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US Tax Problems For Expats With Gabriel Morrow | The Christian Reeve Podcast #312 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:03
  Podcast. Today's guest is all the way
• 0:06
  from the States. His name is Gabriel Marrow, and
• 0:09
  he's here today to talk about a rather interesting topic, which
• 0:13
  I didn't ever imagine I would talk about on this show.
• 0:15
  But it is open to everything, and I had to sit down and really
• 0:19
  do my research. It's all about US taxation for
• 0:22
  expats abroad. Welcome to the show, Gabriel.
• 0:25
  How are you doing? First correction, I'm
• 0:28
  technically from the states, but I'm actually in Canada.
• 0:33
  How long you been in Canada now? Since 2020. 2020 interesting.
• 0:38
  What's when in 2020 did you move there?
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  September 20th of 2020 to be exact, was when I first moved,
• 0:45
  flown here and I came here as a visitor originally and then I
• 0:50
  became a permanent resident. My wife sponsored me here.
• 0:54
  Wow, dumb. That must have been a really
• 0:57
  difficult time to move there because I, I can kind of relate.
• 0:59
  I moved back to England in like February 2020 and like I moved
• 1:09
  up to Manchester here in the UK around early March, maybe late
• 1:14
  February and then boom, COVID hits.
• 1:17
  So it's lucky timing, but you, you moved right in the midst of
• 1:20
  it like sort of well, life or five, five months in, like how
• 1:23
  did that work? Well, I mean, in some ways it
• 1:27
  was less hectic. In other ways it was more
• 1:29
  hectic. I suppose in an average move.
• 1:31
  I mean, I don't really know what it's like to move between other
• 1:34
  countries outside of a COVID situation.
• 1:38
  I can't say that the airports were basically dead at the time.
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  Bonus, I suppose, yeah. So I mean, there's that aspect
• 1:50
  of it. And I mean, Canada basically
• 1:55
  weighed me in because I at the time they had travel
• 1:57
  restrictions where the typical American couldn't fly to Canada
• 2:02
  unless they were married to someone in Canada.
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  That was the only exemption. Oh, so so you'd already married
• 2:09
  your partner by that point in the states or?
• 2:14
  Yeah, well, she came down to the States in February, February the
• 2:19
  13th. Well, she came down in February.
• 2:23
  We got married on the 12th, her birthday was on on February the
• 2:26
  13th. And then 14th of February was
• 2:29
  Valentine's Day. So that's an interesting week.
• 2:33
  That's an expensive month. Every month for you, I'll say
• 2:36
  every year for you, February is like, I get that.
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  I mean, my wife's not really much for much for a material
• 2:46
  thing. So I mean, that's good at least.
• 2:51
  Right. Sorry.
• 2:53
  I just want, I just want to ask you about that.
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  I was, I just found that kind of interest in the timing of all of
• 2:57
  that now UXUS taxation. When I started looking into this
• 3:06
  and your story and everything in between, I decided I would let
• 3:10
  you just kind of tell your story and I would kind of give the
• 3:13
  viewers a little bit of an overview, I suppose just a
• 3:17
  couple of key factors regarding US taxation and then we kind of
• 3:22
  delve into your experiences because this blew my mind.
• 3:27
  This completely blew my mind. Like tax in every country is
• 3:30
  always going to be a little bit different.
• 3:32
  Here in the UK, it can be a bit of a pain in the arse, but it's
• 3:37
  generally pretty straightforward.
• 3:38
  You know, you owe what you owe and you'll get what's owed to
• 3:42
  you eventually. You just have to kind of keep
• 3:46
  track of things. You know, that's on you.
• 3:49
  But like, you always get your money one way or another.
• 3:55
  But here's the thing. So most countries base their
• 4:00
  taxation on residency. So if you live and work in that
• 4:04
  country and you, you know, you claim the benefits of the
• 4:06
  system, you pay into the system, then you're paying taxes as part
• 4:11
  of that, but then you're getting stuff back.
• 4:13
  That's kind of the the general, you know, mindset behind that.
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  And then of course, there's other things.
• 4:19
  You know, if you have a car, you pay Rd. tax, you know, you pay
• 4:22
  for insurance. I know that's not quite tax,
• 4:24
  but, you know, expenses expenditure.
• 4:26
  Now the US is kind of, I suppose, infamous for its tax
• 4:32
  taxation. You know, the IRS is always kind
• 4:35
  of been in this as this like boogie man of of sorts.
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  And in a sense, and I think most people, if they're really being
• 4:44
  honest, they're always going to be a little bit wary of tax,
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  especially if it's quite high. And you know, if you're in a
• 4:49
  higher tax bracket, then you're dealing with a lot more.
• 4:53
  But the US tax system is just, there's so much going on.
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  And right off the bat, when I looked at this topic and and
• 5:03
  what you were dealing with, I couldn't believe that the US
• 5:08
  bases it's taxation on citizenship rather than
• 5:13
  residency. So let's let's begin there.
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  Well, it's AI mean it's a way like of the of the Civil War is
• 5:22
  what it really is. Because back then Abraham
• 5:26
  Lincoln said if you want, if you wish, you want to flee the
• 5:30
  country, you should at least pay taxes to support the war effort,
• 5:33
  is what he basically said. And to people at the time, that
• 5:38
  sounded reasonable. I mean, if you're fleeing the
• 5:41
  war, you should be taxed to support the war.
• 5:44
  Average kind. Of like a honor, Honor thing, I
• 5:47
  suppose. Yeah.
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  That's what it was originally about.
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  And I mean, for a time it was repealed after the Civil War,
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  but later on they brought back that law in the form of the IRS
• 6:01
  Act in the early 20th century or so.
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  And that and at the time, nobody was said much about it because
• 6:10
  that mainly impacted the rich people who are abroad.
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  It didn't really impact most other people and most and in
• 6:19
  general taxing the rich for the average person, that sounds like
• 6:21
  a popular idea. Let's go after the rich back
• 6:25
  cast and move overseas. So it wasn't a big deal.
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  And as the years went by, most people in Congress didn't even
• 6:34
  pay any attention to it, didn't know about it, didn't really
• 6:38
  understand that the US citizens were taxed.
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  Now you, because I go on. Go on, go on.
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  That changed somewhat as they started passing other laws and
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  especially during the Obama years.
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  But yeah. Something in what you said
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  there's quite interesting. You're like, oh, people weren't
• 6:56
  aware of this. And I feel like from what I've
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  read online, both from some companies that talk about it and
• 7:02
  also individual personal accounts, seems like a lot of US
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  expats are not always aware that they are obliged to pay taxes
• 7:14
  for the US when they when they, when not just when they live
• 7:18
  abroad, but when they travel abroad, Which that also blew my
• 7:22
  mind. I was like, why are you paying
• 7:22
  taxes if you're travelling? Like if you're on your holidays
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  and you're not earning, that seems a bit unfair, doesn't it?
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  But it's like you're not exempt. Well, I mean, it's, it's
• 7:33
  something they don't know about, but I mean, it's common.
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  I mean, you think it's common sense you move from the state of
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  say, Tennessee or say the state of California is the state of
• 7:44
  Tennessee. Your common sense would think I
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  don't owe or pay taxes in California anymore because I'm
• 7:49
  in Tennessee and it's and they don't, they don't have
• 7:52
  jurisdiction. So you think that's not how the
• 7:56
  US sees it? Whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 7:58
  Back up. OK, This is a new thing I didn't
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  know. So if you were born in the state
• 8:02
  of California and you lived and worked and paid taxes there and
• 8:06
  you moved to whatever Missouri or I don't know, let's say you
• 8:10
  moved to Texas and you're now living and working in Texas, you
• 8:18
  still have to pay taxes from California.
• 8:21
  No, you don't. But that's kind of like that's
• 8:25
  what the US government's trying to do internationally is trying
• 8:28
  to basically do that. We'll, we'll, we'll get there.
