IRS Crackdown on Canadian US Expatriates Described

The 2011 tax year may be a pivotal one for many U.S. citizens living abroad, including the roughly one million living in Canada, as the Internal Revenue Service moves towards enforcing reporting guidelines and compliance rules for its expatriates.

The United States requires all of its citizens file a tax return on global income regardless of where they live or for how long, even if no money is owed to the IRS. That applies to dual U.S.-Canadian citizens living here — even those who might have moved to Canada as a baby and never returned to their country of birth, let alone ever earned any income in the U.S.  READ MORE HERE IN CBC NEWS.

US IRS to go easy on American residents in Canada Per the Globe & Mail

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is poised to waive potentially massive penalties for Americans who agree to come clean and don't owe any taxes, The Globe and Mail has learned.

The new rules will be announced within weeks by the IRS, according to David Jacobson, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, who has been swamped with complaints from anxious Canadians.

"What the IRS is saying here is that if ... you don't owe taxes to the U.S., and you file your return and they show you don't owe taxes, there aren't going to be any penalties for having filed late," Mr. Jacobson said in an interview Thursday.

Fears of a looming U.S. tax crackdown has caused a wave of angst among the roughly one million Americans living in Canada. Many of them long ago stopped filing, assuming they owed no tax.

READ MORE IN  THE GLOBE & MAIL ARTICLE HERE