BREAKERS AHEAD!

Continuation of the warning, possibly the last from me.

Questions from a reader\subscriber prompted me to dig through my archives of stinky smellies for more background info on my plight. Again, I share this as a warning.  I have been down the road we are all on now several times before.  My current situation is the same or similar to what you all will be in if you do not fight and win.

Digging through the bin of awful revelations looking for the article detailing the abuse of a family with a Japanese National (JN) father, his teenaged JN daughter from a previous marriage and his current wife, an American citizen and their young child by their city office.  I have yet to track that down but in the search I dug up others that IMHO clearly show the progression of how things turn rotten in a short period of time.

As a refresher, remember that when I returned in 2000 the big discussion amongst gaijin working here was whether or not we had to pay into the national health care scheme.  Regardless how it was framed, it appears the argument was over whether we had to join any of the healthcare schemes JNs were required to enter.  Finding no other way to settle the issue, I made the trip into my ward office and inquired.  There I was told that the requirement for gaijin was to have insurance.  If I had private health insurance, I was not required to join any of the health care insurance schemes.  While I have not found anything to support that argument other than this one conversation, a piece published May 25, 2010 states the following.

“How about foreigners?

                  Foreigners whose length of stay is more than a year and who

                  are not covered under Kenpo need to apply for the Kokuho

                  coverage. Foreign students should be covered by Kokuho even if

                  they stay in Japan for less than a year.

                  Foreign residents are required by law to join one of the

                  health insurance schemes, but some opt out because they have

                  their own insurance contracts with private firms or they do

                  not want to pay the fees.

                  There is no penalty for not joining public insurance. But the

                  Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau asks foreign residents

                  to show their public health insurance cards when applying to

                  renew their visas to urge them to join the health care system. “ (1)

Here we see that there is no penalty for not joining.  However, for the record, I do not recall ever having been asked when renewing or upgrading my visa for my health insurance card.   First, I was told that having private insurance satisfied the requirement to have health coverage.  Then later I read that it IS required, BUT there is no penalty for not joining.  No worries, thinks I, as many coworkers and friends, all of whom are gaijin, tried warning me that I must pay in to the national health insurance system or I will wish I had.  However, they did not provide any reason for them thinking thus.

Some time later, two I knew well, one a coworker from the U.S., who lived just across the tracks from me, the other a friend from Great Britain who lives in the next township over from where I currently live went to withdraw money from their bank accounts and found substantial amounts missing.  Thinking there must be a mistake, they go to their banks.  Each were told by their banks that their respective city offices took the missing funds.  With no idea yet what was afoot, they both visited their city offices in the hopes of getting their money returned.  Looooooong story short, their efforts did not met with success.

To say this news shattered my financial planning would be an epic understatement.  I have been rushing to the nearest ATM as early as possible every payday since.  I also have since had two other coworkers who had the same experience.   One left the city office fearful the police would visit their home for they got quite incensed at the klepto they spoke to when she screamed “IT’S OUR RIGHT” in response to his inquiry on how he was supposed to live on what little they left him.  The other complained to me, “If they would just take it out of our pay as civilized nations do this would not happen.”  Probably the only thing I have ever agreed with her upon.

     Using this experience as well as drawing upon others, I believed and with hindsight can now confirm that I knew where the FBAR/FATCA bus was heading.  Most of my fellow expats in Japan simply did not what to know about this conjoined set of evil twins.  Many responded angrily.  Others just disassociated themselves from me.  Homelanders refused to believe the U.S. would ever engage in such activities.  Others cheered the programs stating that I was unpatriotic for paying taxes to Japan and not the U.S. .  They blamed me personally for the crumbling roads and bridges, failing schools and all ills in the U.S. because I was avoiding my patriotic duty by hiding behind the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, which in their view should be abolished.  “You owe, You pay” they would type over and over.

     The law behind FBAR was passed in 1970 and implemented in 1971 but it was not until the Obama admin that there were any penalties for not complying with it.  Hmmm, kinda like the Japanese social insurance stuff.  Suddenly, in or around 2009, there were penalties for not spying on those you do business with or share accounts with and they were applied retroactively.  However, FBAR persecution (not a typo) would begin a few years later.  In the meantime, those, myself included, who warned that FBAR was something that needed to be fought against until repealed and that the proposed FATCA law needed to be defeated as it was its enforcement mechanism were called names for falling for the “FBAR Bluff”.  Then, a naturalized American Jew who had, inherited I believe, accounts in Europe was forced to pay FBAR fines totaling 150% of the combined balances of his overseas accounts.  I provide the victim’s religion as he learned either himself or from his elders the value of having assets in multiple countries so that when things go as they have in the past and are once again now, he would not lose everything if (when?) forced to slip his cable and get underway under a dark sky to make for a safe harbor where he had assets awaiting him.  The name callers still have yet to apologize.   Surprised?   No?  I didn’t think you would be.

