[snakeoil]

http://www.thenation.com/article/176486 ... irty-money" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?

Another result of the UBS affair was that in 2010 Congress enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which requires foreign banks to notify the IRS about accounts held by US taxpayers or face stiff penalties.

One section of FATCA that has elicited particularly intense hostility is its provisions for reciprocity, meaning that American banks would have to provide foreign governments with the same information about their nationals who hold US accounts. FATCA was opposed by investment banks like JPMorgan and Bank of America and foreign financial institutions like the Zurich Insurance Group and the Hong Kong Securities Association. But no one fought harder against the rule than Florida bankers, real estate developers, politicians and regulators, who feared it would slow the flow of foreign money into the state’s economy, especially in Miami.

“The IRS is going to get the names of their girlfriends and aunts and uncles who are serving as directors of companies set up offshore,” he said.

That remains to be seen, as opponents are already campaigning to repeal the rule and the IRS recently announced that it is giving foreign financial institutions an additional six months, until July of next year, to comply. Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, has introduced a bill to repeal FATCA, saying it is a “violation of sovereign nations’ laws and privacy matters.” Congressman Posey is leading the repeal effort in the House. On July 1, he wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew saying that FATCA measures “themselves would not bring one penny into the US treasury, they would discourage investment in the United States.”

A number of conservative activists are also involved in the FATCA repeal campaign, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Andrew Quinlan of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P).

[RealJustme]

Why should the IRS have powers over banks in other Countries?

Fining American citizens for violations of our banking laws is one thing, but violating sovereign nations’ laws and privacy matters is just wrong. Many European Countries have even stricter banking laws than the United States does, how would we react if Germany or France was to start fining our banks for not being compliance with their banking laws?

You wacky liberals think the Government is the solution to everything, citizens have rights not Governments.

[johnforbes]

The US will become ever more desperate for every penny of potential tax money as Obama and his ilk spend and spend and spend.

[snakeoil]

Ah, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

Although the article is a bit long; it is well researched and well written. Should you have read the article you would have found out that most governments are eager to recover the lost money that has been stolen from their coffers (one of the main points of the article.)

1. Most of the condos in Miami costing in excess of $2.5 million are both with cash (86%.)

2. Many Russians who profited from the breakup of the Soviet Union by stealing the county's assets while the government was ineffective after the breakup are laundering their money; first in London and then in Miami through real estate purchases. There are three direct flights a week between Moscow and Miami. Exerpt: “It’s a money center, and it’s a lot easier to get your money there than directly to the US, because of laws and tax issues,” she said. “But after your money has been in London for a while, you can move it to other places more easily.”

3. Exerpt: This remarkable boom in high-end real estate has been driven by foreign money, with “buyers coming from all over the world but with the highest concentration from Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Russia,”

4. Exerpt: significant numbers of foreign condo buyers are political figures and businesspeople seeking to illegally export capital abroad, launder profits or evade taxes.

5. Exerpt: The combination of tax haven accessibility and weak banking secrecy and corporate registry rules—as in Wilmington, Delaware, where nearly 300,000 businesses are registered at a single address—has created a huge global problem.

6. Exerpt: A recent report by the Tax Justice Network described tax havens as “the economic equivalent of an astrophysical black hole” and estimated that they collectively held as much as $32 trillion—roughly double the annual GDP of the United States.

7. Exerpt: In February, a member of Russia’s ruling party, Vladimir Pekhtin, was forced to resign from the Duma when a blogger published documents showing that he owned three Miami properties worth more than a combined $2 million. Pekhtin’s holdings were especially embarrassing because he had not disclosed his overseas properties in his annual financial disclosure filing, as is legally required under a bill he had written as chairman of the Duma’s ethics committee. In Russia, which saw illegal capital outflows of more than $200 billion from 1994 to 2011, charges of corruption and lavish spending overseas have become major political issues.

8. Exerpt: It’s difficult to discover who specifically has been snapping up high-end properties, because many buyers are not individuals but Florida limited liability companies (LLCs). In August 2012, a 30,000-square-foot house on Indian Creek Island with thirteen bedrooms and fourteen bathrooms sold for $47 million, the most expensive home sale in Miami’s history. Media accounts identified the anonymous buyer as a Russian but the listed owner is AVK Land Holding, a Florida LLC, whose business address is a pay-by-the-day business center in midtown Manhattan and which was registered a few months before the sale by a Tallahassee company called Incorporating Services Ltd. AVK’s annual report is signed by Andrey M. Kaydin, an attorney based in Coney Island who has also served as a beard for buyers of luxury properties in New York City.

9. Exerpt: I was especially interested in the growing presence of Russians and other Eastern Europeans, who began purchasing properties in Miami soon after the collapse of communism. Early arrivals included various Russian pop stars, among them Igor Nikolaev and Alla Pugacheva, but more than a few bad apples as well. Miami soon became a boomtown for former government officials and post-perestroika businessmen who looted the state during privatization and for mobsters who trafficked cocaine, bought strip clubs and set up offshore banks around the Caribbean. In his book Red Mafiya, Robert Friedman wrote that “Versace-clad” Russian gang leaders found Miami to be an ideal base for money laundering, “where each new day brought the potential for a multimillion- dollar score.” By 1996, according to a Miami Herald story that year, some 300 former Soviet citizens had bought properties in South Florida.

10.Exerpt: In 2003, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set up what became known as the Foreign Corruption Investigations Group in Miami to track down assets held by foreign officials and business executives in the United States. Within months, the group—which was based in Miami due to the large number of requests for assistance that the local office received from foreign governments—seized a $3.5 million Key Biscayne condo owned by Byron Jerez, former head of Nicaragua’s tax office. The following year, the United States returned to Nicaragua $2.7 million worth of assets that had been stolen by former President Arnoldo Alemán, who was sentenced in his home country to twenty years under house detention for embezzling $100 million from the state treasury. The assets included various Miami bank accounts, a cabana at the Key Biscayne Ocean Club, and a $150,000 deposit for the purchase of another Key Biscayne condominium. (Please note that foreign governments requested assistance form the US.)

11. Exerpt: In 2008, after Uruguayan authorities alerted ICE, the feds agreed to extradite Juan Peirano Basso, an international fugitive wanted for embezzling more than $800 million from financial institutions in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, and who had been living comfortably in Miami. Basso’s actions “are believed to have caused the collapse of the Uruguayan economy and to have caused the South American financial crisis of 2002,” said an ICE press release announcing his extradition. Since its inception, the Foreign Corruption Investigations Group has made eighty criminal arrests, secured 148 indictments and seized more than $131 million in assets, according to ICE.
In 2008, after Uruguayan authorities alerted ICE, the feds agreed to extradite Juan Peirano Basso, an international fugitive wanted for embezzling more than $800 million from financial institutions in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, and who had been living comfortably in Miami. Basso’s actions “are believed to have caused the collapse of the Uruguayan economy and to have caused the South American financial crisis of 2002,” said an ICE press release announcing his extradition. Since its inception, the Foreign Corruption Investigations Group has made eighty criminal arrests, secured 148 indictments and seized more than $131 million in assets, according to ICE.

I could go on and on but my point is that the comments to my OP are off the mark.

[RealJustme]

We should be like most other Countries, only citizens can "own" any portion of the United States. That would stop criminal from other Countries "owning" some of the best homes in the United States pricing U.S. citizens out of the market.