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  I just, I for a minute I was like, no, that, that that's just
• 8:35
  lunacy. From the tax system with the
• 8:38
  USIRS is lunacy now they don't To be fair, California I have
• 8:44
  heard rumors of this online. I don't know if the I don't
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  really been able to look into it in death, but someone did tell
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  me that California has tried to tax people who left California,
• 8:54
  but I'm not really well versed in that so I'm not going to go
• 8:57
  into that topic. Is that punishing people for
• 9:01
  leaving? I mean, I got to say, like when
• 9:03
  I heard about this and started reading into it, I was like, at
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  first I was like, is the US trying to stop people from
• 9:10
  leaving? And then, you know, with what
• 9:13
  you've just kind of cleared up there about it being a hangover
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  from the Civil War, It's it's like, I guess maybe the US
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  government looks at it as, Oh, well, we can still make money
• 9:22
  from the people that have left. And so, you know, we're not
• 9:27
  losing anything if they emigrate.
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  But you're also kind of punishing people in a sense,
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  because not everyone's going to want to work within the US
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  system. Like some people want to try
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  something different. You know, some people might have
• 9:40
  family in other countries and, you know, maybe they, let's say
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  you're an Italian family in America.
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  Maybe you want to go back to the old country and, and live and
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  work there for a few years. Maybe you even intend to come
• 9:50
  back to the US, but you just want to experience that.
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  You shouldn't then be essentially penalized for that,
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  you know, And it's just, I don't know, there's, there's just a
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  lot that I don't get about this because you're not paying into
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  the system. Oh, so you're paying into the
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  system, but you're not getting anything back.
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  You're just handing over money. But.
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  You're not even, you're not even paying into the system in most
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  cases. Like 60% of the Americans abroad
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  don't actually pay income taxes. They do have to fall and pay
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  someone to to basically prove to the US government we don't owe
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  you money, but they don't actually pay anything in.
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  In some cases, depending on the situation, like if they have
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  kids and other things, they might get money back from the US
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  government out of this deal even though they don't pay anything
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  into the US government. Well, this this kind of brings
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  up two important points. So the first thing that I saw
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  was tax treaties. So for example, the UK and the
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  US have a tax treaty. I started reading into that.
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  It was a bit all over the place because the first paragraph
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  says, yeah, there's a tax treaty and you can, you know, claim
• 11:03
  money back and all of this. And then the next, literally the
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  next paragraph is like, yeah, but it's not always honoured and
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  sometimes it's repealed and, and not actually taken into account.
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  So I was like, so where does that leave a user?
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  Like you're like, well, do I save money or not?
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  Am I going to get double taxed or not?
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  Well, I mean, my take is having looked at all the at a lot of
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  the tax code and the tax issues and stuff, I decided I wasn't
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  going to actually delve into each tax treaty and dig too deep
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  into that aid. Because I feel like I could
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  spend 1000 years trying to understand the US tax code for
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  expats and still not even scratch the surface of it.
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  Yeah, and it's obviously going to be different country by
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  country. I mean, I suppose if you take
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  like the US and the UK, there's a lot of links there from a
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  trade perspective, also historical, just in general
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  links that will benefit both nations by having, you know,
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  such a treaty. But then in other countries,
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  maybe less or so. So maybe, you know, you don't
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  stand to save as much of your money.
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  But in general from what I understand, piercing together
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  what you're saying now and also what I've read is that if you
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  move to another country and you are AUS citizen you are expected
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  to pay double taxes or the like. The the bare minimum is you have
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  to file tax returns each and every year around tax season.
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  You have to do that by law and if you don't you're penalised.
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  If you found this out through my flatmate today, if you, the IRS
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  won't tell you what you owe. And if you so if you were to ask
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  them, they wouldn't tell you. You're just expected to have
• 12:50
  your taxes 100% correct and if you don't have them correct that
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  you file them off and they're wrong, you'll again get
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  penalized. Just, it really just looks to me
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  like every attempt to just get more money out of you.
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  Sorry, it's the cynic in me, but I just.
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  And to see that and I'm like, that just seems unfair.
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  That's unfair. That's unfair.
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  That's unfair. Yeah.
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  Because in my perspective, it'd be like, OK, what do I owe?
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  Tell me what I owe. I'll pay what I owe.
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  You know, you know, they know that's the problem.
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  They know. They just refuse to say
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  anything. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know
• 13:24
  if they actually know or not. Because they know.
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  They know what you clearly. Because I mean depending on the
• 13:30
  country and your source of income, they may or may not
• 13:33
  know, like in my case. OK, OK, OK, OK.
• 13:36
  We're talking about two different things.
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  So I, I mean more in general, like if you're living and
• 13:41
  working in the States, for example, and you owe, I don't
• 13:44
  know, I said a couple of grand, a couple of $1000 in taxes,
• 13:49
  right? They'll know that number because
• 13:51
  they'll see how much you've worked and how much you owe,
• 13:55
  blah blah blah, right? Yeah, in the States, they
• 13:58
  definitely know. Yeah, and they still won't tell
• 14:00
  you, which I just think's unfair.
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  Yeah, like, I mean, that's why I came to the conclusion the only
• 14:07
  sane option for a tax system is to pass something like the Bear
• 14:11
  TaxAct. What's that?
• 14:13
  That's the, that's the HR 25 is what it's commonly called.
• 14:18
  The Bear Tax Act. Bear Tax.
• 14:21
  FAIR Bear Tax and basically it gets rid of the IRS and replaces
• 14:30
  it with a national sales tax. But it also gives a we bait or
• 14:38
  probate, they call it to every taxpayer who's in the United
• 14:42
  States. So basically you, you're not
• 14:46
  taxed because of that probate. You're not taxed until you get
• 14:50
  over the property poverty level level, and you're only taxed if
• 14:55
  you spend money, not if you work and make money that way or
• 14:59
  something. Oh, interesting.
• 15:03
  So you wouldn't be. Oh, I don't know how that would
• 15:05
  work because you kind of need to be taxed a certain degree for
• 15:10
  income tax. Not necessarily.
• 15:13
  I mean in theory you don't need an income tax to actually fund a
• 15:18
  country. I mean, the state of Tennessee
• 15:21
  doesn't have an income tax. How is it funded?
• 15:24
  Yeah, I mean, there there are countries like say Monaco that
• 15:27
  that that are tax havens and they don't tax people at all.
• 15:30
  But then obviously they will be getting that money from
• 15:33
  elsewhere. That's the trade off.
• 15:34
  If you don't tax people, then you're going to have to take
• 15:37
  that money from somewhere. Well, you take it from the the
• 15:41
  sales tax is better because it doesn't discriminate based off
• 15:47
  what the person income is like. If like in the states, a
• 15:52
  politician loves to do something like this, they want to help
• 15:57
  homeowners or home builders. So there's two ways that they
• 16:01
  can do that. They can give out $100 billion
• 16:04
  in cash and to home builders. That's not very popular to on
• 16:09
  the street. That sounds like you're giving
• 16:11
  money to someone who's rich built home builders.
• 16:15
  Now the other way they can do it is cut taxes on home builders by
• 16:19
  $100 billion. And the politician can go out in
• 16:23
  the streets and say, I just cut taxes for home builders by $100
• 16:26
  billion. That's the trick.
• 16:29
  That's that's how they get it. That's how they they use the
• 16:32
  taxes to gain votes. Yeah, you're always going to win
• 16:36
  over voters or something like that, though, because it's it's
• 16:38
  business and it's economics. You're, you're saving people
• 16:41
  money, which is always going to be an alluring thing in, in the
• 16:48
  voting situation, isn't it? You know I mean.
• 16:50
  It is, but in the grand scheme of things, economically, what's
• 16:53
  the difference between $100 billion in tax cuts and $100
• 16:57
  billion in additional spending to help the home builders?
• 17:03
  What's the main differences between the two of them?
• 17:06
  Well, I would argue that the home builder thing is, is
• 17:09
  something you do you wouldn't be able to do regularly.
• 17:13
  You'd have to do it like, let's say every five years as income
• 17:16
  tax. Yeah, you could charge that
• 17:18
  every year. I mean, you could do that also.
• 17:21
  You could spread it out so that $100 billion is spread out over
• 17:24
  five years if you want. So that's an option.
• 17:28
  The another big difference is with the income tax, you're
• 17:31
  making the tax code more complicated because then
• 17:35
  whenever you put that in there, that's another exemption or
• 17:38
  credit or whatever that people have to look through and, and
• 17:43
  lawyers and stuff and tax accounts have to look through
• 17:45
  and see if people are eligible for it.
