again, no matter which other citizenship you gain.
Of course, you can just lie about your reasons on the forms.
While it may be true that they are the only ones able to do it effectively, there are some other countries with citizenship-based taxation. According to Wikipedia[0] these currently are: Hungary, Eritrea, Myanmar and Tajikistan
Some other countries have similar policies for tax heavens.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Citizen...
I'm going to venture a wild guess: it may not be that difficult to hide assets from the short arms of the Tajikistani tax office.
So I don't think it's crazy to assume Americans are the only ones suffering under this policy in practice.
"Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said." - Jun 25, 2012
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/internet-file-sharing-giant-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_internation...
If you run a service that allows people to upload data, you are hosting pirated content. The DMCA was specifically designed to address this, to create a system whereby those who host data are not on the hook for every violation. The issue is not that you host pirated content but whether you are following all the rules necessary to enjoy safe harbor protection.
>> Karim left YouTube before Google bought it in 2006. But he kept YouTube e-mail on his personal computer, enabling Viacom to obtain correspondence that Hurley had said he lost, according to court documents. [..] In a July 29, 2005 e-mail, Chen advised Hurley and Karim to "steal it!" in an apparent reference to an unidentified video clip, according to the court documents. After Hurley asked if he wanted to steal movies, Chen replied, "haha ya. Or something."
>> Google had its own copyright reservations about YouTube before it struck a deal. Internal documents obtained by Viacom quote Google executives describing YouTube as "a 'rogue enabler' of content theft" and warning the site "is completely sustained by pirated content."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/youtube-viacom-spat-gets-dir...
You are definitely misremembering and spreading FUD backed by your biases.
He was hosting illegal material on servers geolocated inside the US. I'm sure if someone were producing and distributing illegal material (let's use the extreme example: child pornography, for instance) on NZ servers and networks, NZers would want to see them extradited.
It has nothing to do with "imperialism".
You can try to pettyfog the case and move goalposts all you like, each time one of your points/misunderstandings is debunked, however it's pretty clear what he was doing. And, more importantly to the original point, the laws/extradition would apply similarly to any nations with the same IP laws; "empire" or not.
A couple points.
First, wasn't there a huge issue where the data centers had money problems because the FBI (or some agency) was forcing them to retain all the data, as they didn't actually know for sure what was there? Or am I wrong and they had a list of specific files hosted on specific servers and were able to use that to demonstrate wrongdoing? Just because I say I'm going to hack the Gibson, doesn't mean I actually do it.
Second, there is a real jurisdiction issue here. Kim Dotcom is a German citizen based in New Zealand. The servers themselves are (or were) hosted in the US. Did Kim Dotcom himself upload anything to them? I can absolutely see the case for shutting down servers that might contain illegal data. I don't see the case for extraditing someone to the US for allegedly breaking a law that applies neither to his country of origin nor residence.
Also, I'm not sure why you're being so angry with me, I'm just looking at the facts. I do have a bias, but I'm not moving any goalposts, just making sure we discuss the actual issues at hand.
Personally I find safe harbour arguments very weak when the service provider allows anonymous sharing.
But we don't need to wonder what the US would do in such a scenario, since we already know. What's being discussed is not that the Internet being in the way somehow changes things, but that countries shouldn't be able to override jurisdictions like this. If other countries had balls, the most the US could do is ask for a person to be tried in the country they were in when the event in question happened, under that country's laws. What, the US now has jurisdiction over every living person? Anyone can be accused and tried in the US despite never having set foot there?
If they choose to operate in/through that country, yes. If he never illegally hosted anything on a server within US jurisdiction, they would never have an argument.
Your entire argument is akin to "oh, I hired someone to kill a guy in the Germany, but I'm in China so...too bad". They only care because someone was killed (pirated material was hosted) in Germany, breaking Germany's laws.
You're delusional if you think other countries wouldn't make the same claims. And it's on the recipient country to agree or not. Plenty of countries deny extradition to the US all the time, just look at Roman Polanski.
What would normally happen in that case is that one country would present evidence to the other country, which would then prosecute under its own laws and court system, since hiring assassins is illegal everywhere. You're the one who's delusional if you think countries have free reign to impose their laws on people who are not physically there. It's called sovereignty. What NZ is doing here is saying that it's the US's bitch.
Oh, gotcha. You're a child.
You could have just lead with that.