Overseas Radio Network to Launch with P.T. Freeman as Host
By: P. T. FreemanIn the first days of January 2012, the Overseas Radio Network will begin broadcasting, aiming at people who desire for one reason or another, to leave the United States and set up a new life elsewhere. It will be primarily talk radio that will be broadcasting online. There will approximately 40 show hosts with various themes and topics, most of whom are experts in their fields.
Yours truly (P.T.) will have a show entitled: “The Second Passports and Expatriation Report: The Life of a Perpetual Traveler.” This will be a 60 minute program that will commence at 16:00 US Eastern Time. My friend and colleague Mark Nestmann will be a guest on the show from time to time.
I invite you to join me each Friday as I discuss second passports, loss of nationality, immigration, travel experiences and opportunities abroad. We will also take calls from listeners during that time.
For further information, please see overseasradio.com.
Nestmann Interviewed by This Week in Money & Sovereign Man
I’ve recently been interviewed by Phil Mackesy of “This Week in Money” and Simon Black of “Sovereign Man.”Here are the links to the archived interviews:
This Week in Money: http://talkdigitalnetwork.com/2011/12/this-week-in-money-9/. My interview starts at 31:33. In this interview I give a chapter by chapter breakdown of my book The Lifeboat Strategy, including numerous practical recommendations to lower your vulnerability to lawsuits, asset seizures, and other threats
Sovereign Man: http://withoutborders.libsyn.com/mark-nestmann-on-201-9efc9f-mp3 . In this interview, I discuss my personal experience with “civil forfeiture,” and how that led to my interest in offshore asset protection. Simon and I also discuss what’s to come in the USA as the global financial system continues to deteriorate.
Enjoy listening!
Can Obama Send U.S. Citizens to Guantanamo Bay?
The blogosphere has been humming the last couple of weeks with condemnation of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. This bill, which funds U.S. military forces for the coming year, has a neat little provision tucked away in Sec. 1031. It permits anyone the government claims is “a member of, or part of, al-Qaida or an associated force” to be held in military custody “without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” Including, according to numerous blog posts, U.S. citizens residing in the United States.The bill has passed both the Senate and House, and is now before a congressional conference committee to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions.
Because the bill, after all, funds the almighty military, there’s close to a 0% chance that it won’t show up on President Obama’s desk in the next few days or weeks. And, despite Obama’s threats to veto the bill, he won’t. More importantly, even if he did veto the bill, it wouldn’t change anything. The president already has or has assumed most if not all of the powers this bill provides. Perhaps that’s why leaders of both chambers have agreed to insert language to the effect that, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”
“Existing law or authorities” leaves a lot of room for abuse. For instance, President Obama claims the authority to assassinate U.S. citizens without a trial, and has done so on at least one occasion. In September, he authorized the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections. A U.S. drone armed with a missile subsequently killed Awlaki in Yemen.
The military also has authority under existing law to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely, without trial or any due process whatsoever. That’s a consequence of the Military Commissions Act, enacted in 2006, which allows the president to throw anyone in a military prison, including U.S. citizens, without access to any court. With this authority, the law repeals, or attempts to repeal, the constitutional principle of habeas corpus. If you’re classified as an “enemy combatant” under this act, there’s no requirement that a trial of any kind will ever occur. You can be held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay or another military facility, without ever being accused of a crime.
The blogosphere seems to believe that this bill would make the entire United States a “battlefield.” Well, the United States already is a battlefield, in law if not in reality. In 2006, Congress authorized the president to deploy troops within the United States when, in the president’s judgment, the authorities of the state are incapable of maintaining public order. This may occur without the consent of state authorities. Two years later, the U.S. Army announced the first deployment of a combat brigade within U.S. borders since the end of the Civil War. It functions as an “on-call federal response force for natural or man-made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks” and for “crowd control.”
So…the president can already assassinate U.S. citizens or detain them indefinitely without trial. Obama can also deploy the military anywhere in the United States to maintain public order. He can do so indefinitely, not just until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force. In that sense, the authority in the National Defense Authorization Act is actually more limited than that which the president already possesses.
I don’t want to minimize the seriousness of provisions such as those in this bill. The fact that these powers already exist underscore the fact that Obama and for that matter any U.S. president already has the powers of a dictator, including the authority to assassinate U.S. citizens without trial or other legal process. Obama has the good political sense to use these powers only against individuals such as Anwar al-Awlaki. The real question is…
Who’s next?