• 17:47
  Do they work on building a home? And over time, little bitty
• 17:53
  adjustments like that just build up and you get a very, very
• 17:56
  complex tax code. I mean, to be honest, with the
• 18:01
  state of how US taxes are anyway, I doubt it would make
• 18:04
  much difference because you've got to fill out like 1500 forms
• 18:09
  like like here in the UK. I'm sorry, but I am going to
• 18:12
  compare. There's one, there's one form.
• 18:15
  You fill out one form. Now granted that form can be a
• 18:18
  pain in the arse if you're self-employed, right?
• 18:21
  But it's just one form. Once it's done, it's done.
• 18:25
  Whereas in the States you've got like at least 10 different forms
• 18:29
  that you've got to fill out for various different things.
• 18:31
  And I, I just, it's just a rabbit hole.
• 18:35
  I can see why people get stressed in the, you know, the
• 18:39
  tax season because like, for me, it's like, all right, I just had
• 18:42
  to dedicate a day. Like it's, you know, it's
• 18:44
  annoying, but it's, it's done right.
• 18:46
  But over in the States, it's like you, you need to get like
• 18:49
  full accountants for that stuff. And, you know, you got to like
• 18:52
  fill out all your receipts and like people are stressing stress
• 18:54
  and stressing them. It's like if you got to fill out
• 18:57
  that much information and you get fined for making a simple
• 19:00
  mistake, then yeah, of course it's going to be extremely
• 19:04
  stressful and problematic. You know, couple of other things
• 19:10
  before we we sort of delve into your story.
• 19:15
  In addition to this kind of double taxation thing that
• 19:20
  obviously does vary according to which country you're in and, and
• 19:24
  what the laws are and what the relationship is between that
• 19:27
  country and the states. I can't believe this, but if you
• 19:33
  denounce your citizenship, which arguably would be like the way
• 19:38
  that you fix this problem, right?
• 19:39
  You OK? I'm no longer a citizen of the
• 19:41
  US, so therefore I shouldn't owe taxes, right?
• 19:44
  Apparently in some instances, you still can be.
• 19:51
  What's the word I'm looking for? You may still owe taxes.
• 19:55
  You may still have to pay taxes. Can you speak to that?
• 19:58
  I mean, I can, I mean, usually that's called the exit tax and
• 20:02
  stuff. I mean, that doesn't, that
• 20:05
  wouldn't, that wouldn't really apply to me personally because
• 20:09
  my income and net worth is too low for that.
• 20:13
  In some ways I'm lucky that my, that my income and assets have
• 20:17
  been relatively low since I moved to Canada because I don't
• 20:20
  have to do the F bar. I don't have to deal with the.
• 20:24
  Any, I mean if I did renounce, I wouldn't have to deal with the
• 20:27
  exit tax under current U.S. law. So there's that.
• 20:33
  But I mean I think it's if I remember what I think it's like
• 20:36
  $5,000,000 that you have to have had made over like a certain
• 20:40
  period of time or something before you're subject to the
• 20:42
  exit tax or something is usually a high net worth individuals for
• 20:45
  that one. I read the same is true of
• 20:49
  retirement as well. You retire outside the states it
• 20:53
  also. Depends on where you retire.
• 20:56
  I know France with their tax treaty with the United States.
• 20:59
  It's actually a really good tax treaty they got from what I've
• 21:04
  heard. And if I'm not mistaken they
• 21:07
  actually benefit from being AUS citizen in the current tax
• 21:11
  system relatively speaking. I could be wrong.
• 21:14
  That's what I've heard. I mean, I've really looked into
• 21:16
  each individual's country and each individual situation
• 21:19
  because there's millions of Americans abroad.
• 21:24
  Each story is different and I'm not at liberty to speak about
• 21:29
  other people's stories, but I can just say that everyone's got
• 21:33
  a different story. For sure, for sure.
• 21:38
  Do you still have access to US state benefits or any other kind
• 21:42
  of resources, services if you're living abroad?
• 21:46
  So like obviously with you being in Canada and still potentially
• 21:50
  having to pay taxes, can you still get access to those
• 21:54
  things? Well I mean I do have AUS
• 21:57
  passport so I have access to that.
• 22:00
  OK. Which allows me to travel to any
• 22:03
  country that AUS passport's accepting.
• 22:06
  And obviously if I want to, I do technically have access to US
• 22:11
  counsellor services. So if I get like a, let's say
• 22:14
  for some reason I get into altercation or fight or
• 22:17
  something happens unexpectedly and I get detained, I can still
• 22:22
  reach out to the US embassy and they would help me out as AUS
• 22:26
  citizen. So I mean, I do technically have
• 22:29
  some benefits from being AUS citizen and various situations.
• 22:35
  But again, I'm not going to get detained because I'm not doing
• 22:38
  anything illegal in Canada. I'm not going to go out and kill
• 22:42
  somebody or anything like that. No, but I mean, it's important,
• 22:46
  especially in instances of like extradition, I suppose, you
• 22:50
  know, if you're, if you're detained, let's say for a crime
• 22:57
  you didn't commit and you're trying to fight the system and
• 23:00
  stuff like that. You know, obviously if you're a
• 23:03
  taxpayer and you're still AUS citizen, you, you've got rights
• 23:06
  and whatnot and you're still protected by that system.
• 23:12
  So I, I guess, yeah, there's, there are some benefits there.
• 23:14
  But I think the way I look at it is you won't be getting
• 23:20
  something back for what you're paying in.
• 23:22
  You know if you are having to pay, you should have to.
• 23:24
  You should be able to get something back otherwise.
• 23:26
  Yeah, Well, I mean, it's not really that.
• 23:28
  I mean, there's like if you're detained here, you can also
• 23:31
  still technically get a lawyer here and stuff.
• 23:34
  I mean, as a permanent resident of Canada, I do have rights here
• 23:38
  in Canada as well. So I mean, it's not like like I
• 23:44
  get, I get healthcare here in Canada as a permanent resident.
• 23:48
  In some ways in the States, I did not get healthcare as a
• 23:52
  permanent resident. And I mean, so there's certain
• 23:56
  differences between the two of them, but I got more rights here
• 24:00
  in Canada in some ways than I did in the States.
• 24:04
  Crazy, isn't it? I get it.
• 24:07
  I think everyone kind of knows about the US healthcare system.
• 24:11
  I presume Canada has something similar to the UK in that you
• 24:15
  pay in but you get either free or subsidized services.
• 24:20
  Something like that. Well, here in at least in
• 24:23
  Ontario, you're taxed. You pay taxes like on food and
• 24:27
  stuff that supports the healthcare system, and you don't
• 24:31
  really pay for most things except prescriptions and a few
• 24:36
  other things that they're relatively cheap compared to the
• 24:38
  states. But having lived in both
• 24:41
  countries on the healthcare subject, I can say that both the
• 24:45
  US system and the Canadian system had their flaws and
• 24:48
  benefits. For sure, for sure.
• 24:52
  I mean, here in the UK we've got, from the sound of things,
• 24:55
  quite similar system to the to Canada.
• 24:59
  But my word is flawed. Even trying to get like a doctor
• 25:04
  sometimes can. I mean, that's crazy.
• 25:08
  It might be a free system, but you're competing with everyone
• 25:10
  else to get seen and it's just a bit crazy sometimes.
• 25:15
  I mean, right now I still haven't got a doctor here in
• 25:17
  Inglehart, Ontario. Right now I'm working on, I'm on
• 25:21
  the wait list for that. But as far as the, I mean, if I
• 25:26
  was in the States and I wanted to see a doctor go and get knee
• 25:30
  surgery or something like that, and I had money or health
• 25:35
  insurance through a job, I could go next week and get knee
• 25:39
  surgery. And that is obviously a big
• 25:44
  benefit of keeping a citizenship.
• 25:46
  Like I don't, I don't, I understand why an American
• 25:51
  citizen would be afraid or, or would not want to give up their
• 25:55
  citizenship. You know, just because you've
• 25:57
  moved abroad doesn't mean you want to give that up.
• 26:00
  Like I wouldn't want to give up my UK citizenship.
• 26:02
  Like I'm, I do think a lot about moving abroad again, but I
• 26:07
  wouldn't want to give up what I have here.
