FATCA – Overlawyered

Wealth registries and exit taxes

Walter Olson — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 10:01:36 +0000

Not scary or intrusive at all: presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has called for enacting a “national wealth registry,” the better to enforce future schemes of taxation, confiscation, and restraints on expatriation [Brittany De Lea, Fox Business; related, Chris Edwards, Cato; Emily Ekins on opinion poll] And the steep “exit tax” that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sanders propose to slap on wealthy individuals who depart the U.S., of up to 40 and 60 percent respectively, did not sound better in the original German [Ira Stoll; earlier]

P.S.: On the constitutionality angle, note that the Competitive Enterprise Institute has just filed a lawsuit on behalf of a couple challenging the constitutionality of a provision of the 2017 tax reform law known as the Mandatory Repatriation Tax. Counsel Andrew Grossman, quoted in the CEI press release, stated:

The Mandatory Repatriation Tax is unconstitutional for the same reason that a wealth tax would be. The Constitution does not permit Congress to simply declare money that it wants to tax to be income and then demand its cut. And the courts have never permitted retroactive taxation reaching back anywhere near the 30 years, as the Mandatory Repatriation Tax does. The details of the tax may be complicated, but the constitutional violations are clear.

Tags: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, FATCA, taxes, Wall Street

Wealth registries and exit taxes is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 10:05:26 +0000

Advice to Mark Calabria, newly installed as head of the Federal Housing Finance Administration, or FHFA [Arnold Kling; more on what to do with Fannie and Freddie]
Bad blood between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren on consumer bankruptcy issue goes back decades [Matthew Yglesias, Vox]
“Financial planning websites consistently emphasize paying off revolving high-interest debt before saving for retirement (unless a company offers a match rate).” But state-mandated auto-IRAs nudge workers the other way [Aaron Yelowitz, Cato, earlier]
Competition for incorporation: “Nevada adopts fee-shifting: Should Delaware worry?” [Stephen Bainbridge]
“The True Winners and Losers of Financial Regulation” [Diego Zuluaga] Fed vs. narrow banks [John Cochrane, more]
FATCA was the bad fairy’s curse at the royal baby shower: “Welcome to Tax Hell, Little Earl of Sussex” [Suzanne Lucas, earlier]

Tags: bankruptcy, banks, Delaware, FATCA, loser pays, mortgages, Nevada

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

FATCA may soon vex the British royal family

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 05:05:46 +0000

FATCA, the expatriate financial reporting law, has been a compliance nightmare for many ordinary Americans abroad, and soon it may vex the British royal family. Depending on how and whether Prince Harry mingles his finances with those of American-born fiancee Meghan Markle, various aspects of Crown finances might have to be reported to American authorities. “The United States and Eritrea are the only countries in the world that tax based on citizenship, rather than residency.” [Suzanne Lucas, Evil HR Lady/Inc.; Amy Alkon] More: Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg.

Tags: extraterritoriality, FATCA, United Kingdom

FATCA may soon vex the British royal family is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 04:05:58 +0000

What’s actually in the new House-passed bill revamping Dodd-Frank? And what’s likely to happen to it in the Senate? [David Henderson, EconLib; Benjamin Parker, Weekly Standard; Stephen Bainbridge]
Supreme Court, 9-0, rebuffs SEC: yes, disgorgement is a penalty and statute of limitations applies to it [Theresa Gabaldon/SCOTUSBlog (statutes of limitations “vital to the welfare of society,” per Sotomayor), Bainbridge and more, Thaya Brook Knight and Ilya Shapiro/Cato]
Allan Meltzer, R.I.P. [James Dorn, Gerald O’Driscoll, Ian Vásquez, Cato]
“The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the New Trump Administration: Your Top Ten Questions Answered” [Foley & Lardner]
June 15, mark your calendar: “Financial Crisis and Reform: Have We Done Enough to Fix the Government-Sponsored Entities?” with John Allison, Susan Wharton Gates, R. Christopher Whalen, Landon Parsons, and Ike Brannon, Cato event streaming live or in person in Washington, D.C.;
Why, yes: “Is It Time to Repeal FATCA?” [Veronique de Rugy, more]

Tags: Dodd-Frank, FATCA, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Securities and Exchange Commission, statutes of limitations, Supreme Court

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 11:03:29 +0000

Judge Neil Gorsuch on securities litigation and related issues of agency deference [Paul Weiss attorneys at D & O Diary]
New York attorney general’s office pursued Hank Greenberg for years, wound up settling for $9 million and this lousy t-shirt [WSJ editorial]
Exit tax and FATCA: “America charges $2,350 to hand in your passport, a fee that is more than twenty times the average of other high-income countries.” [Robert Wood, Forbes]
“Overgrown Wall Street regulation needs a trim in 2017” [Thaya Brook Knight, The Hill] Last-minute Obama regs encourage shareholder activism [Stephen Bainbridge]
Organized push to restrict use of cash includes some idealists, some economists, quite a few tax- or rent-seekers [Lawrence White/Cato, David Henderson (did USAID push India?), Stephen Williamson via Henderson]
U.S. regulatory environment threatens the rise of fintech [Nikolai Kuznetsov, TechCrunch]

Tags: banks, Eric Schneiderman, FATCA, Neil Gorsuch, securities litigation, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 10:10:16 +0000