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Nestmann
The IRS Wants Your Electronic Data
Other than the crisis in Europe or Herman Cain’s latest mistress, what else is happening in the world?In case you missed it, on October 18, the IRS issued what’s called a “Chief Counsel Advice” (CCA) concerning what it calls “original electronic data files.” Basically, the IRS now asserts the right to issue a summons to force a taxpayer to provide this data within whatever statute of limitation applies for the type of examination the agency is undertaking. And that means that you need to be careful not to dispose of any electronic communications or records you maintain that might concern some future tax issue. Click here to view the October 18 CCA.
The Internal Revenue Code gives the IRS authority to review “books, papers, records or other data,” to confirm the accuracy of tax or information returns, calculate a tax liability, or collect any tax or penalty. To enforce these provisions, the IRS may issue a summons to you or any third party custodian of records relevant to the inquiry.
The standard of proof necessary to enforce an IRS summons is laughably low. All the IRS needs to demonstrate is that the investigation is legitimate, the inquiry is relevant to that investigation, the IRS doesn’t already have the information, and that the agency has followed all required administrative steps. This means any efforts to quash the summons probably won’t be successful.
What electronic records does the IRS want you to maintain? Essentially, it’s “metadata,” which Google helpfully defines as “a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.” But in the context of an IRS examination, or other demand for electronic data, metadata is information on who, when, and how electronic data was created. For instance, the IRS could request e-mail metadata including:
- Author
- Recipient(s), including cc and bcc
- Date and time sent
- Date and time received
- Subject
- Attachment relationship to original email (and metadata fields listed for e-documents)
- Forwarded e-mails; attachment documents and files
Fortunately or unfortunately, every email you send or receive probably has the metadata associated with it automatically included. So does every file you save on your PC. To get a sense of what information email metadata contains, look at the “Internet headers” your messages—sent and received—contain. It’s easy to produce this data if you save your emails or computer files without editing them. Editing the emails or files changes the metadata. But be careful: these changes may be recorded in the metadata!
This discussion may seem esoteric, but it’s not. It means that you need to be careful when deleting emails or other files that may have even the slightest relevance to an IRS investigation. For instance, unreported offshore accounts currently are an IRS hot-button issue. Earlier this month, the IRS revised the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) to include additional guidance to agents investigating violations of the requirements for reporting foreign accounts on the Foreign Bank Account Reporting Form TD F 90-22.1 (FBAR).
Any U.S. citizen or permanent resident must file this form annually to acknowledge a financial interest in, signature authority, or other authority over foreign financial accounts outside the United States if the aggregate value of those accounts exceeds $10,000. Failure to file this form—and to keep all relevant records associated with it—can subject you to both civil and criminal penalties.
The new section of the IRM provides detailed guidelines to IRS agents for assessing FBAR-related penalties. It also makes clear that failing to keep the required records relating to the FBAR is a separate violation from failing to file the FBAR itself. The civil penalty for failing to file the FBAR is $10,000 for each violation. Now there are two possible fines: a $10,000 fine for failure to file and an additional $10,000 fine for failing to keep the appropriate records. You must keep the records for at least six years after the due date of the FBAR. For instance, for most U.S. taxpayers, the 2010 FBAR form was due June 30, 2011. That means you need to keep the relevant records relating to offshore accounts you held in 2010 at least until June 30, 2017.
One way to avoid the additional $10,000 fine for failing to keep the appropriate records would be to turn over those records in response to an IRS summons. But if you do so, that could give the IRS the ammunition to prove that you “willfully” failed to file the FBAR. That’s a much more serious violation punished with a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and a $500,000 criminal fine.
What to do? There are no easy answers. One possible solution to the metadata dilemma is to avoid any type of electronic communication or storage for anything related to your taxes. That’s not realistic for most people, so the only other alternative is to save all foreseeably relevant electronic communications for at least three years after the due date for your “regular” tax return and six years for anything that’s offshore-related. And no, it’s not sufficient to print out emails, statements, etc. You need to save the original electronic records!
It may not make you feel any better, but the IRS isn’t alone in demanding metadata. An increasing number of lawsuits ask for metadata in discovery requests. In one case, lawyers representing employees eliminated in a corporate “downsizing” demonstrated that the corporation involved tried to delete metadata from electronic records. The records allegedly proved that the company had illegally targeted older employees to positions that were eventually eliminated. The corporation eventually settled the lawsuit with a payout of nearly $60 million.
A good rule of thumb is never to write in an email or store in an electronic file anything you wouldn’t want published on the front page of the National Enquirer…because that’s where it could wind up!
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Nestmann
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