• 26:11
  I do recognise the benefits of, of keeping your citizenship and
• 26:14
  what that brings. And also like how it protects
• 26:16
  you because times change, things change.
• 26:18
  Like the US might right now might not be as alluring to live
• 26:24
  in, but in the future, it might get better.
• 26:25
  You know, things might improve and that improves with time and
• 26:28
  different governments, different systems in place, different laws
• 26:31
  passed. You know, things always change
• 26:33
  and it's just something I guess to keep in mind as time moves
• 26:38
  on, as things move on I. Mean I'm, I was born in the
• 26:44
  states, so there's there's that history there.
• 26:46
  I mean, sure, I'm always going to have ties to the states, even
• 26:50
  if I were now citizenship just because I was born there.
• 26:53
  There's ties in history there, yeah.
• 26:55
  And you want to see like family and stuff like that, you know?
• 26:58
  By the same token, I've got ties in history here in Canada now.
• 27:02
  I'm a WASP, was born here and everything.
• 27:05
  So I don't technically fit in in either country in the broader
• 27:09
  sense of the term. I mean, then I don't, I'm kind
• 27:13
  of like, I don't fit in either country.
• 27:16
  And that mean that's common for a lot of immigrants.
• 27:18
  It's kind of that identity crisis where they're like, I
• 27:21
  don't fit in the States anymore, I don't fit in Canada.
• 27:23
  So yeah. I get that right.
• 27:28
  Should we get to the main event? I don't know how to really,
• 27:33
  like, ask this question, but OK, Gabriel, tell us why you're here
• 27:39
  today. Like, tell us about your story.
• 27:40
  Walk us through your journey and your battles and why you're sort
• 27:45
  of campaigning to create awareness about this.
• 27:50
  I mean, that's a, like I said, that's a podcast in and of
• 27:53
  itself. That's an actual podcast
• 27:55
  literally. But I mean, basically my legal
• 28:00
  issues, I've got such legal, such major legal issues.
• 28:04
  The only, I mean, Congress is the only one that can address my
• 28:09
  legal issues. I mean, that's what's
• 28:11
  interesting about this is I'm not afraid of any litigation,
• 28:15
  like he was talking about litigation earlier.
• 28:17
  I'm not actually afraid of that because ultimately the only
• 28:21
  solution is Congress will have to pass a bill specifically to
• 28:24
  deal with my legal problems. Lawyers.
• 28:28
  Lawyers at best, can push it to Congress.
• 28:32
  Media at best can push it to Congress.
• 28:35
  But litigation I'm not worried about.
• 28:38
  What is the law that you're trying to push then,
• 28:41
  specifically to Congress? Well, I'm trying to push a
• 28:46
  certain government report and the legal issues around it over
• 28:52
  to the Congress. Is the University of Washington
• 28:55
  low income tax clinic report to be exact, covering their 2024
• 28:59
  clients. The legal issues around that
• 29:03
  report are pretty major and the Trump administration and Biden
• 29:11
  administration would both prefer that report never see Congress
• 29:14
  because. They'd lose money, presumably.
• 29:17
  Well. They'd lose money and there's a
• 29:19
  lot of other issues around it. Have you taken any steps to try
• 29:29
  and push this towards Congress or, or, you know, obviously I
• 29:33
  know you're sort of campaigning, you're talking about it, so
• 29:35
  that's a good step, but have there been any major steps
• 29:39
  towards that? Well, I mean, part of that's
• 29:43
  going on podcasts like yours and Giants Among Us, which your
• 29:48
  viewers can look up later if they want to.
• 29:50
  Giants among us. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you
• 29:53
  probably watched the podcast. I actually didn't, I actually
• 29:58
  wanted to come into this completely.
• 30:02
  What I like to do sometimes when it's a particularly big topic is
• 30:05
  I like to do a bit of research. I know what I'm going to ask and
• 30:09
  what the topic at hand is, but I like to kind of be the same as
• 30:13
  the viewer kind of coming into this going like, oh, what's this
• 30:16
  about, you know? And yeah, it's it.
• 30:20
  It can work sometimes. It might be problematic.
• 30:22
  It depends on the nature of the topic.
• 30:24
  You know, taxes is something I understand very well.
• 30:27
  US taxation? Not so much, for obvious
• 30:31
  reasons. This particular topic is very
• 30:33
  complicated. That's OK.
• 30:36
  We, we can. There's multiple layers to it.
• 30:38
  It's technically, I believe it's a constitutional crisis actually
• 30:43
  around my 2020 that Congress won't be able to fix but just
• 30:47
  manage the ball out of. I suppose it really boils down
• 30:51
  to like the simple question of do does the does America still
• 30:57
  want to? This sounds so stupid to say,
• 31:01
  but does America still want to make money from the people that
• 31:05
  no longer live in the states? Well, yes, like when I look at
• 31:08
  this this law for what it is, you'd be crazy as a nation to to
• 31:16
  do AU turn on it. Not exactly because I mean on
• 31:23
  paper they do make money off of the law, but the cost of
• 31:28
  enforcing the law. OK.
• 31:31
  It's so great that they that they lose money and the IRS is
• 31:37
  has to process so many expat tax returns that don't actually put
• 31:41
  money into the system. It causes delays and makes it
• 31:46
  harder for them to focus on tax returns in the state.
• 31:49
  So on net, this system doesn't really help the United States at
• 31:55
  all financially. You mentioned before as well
• 31:59
  that you don't have to specifically pay because you,
• 32:02
  you're under a like an income tax bracket.
• 32:05
  We've got something similar here in the UK where if you don't
• 32:08
  earn above a certain amount, then you, you either won't pay
• 32:14
  tax or you'll pay significantly reduced taxes.
• 32:20
  So we do it kind of it's like 20 percent, 40% and so on,
• 32:24
  depending on your income bracket.
• 32:27
  But if it is below the 20% mark, like, then you won't pay at all.
• 32:32
  But then you'd be like really struggling to survive.
• 32:36
  I guess it would depend on your expenditure, where you're
• 32:39
  living, a lot of different factors.
• 32:43
  So with that in mind, is it arguable maybe, that a lot of
• 32:47
  the expats living abroad just simply aren't earning enough?
• 32:52
  Well, I mean, that's possible too, but I mean the amount of
• 32:55
  the exemption, well, there's the foreign earned income tax
• 32:59
  credit, which is a like 130,000 or 140,000, something like that.
• 33:06
  Says it's dollar for dollar credit on any income taxes paid
• 33:10
  to a foreign government. Yeah, there's that and then
• 33:14
  there's AI. Think there's some one other
• 33:18
  credit I'm not? Able to think about there's a
• 33:19
  there's a few that I've got here.
• 33:20
  So you've got foreign earned income exclusion, which allows
• 33:27
  you to exclude a certain amount of foreign foreign earned income
• 33:32
  from US taxation. And you can this gets changed
• 33:39
  every year, but you can always seemingly claim this can't even
• 33:46
  read my own handwriting here. There's foreign something
• 33:49
  deduction. There's lots of deductions and
• 33:53
  credits, but I mean those credits and stuff.
• 33:57
  I mean in the states as an example, the average person
• 34:01
  probably doesn't even make make 100,000 a year.
• 34:05
  This is yeah, this is what I'm thinking because like in the
• 34:08
  States, what I've noticed is that people earn more, but they
• 34:13
  pay more. So like 100,000 sounds like wow,
• 34:17
  that's a lot of money and it is a lot of money.
• 34:19
  But then you've also got to consider, OK, well, what are
• 34:22
  people in the States generally getting for their wages versus
• 34:26
  what are they paying into the system, paying for everything
• 34:29
  else? Whereas you go to like 100,000
• 34:33
  lbs. By comparison, in the UK,
• 34:37
  because the pound is strong against the dollar, 100,000
• 34:40
  would be like equivalent to well, like 88, 1000, maybe
• 34:46
  $90,000. Like there's a key sort of
• 34:49
  discrepancy or not discrepancy. There's a big difference in, in
• 34:52
  the, the currencies and what things are worth and and so on
• 34:56
  and so forth. So maybe that's a factor as
• 35:01
  well. Like it's, it's simply maybe
• 35:03
  cheaper to live in other countries and therefore you're,
• 35:06
  you're earning less and you're paying less.