      Then FATCA is passed and signed into law be Obama.  The same voices told me and others that if we are the minnows we claim to be, we have no need to worry as FATCA is a net for whales.  We explained that their sense of security is false, that the provisions they cite as reason to be unconcerned all come with unknown expiry dates that will arrive suddenly, without warning and sooner than they think.  Their response, “Did you get a FATCA letter?  NO?  Then shut the fauci up!”  When I did get my FATCA letter from a bank, the date of preparation predated this exchange.   When I shared the contents of my FATCA letter, silence.   They, by the way, were CPAs and other highly esteemed tax professionals.  They were and remain wrong.  I was and remain correct.   Apologies from this group of credentialed tax and legal experts?  You know the answer.  Another had a friend who was a staffer for a member of the US legislature who asked his friend about it who then asked the legislator.  They knew nothing at all about FATCA/FBAR nor CBT.  They, as I did earlier with Japan’s social insurance scheme, were satisfied that my telling of the story lacked credibility as a government official said otherwise.   Yes, I have been down this road many times, but I sat in different seats each trip.

Does any of this sound familiar?  Say, perhaps, with our take on Covid and all the BS “experts” forced us to comply with, at pain of job loss or worse?  Well guess what folks, so too is this all playing out again as a redo of Ground Hog’s Day with the new screenplay written in Hell with digital IDs and CBDCs.  In the smelly heap of bad news I have been saving for over 2 decades I found a cluster of articles from 2017/18 on how Sweden is almost cashless including how subjects there are implanting IC chips in their wrists for the convenience they provide to how banks in Japan are in a race against IT companies to be the first to set up a cashless system in Japan to corporate leaders pressuring the Jgov to abandon the reliance on cash.  Recent reports claim that a major bank in Australia is shutting all its branches and will thenceforth be an online only bank.  Oh, there is so much to say on this.  Suffice it to say that there as there was myself thinking that I had nothing to worry about the social insurance scheme in Japan followed by those who hurled insults against me for my warning on FATCA/FBAR/CBT (and the OECD CRS), we have those who discount the dangers this presents.

A subscriber asked what happens when the city office discovers me.  Here’s how that will play out.  This weekend I must deposit cash into my account to ensure it posts in time to cover my credit card bill.  This is a new development as until a few months ago I could pay in cash; first at a pay window but in the last decade through ATMs and starting during covid only through ATMs.  Now only electronic payments are accepted.  See the progression?  If the city office rep visits the bank between Monday and when the credit card company automatically withdraws the amount of the bill, the only option left for me is to cash in the coins in my “piggy” banks and if I have enough g=for whatever the current cost of airfare is, buy an air ticket back to the US, saying good bye to my family here for good.  Once the city office finds me, they will zero my account each and every payday.  Not getting enough to cover the 2-5 years of missed social insurance payments, they will raid the house and remove anything and everything of value regardless of whose it is.  Unless, I hope, I am no longer here.  As long as I remain, once they find me, I will be a Trojan horse for both the kleptocratic US and Japanese governments to drain all wealth from my wife and kids.

This fear is not new.  I have been living with it for almost 20 years.  But with news that the government  is now going to conduct a survey even before the bill becomes law, they are now actively seeking me and all in my situation out, though many do not know they are.  For those who have seen naval war movies, I have been trying to avoid their passive sonar for two decades but they have just started active pinging.  I no longer need to make a sound to be found, if they just look my way, they find me.

Do I think they will go to my bank this coming Monday?  Not really.   But they will at some point, and now that will be sooner rather than later.  But they could visit this Monday.  Since my credit cards change in acceptable payment, I have been anxious not only every payday, but also the few days between redepositing enough to cover the credit card bill and when it is deducted.  Now, this terror is even more intense.

All who read this, you too are going to find yourself in similar dire straights unless you stop this.  It is too late for me, I can hear the breakers ahead.  If you do not act, you too WILL find yourselves upon rocks and shoals.

(1) It must also be pointed out that this “expert” opinion came after both my coworker and a friend had their bank accounts drained by their city offices.  However, I had read similar before and believed it until my too acquaintances had their OMG moments.