Bank of England deputy governor: banks have incurred an estimated $275 billion in legal costs since 2008 and that’s been a drag on economic growth [Katy Burne and Aruna Viswanatha, WSJ]
Economist Ken Rogoff proposes doing away with most large-denomination paper money so as to stifle crime, tax evasion and the like, and George Selgin of Cato pushes back;
“M&A Lawsuits Plunge As Delaware Judges Make Them Harder To Settle” [Daniel Fisher]
CFPB keeps pushing to expand its authority, but on lending rate caps it runs into a direct statutory limit [Thaya Brook Knight]
House Financial Services Committee votes to repeal the awful conflict minerals rule [Marcia Narine via Bainbridge and more, earlier] And maybe the rest of Dodd-Frank too? [Mark Calabria]
How the Swiss–American Chamber of Commerce sees FATCA, the overseas banking law vexing expats and legitimate business overseas [American Swiss Foundation]

Tags: banks, CFPB, Dodd-Frank, FATCA, securities litigation, Switzerland

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 05:05:16 +0000

Bernie Sanders still rants and raves about Glass-Steagall Act. Who will break the news to him? [Catherine Rampell/WaPo, P.M. Carpenter (Krugman, Pearlstein in accord with Rampell), earlier] “Hillary Clinton vows to go ‘well beyond’ Dodd-Frank” [Housing Wire via Kevin Funnell]
“In the past, ‘financial institutions were unwilling, for relationship reasons, to litigate against each other…That has changed dramatically.'” [Daniel Fisher quoting New York attorney Brian Fraser]
“Government Thinks You’re Too Dumb To Try Crowdfunding” [Ben Weingarten, The Federalist]
“If every bank behaved like Abacus, the financial crisis wouldn’t have occurred.” So guess which bank got prosecuted [Jiayang Fan, The New Yorker back in October]
Billions in free money for consumers, just by regulating credit card fees! Sorry, it’s not that simple [Todd Zywicki]
“The war against cash”: government vs. the cash economy [Daniel Mitchell, Cato, first and second post]
New IRS authority to secure revocation of passports should give pause to everyone concerned about American liberty [Investors Business Daily]

Tags: banks, Bernie Sanders, Crisis of 2008, FATCA, Hillary Clinton, taxes, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 05:05:52 +0000

Robert Litan in Fortune on why Elizabeth Warren went after him;
“Economists have no idea how to measure the value created by the financial sector.” [Arnold Kling]
W$J at end of August had an investigative report on the (opaque, high-discretion, unaccountable) system of installing “monitors” in banks and other financial institutions to settle civil or criminal charges;
Update: in a sidebar to my City Journal piece on New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman this summer, I covered his charges of “redlining” against small upstate banks that did not operate in inner cities; now Schneiderman has extracted $825,000 from a Buffalo bank [NY AG press release]
No kangaroo courts at the SEC, please [Bloomberg View editorial on in-house adjudicators, earlier here, etc.]
How the FATCA law, deplored in this space for years, makes life hard for U.S. expatriates/spouses [Colleen Graffy, WSJ]
“Except for the ten to twelve million people who use them every year, just about everybody hates payday loans.” [New York Fed “Liberty Street Economics” via Tabarrok] Despite reports of FDIC back-off, Operation Choke Point controversy not over [Ballard Spahr via Kevin Funnell]

Tags: banks, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Schneiderman, FATCA, Operation Choke Point, settlement monitors

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 04:05:12 +0000

Stock analyst in India puts out a “sell” recommendation, is arrested and jailed [W$J, compare Argentina economists]
Dear Mayor Bill de Blasio, Messrs. Dodd, Frank, & Co.: London thanks you! (It’s now back on top over NYC as most-desired financial center.) [Business Insider]
Amid court setbacks, SEC says it might tinker with its use of in-house administrative judges after all [David Michaels, Bloomberg]
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Arbitration Study: A Summary and Critique” [Jason Scott Johnston and Todd Zywicki, SSRN]
“Rand Paul and Five Expats Sue the Feds Over FATCA” [Matt Welch, Reason, earlier on this exceedingly bad law]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came to Cato and spoke, that’s not a punch line setup but a real thing that happened [Tom Clougherty, more on Warren-Vitter and “too big to fail”]
Use credit responsibly? Sucker! NYC first city to follow state trend toward banning employer use of credit history in hiring [Jennifer Mora, David Warner, and Rod Fliegel, Littler this spring]

Tags: arbitration, Bill de Blasio, CFPB, Elizabeth Warren, FATCA, India, NYC, Securities and Exchange Commission, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 04:05:56 +0000

Marcia Narine on D.C. Circuit’s recent ruling striking down part of Dodd-Frank conflict mineral disclosure rule [Business Law Prof]
More on suit challenging constitutionality of FATCA, the law complicating many expatriates’ lives [Paul Mirengoff, PowerLine]
“Jury Will Put A Price On Terrorism — And Stick A Bank With The Bill” [Daniel Fisher, Reuters on Arab Bank settlement]
Operation Choke Point: “How a program meant to stamp out fraud has put a stranglehold on legitimate industries” [Reason TV video, AmmoLand on markup of Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer’s anti-Choke-Point Financial Institution Customer Protection Act]
Federal Reserve’s denial of core banking services to Colorado cannabis businesses: consistent with its authorizing statutes? [George Selgin/Cato, related from me on RICO suit against bankers, bonders, and others interacting with the industry]
“A financial system based not on … charging interest for lending … but on traditional social values”: Russia’s Orthodox Church backs interest-avoiding finance system akin to Islamic sharia finance [Bloomberg, Moscow Times]
Two popular views in tension with each other: “Wall Street = short term thinking” and “Wall Street spins meager current earnings into bubbles” [Kevin Erdmann via Tyler Cowen]

Tags: banks, Dodd-Frank, FATCA, Russia, terrorism, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system