• 35:09
  One could argue maybe. I mean it the currency is
• 35:12
  different, but I wouldn't say say it's cheaper to live in
• 35:15
  another country than it is in any other country.
• 35:18
  I mean here in Canada for instance, the average person
• 35:23
  here does payless in healthcare, but they make up for it with
• 35:27
  more taxes on food and other things.
• 35:32
  And in general, the cost of living here is comparable to
• 35:36
  that in the States. By the time you factor in the
• 35:39
  currency exchanges and stuff, you're going $1,000,000 from the
• 35:42
  states to here. You'll be able to get basically
• 35:45
  the same value out of it as you would in the States by the time
• 35:48
  you factor in currency. So I mean, there's not much of a
• 35:52
  dividend in the cost of living between the two.
• 35:57
  So you move to Canada in 2020. Why did the problems begin?
• 36:05
  Well, at first the problems technically began in 2021, but I
• 36:11
  didn't know about it until 2023. Oh my God.
• 36:17
  OK, right. So you're finding out in 2023.
• 36:21
  Are you being threatened with legal action at this point?
• 36:25
  Because clearly I'm not. I'm not threatened.
• 36:28
  I'm not threatened. I wasn't threatened with legal
• 36:30
  action. What started was OK I moved in
• 36:33
  2020 to 2021. I've all my income taxes.
• 36:38
  I'm owed a refund from the states in 20 for 2020.
• 36:42
  OK $1800 and mail service into Canada was very heavily
• 36:50
  disrupted because all these COVID mandates with the post
• 36:53
  office stuff like that. So I'm thinking I'm due a refund
• 36:57
  but it's not a big deal. It probably got lost in the mail
• 37:00
  and I'm enjoying life here in Canada and I'm like, I don't
• 37:04
  really care about that refund. It's not a big deal to me at the
• 37:07
  time. But unbeknownst to me at the
• 37:10
  time, in that March of 2021, the IRS flagged my return as
• 37:18
  possible identity theft, refund fraud.
• 37:21
  Because they have this program where they try to be an identity
• 37:24
  theft refund because people steal your identity.
• 37:27
  They follow return in your name and try and steal your refund
• 37:30
  that way in the States. So they thought, well, this guy
• 37:35
  before this had always filed his return and had it mail, had it
• 37:40
  direct deposited into his bank account here in Tennessee, and
• 37:44
  now all of a sudden he's trying to mail his return to Canada.
• 37:47
  Had you declared to your bank that you'd moved to Canada?
• 37:51
  I mean, my bank knew about it because I mean, they knew I had
• 37:54
  ties to Canada because I had gotten Canadian money out from
• 37:58
  the bank before and stuff like that.
• 38:00
  So they knew I had ties to Canada, but the US government
• 38:04
  doesn't really keep a close eye on what actually is happening at
• 38:07
  the local banks. And also I had already opened a
• 38:12
  bank account in Canada, but because it was below the airport
• 38:18
  requirements, there wasn't any airport is being sent to the
• 38:21
  States and stuff. So it kind of fell through the
• 38:24
  system and they thought possible fraud some he's trying to mail
• 38:28
  his check to Canada or someone's trying to get his check mailed
• 38:31
  to Canada. We better send a letter to him
• 38:34
  and just double check and verify this returns what it's supposed
• 38:39
  to do. And.
• 38:42
  I mean, to the average taxpayer, that's not a big bad thing for
• 38:45
  them to do that. That's, I mean you'd want to
• 38:47
  know if someone was trying to mail you refund in the UK to
• 38:51
  Japan or something, you'd want to know about that.
• 38:55
  So that's what they did, but the letter somehow got lost in the
• 38:59
  mail somewhere along the way. That's problem number one with
• 39:03
  that return. And the other problem with that
• 39:06
  return is somehow along the way they lost the original return
• 39:11
  itself. Instead of archiving it so that
• 39:13
  they could unarchive it later, they somehow lost the return.
• 39:18
  And all this was happening and I didn't really think much about
• 39:20
  it because like I said, I was enjoying life in Canada.
• 39:25
  And that return didn't really wasn't really a big deal to me
• 39:29
  at the time because I thought it was lost in the mail.
• 39:32
  I mean, surely there were I didn't know anything about the
• 39:34
  IR s s ability to lose a return. I wasn't thinking about that or
• 39:37
  their ability to flag a return as possible.
• 39:39
  IDT refund bought, didn't think anything about any of that
• 39:42
  because I didn't even know they could do that.
• 39:45
  Few quick questions. One, do you have to pay to fill
• 39:48
  out your tax return? I'm I.
• 39:51
  Mean the postage and all that, obviously that's going to cost
• 39:54
  money, but. I mean you do technically
• 39:57
  usually pay to do your for your tax returns.
• 40:01
  I mean a cheap return is around 300 four, $100 at H&R Block for
• 40:07
  the lower end of things for US return.
• 40:11
  And this money's going to or who?
• 40:13
  The IRS? The government.
• 40:15
  To H&R Block, the companies that file your taxes.
• 40:19
  Christ, I can tell you something even more shocking.
• 40:24
  I want to. Know.
• 40:25
  Well, what do you think the H&R Block and these tax companies do
• 40:29
  with your money? Go to Vegas.
• 40:34
  No, they go into Congress and lobby the congressman.
• 40:38
  The congressman money if they keep your taxes complicated.
• 40:42
  My housemate said the exact same thing today.
• 40:45
  The like word for word, exactly that.
• 40:49
  You may have listened to the podcast.
• 40:52
  Oh, wow, maybe. No, what he said is what you're
• 40:55
  saying that they're these companies lobby, they
• 40:57
  deliberately try and make it more difficult because they'll
• 41:01
  earn more money ultimately from you, the taxpayer.
• 41:06
  Yeah. Well, I mean to them, they just
• 41:08
  put your numbers into a computer.
• 41:10
  The computer takes care of most of the stuff for them and 99% of
• 41:13
  returns, that's that's all they have to do.
• 41:15
  They they don't have many problems with.
• 41:19
  You mentioned that you've mailed your tax return as well, yeah.
• 41:25
  Is it not possible to do it online?
• 41:27
  Well, that my 2021 return I mailed in in the states.
• 41:34
  You could e-file from the states, but H&R Block here in
• 41:37
  Canada didn't have the ability to e-file returns.
• 41:40
  OK, so they're just not. Citizens, U.S. citizens until
• 41:43
  2023. OK.
• 41:46
  Still pretty crazy though in the year 2023, but I get it, I get
• 41:50
  it. Yeah, we're we're, I'm not one
• 41:54
  to judge here, here in the UK, we, we do have some archaic
• 41:57
  systems here and there that need update.
• 41:59
  I mean, I mentioned the NHS earlier.
• 42:01
  Do you know how we get our doctor's appointments here?
• 42:04
  How? I mean, I don't know if it's
• 42:06
  some of the states, but my local practice, right, I have to sit
• 42:12
  and wait until 8:00 AM and as soon as it hits 8:00 AM, dial
• 42:17
  the phone number and wait on the line in a queue.
• 42:21
  But God knows how long to then try and book an appointment for
• 42:25
  the same day. So you have to have a day off or
• 42:28
  a day booked aside, and you have to hope and pray that they'll
• 42:32
  have time for you to book you in that same day as well.
• 42:38
  Well here in Canada, I mean if you got, if you're lucky enough
• 42:43
  to have a primary care doctor, you can book it out.
• 42:46
  Depending on the doctor and how busy they are, you might get an
• 42:48
  appointment in a couple of weeks or months.
• 42:50
  From there, if there's something more serious, you usually just
• 42:54
  go to the ER port. Yeah, of course.
• 42:56
  And and it's the same here. But like I don't know for these
• 43:00
  like mid tier things where it's ongoing and you need help ASAP
• 43:04
  but it's not an emergency, it can be problematic.
• 43:07
  You might be on the waiting list for months, maybe even close to
• 43:10
  a year. Depends on what it is.
• 43:12
  I mean, mental health, I've spoken about it on the show
• 43:15
  before, but when it comes to NHS and the mental health, I mean
• 43:18
  it's, it's not taken nearly as seriously as it should be.
• 43:22
  I know in the case of in the States, it's usually pretty
• 43:26
  quick to get into a doctor. Like if you need to go see a
• 43:29
  doctor for like something like let's say like let's say you
• 43:35
  need a medicine for an infection or something, you don't have to
• 43:39
  actually go to the you or you can call up your local doctor
• 43:42
  that morning and usually they can work here in the same day.
• 43:45
  Yeah, and that's kind of the the ideal, isn't it?
• 43:48
  Like I when I called my doctors, I was trying to get an
• 43:52
  appointment for like the following week and they were
• 43:54
  like, Oh no, sorry, we only do same day appointments.
• 43:56
  I was like, what do you mean? I was like I was getting
• 44:00
  frustrated because I was like I've been on the phone in a
• 44:03
  queue of like 10 people for the last half an hour, finally get
• 44:06
  through and they tell me I can't book it for another date.
• 44:09
  And then luckily the receptionist was really cool and
• 44:11
  just managed to get me something anyway.
• 44:13
  But I was stressing man because I'd already been waiting for
• 44:16
  like 2 months to get all this stuff finalised and I only got
• 44:22
  it done like the other day. But it is what it is.
• 44:26
  Anyway, back to the task at hand, the title, the main event.
• 44:34
  So the government's looking into whether or not this is a
• 44:37
  fraudulent activity. Obviously we know it's not what
• 44:42
  happens next. Well, in 2023 H&R Block switched
• 44:48
  to E following returns, and I also happened to have a legal
• 44:53
  settlement with my prior employers so and they paid me
• 44:57
  wages for in 2022. So I was due a refund for that
• 45:02
  year since they withheld money from those wages.
• 45:06
  So H&R Block prepares my return, they go to e-file and they have
• 45:16
  an area where it wants a pen for me to e-file an identity
• 45:21
  protection PIN. They call it.
• 45:24
  And I'm like, what? What do you mean I need a PIN?
• 45:29
  And then they give me a number to call it the IRS.
• 45:33
  And I call that. And after countless hours on the
• 45:37
  phone talking to people, I figure out that they flagged my
• 45:43
  2020 return as possible IDT. We've been plaud and I have to
• 45:47
  go through a whole lot of hoops to prove that I was the
• 45:51
  taxpayer, filed this, return this and that, and it just
• 45:56
  becomes a it just that's whenever I went down the rabbit
• 45:59
  hole or the start of the rabbit hole.
• 46:02
  Jesus. OK, so you what happened next?
• 46:10
  Well I spent most of 2023 basically on the phone with the
• 46:16
  IRS and each tax year they do differently, so I managed to get
• 46:20
  2021 and 2022 tax years resolved.
• 46:24
  That's good. So stop.
• 46:27
  And 2023 was pretty much resolved too, but I couldn't get
• 46:31
  the 2020 resolved because there was two issues with that tax
• 46:35
  return year. I managed to figure out and
• 46:38
  resolve the identity theft refund quad portion, but I
• 46:41
  didn't know that they had lost the return as well.
• 46:45
  Right. And that issue is still ongoing,
• 46:49
  so I'm rolling around to 2024. Back up, back up, one second.
• 46:54
  Like, surely it's their responsibility to tell you that.
• 46:59
  It is, but they don't. I mean, they, they don't know
• 47:02
  what they don't they. What do you mean they don't
• 47:05
  know? They should know?
• 47:06
  It's literally what they do is to know your taxes.
• 47:09
  The. System.
• 47:09
  Now the IRS has several systems. There's the system that does
• 47:15
  your regular returns and stuff, but there's also a system that's
• 47:18
  the identity theft system that's like totally different.
• 47:23
  Unless they go to a different computers app application, they
• 47:26
  can't access that. So that so just because they see
• 47:32
  part of your tax account, they can't see what's happening over
• 47:35
  here in the IDT protection portion.
• 47:37
  And and also the IRS just does, the IRS just doesn't know what
• 47:41
  they're doing. Really it's like, think, think
• 47:46
  about this for a second. The people that are literally
• 47:48
  responsible for taxing you and giving you your money back if
• 47:54
  you're owed money like that, that's all they're supposed to
• 47:56
  do. And look, maybe I'm
• 47:58
  oversimplifying taxation, right? I understand it can be
• 48:01
  particularly complex, especially in the states.
• 48:03
  But like, if nothing else, they should definitely know if
• 48:08
  there's been fuck ups, especially if it's on their part
• 48:11
  or something's been lost or whatever.
• 48:13
  And I would argue it's kind of crazy that they don't know
• 48:18
  because you know, the classic adage is like anytime you owe
• 48:24
  money, they come after you like vicious dogs, right?
• 48:26
  But if you, if they owe you money, it's like off, yeah,
• 48:31
  you'll get it at some point, whatever, you know.
• 48:33
  But like, do you know what I mean?
• 48:34
  Like it's so they've made a fuck up twice.
• 48:40
  Do you know what I mean? That they've, they've
• 48:43
  incorrectly started an investigation into fraud that
• 48:47
  was incorrect, which as we discussed earlier, isn't, isn't
• 48:51
  a bad thing in so much as it's good that they investigate such
• 48:54
  things. But they're basing it on
• 48:56
  nothing. They have no evidence and they
• 48:58
  were wrong. And secondly, this lost tax
• 49:02
  return, both of both things of which they've not told you
• 49:06
  about, which I just, I just find that mind boggling.
• 49:10
  Well, they told me about the possible IDT refund fraud.
• 49:14
  But yeah, eventually. I mean, I mean, that was, I
• 49:18
  figured that out in 2023. I mean, they did send a letter
• 49:20
  in 2021 apparently for that, but somehow it got lost in the mail.
• 49:25
  So instead of losing the refund in the mail, which I thought was
• 49:28
  possible and was publicly fine with me, they lost a letter
• 49:33
  saying I had had possible IDT refund fraud.
• 49:36
  Which I mean, that's kind of worse in my opinion than if I'd
• 49:43
  actually just lost a refund because it now.
• 49:46
  Because now I have to deal with straightening out my IRS account
• 49:49
  and all that nonsense. OK, so you find out that these
• 49:54
  tax returns are done, you sort out the issue with the
• 49:58
  fraudulent tax identity stuff. All that's left is this 2020
• 50:06
  lost 2020 tax return. What's your next step?
• 50:08
  What's your next move? Well, eventually I spent so many
• 50:14
  hours on the IRS's phone, I'm starting to think, well, I'm not
• 50:17
  getting anywhere talking to them.
• 50:20
  And I'd faxed a copy of my return, but I forgot.
• 50:23
  I didn't know you had to sign the return.
• 50:25
  I was just faxing in. I wasn't thinking about, oh,
• 50:27
  I've got to sign the return for them to process the return and
• 50:30
  clear up their mess up. So I wasn't didn't know about
• 50:34
  that aspect of it. So I'm thinking, OK, I need me a
• 50:37
  lawyer. So I'm like, well, looking into
• 50:42
  it, I'm thinking, well, Congress doesn't know or didn't think
• 50:46
  about how these laws developed over the years.
• 50:49
  So I'm thinking as far as the law is concerned, I'm just a
• 50:52
  taxpayer like any other taxpayer in the state.
• 50:54
  So I'm looking at the laws there and I'm thinking what laws help
• 50:58
  low income taxpayers like me get help if they got a dispute with
• 51:03
  the IRS and trying to resolve their legal issues.
• 51:08
  And I come across the Low income Tax Clinic Act.
• 51:12
  I'm like, well, part of this issue occurred in the state of
• 51:15
  Tennessee because that 2020 I was in Tennessee for nine months
• 51:20
  of 2020. So I'm thinking, OK, maybe I can
• 51:23
  call the low income tax clinic in the state of Tennessee.
• 51:27
  And I call there and I end up getting connected to them and
• 51:34
  they say, well, we can't take your case because you're not in
• 51:38
  our geographic area. And they suggest I reach out to
• 51:41
  someone near the border, a tax clinic near the border.
• 51:44
  So I'm thinking, well, I'll call the tax clinic and maybe in
• 51:47
  Washington, DC or something. What I was thinking at that
• 51:50
  stage, But whenever I called the number, I called Washington
• 51:55
  State's tax clinic, the University of Washington State,
• 52:00
  and managed to talk to a student lawyer there and then a few
• 52:09
  weeks after I talked to them because at that stage I'd like I
• 52:13
  was, I'd almost given up whole neighbor resolving the issues
• 52:15
  around my 2020. That thing just got so
• 52:17
  convoluted. I spent so many hours, I just
• 52:19
  decided it's not worth it to continuously call the IRS and
• 52:23
  stuff. Over $1800 to spend at minimum
• 52:27
  wage or spend more time and money just on the phone than
• 52:33
  it's worth. But they called back a few weeks
• 52:35
  later and took me as a client on a case by case basis, which is
• 52:45
  worldwide news because before that, no taxpayer ever used
• 52:49
  these clinics outside the United States before.
• 52:59
  So what's your next move off to this?
• 53:01
  Like where, where do you take this?
• 53:02
  Because from what you're saying here is you, you've kind of
• 53:06
  accepted you're not going to get your money.
• 53:08
  That's OK. But we've actually got that
• 53:11
  return at this stage but. So you did get the money back
• 53:15
  eventually. Yeah.
• 53:18
  When did you get that money back?
• 53:20
  I got the return back in October last year.
• 53:24
  God damn. So that's four years to get a
• 53:30
  couple of $1000 just under. I mean, I'd only started trying
• 53:34
  to get it back in 2023. Still though, man, like that's
• 53:38
  on them because it's on their records.
• 53:42
  I mean, like here in the UK, you know, they they review it yearly
• 53:46
  and then you know, you get your money back like the same month
• 53:49
  typically. Sometimes it could take longer
• 53:51
  if they're taking the MIT, but you will get the money back
• 53:53
  probably within that month. Yeah.
• 53:56
  Well, I mean, I mean it takes a while.
• 54:00
  I mean, even when you do discover an error at the IRS,
• 54:04
  it's not like they their systems are archaic.
• 54:07
  I mean they still want probably some of the systems they still
• 54:13
  use floppy disks if that. No way.
• 54:18
  No way I'm. Serious.
• 54:20
  I mean you can look it up. They use some of the their
• 54:22
  machines in hardware are years and years old.
• 54:26
  You're not sure you're they're using 90s computers with floppy
• 54:29
  disks. Yeah, I'm serious.
• 54:32
  I mean, a lot of systems are old and archaic.
• 54:35
  I mean, look it up. Yeah, but that, that's crazy.
• 54:38
  I mean, like, I, I thought when you went old and archaic, you
• 54:40
  mean like, OK, well, maybe they're still using like Windows
• 54:44
  7 or something, which is a bit insane, but all right.
• 54:46
  But like, that's actually insane.
• 54:48
  Like, come on. Like end of the 29th century.
• 54:53
  Come on. I mean a lot of the systems are
• 54:56
  very, very old. Like I mean if you look at in
• 55:00
  2021, you can look it up on the GS ogao.gov website, it says IRS
• 55:07
  efforts to modernize 60 year old tax processing system.
• 55:10
  So some of the systems are probably even older than that.
• 55:16
  What do you even do with information like that?
• 55:18
  Like what? Like you're still using floppy
• 55:22
  disks. I mean, some of the systems do
• 55:25
  use that. Some of the other systems are
• 55:27
  more up to date. I mean it, I mean, it depends on
• 55:31
  which system you're talking about.
• 55:32
  Like the US government's got a lot of old and outdated computer
• 55:36
  systems. Like, I understand the old
• 55:40
  saying of, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
• 55:43
  I I get that right. But like, sooner or later you
• 55:47
  have to update your systems, you know, especially in in this
• 55:50
  world like emerging technology, you just have to accept that
• 55:53
  things change, you know, like adapts.
• 55:55
  And some systems have been updated.
• 55:56
  I mean, I don't know all the details of the computer systems
• 55:59
  they actually use at the IRS, but I do know it's a way more
• 56:02
  outdated than it should be in some cases.
• 56:06
  They have tried to modernize it lately.
• 56:10
  But I mean, I don't know what's going on inside the IRS.
• 56:14
  I'm, I'm, I'm an average person. I'm, I mean I can only speak
• 56:17
  from experience that their their systems are a complete mess.
• 56:23
  What's your next step? Like?
• 56:25
  Where, where, where? Where are we today?
• 56:28
  Well, right now I've got legal issues around that government
• 56:32
  court. Right now, what I'm doing is
• 56:34
  basically trying to get enough media coverage of it to push it
• 56:39
  to Congress or trying to find a lawyer that can push it to
• 56:43
  Congress. I'm not worried of litigation.
• 56:46
  It's not like the I'm not worried of the US government
• 56:49
  coming after me. Yeah, I, I.
• 56:51
  Based on what you've laid out there, I think it's highly
• 56:53
  unlikely because you, you're just trying to push for a bill.
• 56:57
  Do you know what I mean? You're not really, like, it's
• 56:59
  not like you're suing anyone or suing the government or
• 57:02
  whatever, you know? No, I mean, I've got bad stuff
• 57:05
  on the US government. Technically, it's just a getting
• 57:07
  the media to death. The dirt that I have on the US
• 57:09
  government, it's another matter. It's a slippery slope there,
• 57:14
  buddies. I do.
• 57:16
  I mean that. I mean, that government report
• 57:21
  and knowing about it, that government report will impact
• 57:24
  every American outside the United States.
• 57:27
  There's a lot of people to be. Found the US government's
• 57:29
  concealed that government report, so that's kind of a big
• 57:34
  deal. What do you think the likelihood
• 57:39
  of this being taken to Congress actually is?
• 57:43
  I'm 110% sure it will hit Congress, I just don't know the
• 57:47
  time frame of it. OK.
• 57:51
  Do you think, do you think it's likely it would actually be
• 57:54
  passed and and you know, maybe written into law and changed?
• 57:58
  I'm pretty sure it will be passed and will be changed.
• 58:01
  What? Makes you so sure.
• 58:04
  Because legally it's in a government report, legally it
• 58:09
  must hit Congress. Only Congress can deal with the
• 58:12
  legal issues around that report. It's not something that the
• 58:15
  lawyers can actually fix or deal with.
• 58:20
  But the hurdle is, is in. It's something the US government
• 58:24
  doesn't want out there, information about that tax
• 58:28
  clinic. They don't want that out there
• 58:30
  and the law that's designed to protect taxpayer privacy
• 58:33
  information 61O3C is what it is and the laws around that.
• 58:39
  What's the government scared of though?
• 58:40
  Like, why doesn't the government want that out there?
• 58:43
  What's Why would that be damaging to the government's
• 58:46
  reputation? The first problem is that tax
• 58:52
  clinic behind that report. If it's out there that AUS
• 58:57
  citizen use that tax clinic, it would likely create a huge flood
• 59:00
  of U.S. citizens trying to use that tax clinic.
• 59:03
  Or you're accessing these tax claims because I'm not the only
• 59:06
  US taxpayer outside the United States with problems.
• 59:09
  I'm the only one that's actually use this loophole to the best of
• 59:12
  my knowledge. But I'm not the only one with
• 59:15
  problems. So these tax clinics can only
• 59:21
  only handle maybe 20 to 30,000 cases a year of citizens in the
• 59:27
  United States who have relatively simple returns,
• 59:30
  comparatively speaking. They can handle those cases, but
• 59:33
  they don't have the resources to handle, except maybe case by
• 59:37
  case, U.S. citizens outside the United States and their issues.
• 59:42
  Have you spoken to other people in a similar situation to
• 59:46
  yourself and did you learn anything from that from other
• 59:49
  people's experiences? I mean, I've learned some from
• 59:52
  other people's experiences, but I mean legally, to the best of
• 59:56
  my knowledge I'm the only one that's usually a low income tax
• 1:00:00
  clinic. So I mean, their experiences are
• 1:00:02
  similar, but they're also different from mine.
• 1:00:06
  What kind of experiences were you hearing from other people?
• 1:00:09
  I. Mean some people have trouble
• 1:00:13
  because they have to because of the tax laws.
• 1:00:15
  They can't really, they can't open a business or they are
• 1:00:21
  their retirement plans or tax like like there for a long time.
• 1:00:25
  There's a thing called PFIX, which is a big one and certain
• 1:00:31
  retirement accounts that are considered tax exempt in one
• 1:00:35
  country, like let's say a big one here in Canada is the tax
• 1:00:41
  free savings account. It's considered tax exempt here,
• 1:00:44
  but the United States's position is because Canada doesn't tax
• 1:00:49
  it, and it's also not subject to the Foreign Earned Income Tax
• 1:00:52
  Credit because the income you earn in it is not earned income
• 1:00:58
  you the IRS decides it wants to share that of.
• 1:01:03
  Course they do, so they. Tax certain things that are not
• 1:01:07
  taxed in other countries. I wonder if that's actually
• 1:01:13
  legal or if they can actually, if they can actually do that,
• 1:01:18
  it's a bit dodgy. I mean it's.
• 1:01:19
  Fully, it's fully legal for the IRS to do that, I mean.
• 1:01:23
  But to take things that are not really under the under what they
• 1:01:29
  are able to claim. I mean it's, it's AI, mean I,
• 1:01:35
  it's whether or not it's legal or not.
• 1:01:38
  I mean, it's you're AUS citizens, so you're subject to
• 1:01:40
  US taxes. It's extraterritorial.
• 1:01:44
  Have you not in the States anymore?
• 1:01:46
  You know, it's, it's the the, I think moving forward, whatever.
• 1:01:55
  OK, If I had to take a guess, I would say there'll be a reform
• 1:01:58
  of this. So it won't be completely
• 1:01:59
  removed, but it will be reformed.
• 1:02:03
  And what I would argue is, OK, yeah, you, you don't pay, maybe
• 1:02:09
  you pay like 30% of what you would have paid in the States.
• 1:02:15
  You know, you pay like a sort of like a tribute, I suppose, you
• 1:02:18
  know, and, and the tribute is for some of those things that
• 1:02:21
  you discussed earlier that are benefits like having the
• 1:02:24
  passport, having rights, access to the embassy, you know, being
• 1:02:28
  able to come home and, and still get access to these things, have
• 1:02:31
  operations, use the healthcare system, all these things that
• 1:02:36
  you benefit from being a citizen and like you're still paying
• 1:02:41
  into it. So you're entitled to those
• 1:02:43
  things. However, you're not living there
• 1:02:47
  full time and therefore you shouldn't be subject to the full
• 1:02:52
  payment. Like that's because you are
• 1:02:54
  going to be taxed in in the country you're in and that I.
• 1:02:57
  Don't think that's how it's going to unfold.
• 1:03:00
  I think they're just going to, at a minimum they're going to
• 1:03:02
  get rid of the citizenship based system and move to the same
• 1:03:05
  system or something similar for their U.S. citizens abroad as
• 1:03:10
  what they've got in for people in the UK.
• 1:03:12
  Like if you was to move to Spain you wouldn't file taxes to the
• 1:03:16
  UK. No.
• 1:03:17
  You would still benefit from having auk passport and stuff,
• 1:03:20
  but you wouldn't follow have to deal with that.
• 1:03:23
  If we're talking about the UK system, what we're saying here
• 1:03:26
  is that it would be completely eradicated, which I don't know,
• 1:03:29
  man. I mean, I think it comes down to
• 1:03:31
  what we were talking about earlier.
• 1:03:32
  Like what would they stand? What would the US government
• 1:03:35
  stand to earn more money from? Would it be from eliminating
• 1:03:41
  this tax, this taxation system and therefore saving money on
• 1:03:46
  the IRS tax returns and all that, or would it be from
• 1:03:51
  keeping it and finding a way maybe to reduce these IRS tax
• 1:03:57
  returns that they have to process?
• 1:03:59
  Well, I mean, for starters, looking at the low income tax
• 1:04:02
  city gap, which since it's been extended outside the United
• 1:04:05
  States for the first time they ever used outside the United
• 1:04:07
  States. The issue there becomes they are
• 1:04:14
  going to have to address that. They're going to have to either
• 1:04:17
  extend these clinics outside the United States, which isn't
• 1:04:20
  practical on a regular basis because it's just the way they
• 1:04:24
  work. They're they're, they're student
• 1:04:27
  values mainly that represent people.
• 1:04:29
  And a lot of these taxpayers outside the United States, they
• 1:04:33
  can't even speak English, many of them, or Spanish or some
• 1:04:37
  other language. They're outsourcing.
• 1:04:40
  That's crazy that they're outsourcing something this
• 1:04:43
  important. Well, no, I mean, not so much
• 1:04:45
  that. I mean it's just the taxpayers
• 1:04:47
  themselves or the US citizens living abroad.
• 1:04:50
  Not all of them speak English, but the IRS where customer
• 1:04:53
  service where if they speak English, that's their own,
• 1:04:55
  that's their primary language. Maybe you find some that can
• 1:04:58
  speak a little bit of Spanish possibly.
• 1:05:00
  Sorry. But I understand but.
• 1:05:03
  To the but you they're trying to tax U.S. citizens abroad that
• 1:05:08
  are not that don't have English as their primary language.
• 1:05:13
  That's tough. And.
• 1:05:15
  Surely, surely they should have people in the IRS that speak
• 1:05:18
  Spanish. I mean, there's a large
• 1:05:21
  population in the United States that speaks Spanish.
• 1:05:24
  Like that's, that's been documented.
• 1:05:25
  Like it's, that's crazy that they're not, that they don't
• 1:05:30
  have more workers that are able to do that.
• 1:05:32
  You know I. Mean, there's that too.
• 1:05:34
  But I mean, the IRS itself, I mean, they have workers that
• 1:05:39
  probably do speak Spanish, but then they'd also need to have
• 1:05:41
  workers that speak French. If you want to extend the tax
• 1:05:44
  system outside the United States and make it fair, you got to
• 1:05:47
  have workers that speak French. You got to have workers that
• 1:05:49
  speak German. You got to have workers that
• 1:05:50
  speak every language. That's that's yeah, that's a
• 1:05:54
  tough one. Well I mean This is why you have
• 1:05:56
  paid translators and stuff like that though.
• 1:05:58
  But. By the time you start having
• 1:06:00
  paid translators, you start getting into very expensive.
• 1:06:05
  But what do you do, man? Do you just say like, sorry, we
• 1:06:08
  can't understand, you can't help you, like, can't do that?
• 1:06:13
  What's the solution, Gabriel? Now the solution is to get rid
• 1:06:18
  of the expat tax system for the IRS.
• 1:06:20
  That's a long term solution. One other thing I wanted to
• 1:06:24
  bring up because you mentioned tax exemption, I find it's quite
• 1:06:27
  interesting. So Vilma, friend of mine, friend
• 1:06:30
  of the show said that because she's from Greece and she said
• 1:06:34
  in Greece she would sometimes see and still to this day see
• 1:06:38
  shops that would say tax exempt for U.S. citizens.
• 1:06:44
  You could go into the shops and you wouldn't have to pay any tax
• 1:06:49
  to purchase these items or whatever.
• 1:06:52
  They're like tax free items. Have you seen a lot of that?
• 1:06:55
  Have you seen that in say the Canada like where that's
• 1:06:59
  factored in tax exempt products or services?
• 1:07:04
  I'm not here in Canada. I mean here in Canada.
• 1:07:09
  I mean, what I've noticed lately is there's a lot of angst about
• 1:07:13
  the tariffs. That's the biggest thing here in
• 1:07:14
  Canada. Terrorism, you say?
• 1:07:17
  No, the tariffs, not the terrorism, but the tariffs Trump
• 1:07:20
  put in for like lumber and stuff.
• 1:07:24
  That's been a big thing here. In the Oh OK interesting,
• 1:07:29
  interesting All right so we've we've kind of we're sort of what
• 1:07:37
  would what would OK other other than what you've already
• 1:07:40
  discussed, is there anything else that you you would like to
• 1:07:42
  see change or maybe like a final message you'd like to leave just
• 1:07:46
  on this topic I. Mean I wake, I mean people
• 1:07:49
  listen to the other podcasts, the Dance Among Us podcast if
• 1:07:53
  they want more in depth view of my story.
• 1:07:56
  We'll make sure that's. And also, I mean, the other
• 1:08:00
  thing is, I mean, there's, I'm currently writing, I mean,
• 1:08:05
  there's a lot going on and stuff.
• 1:08:06
  There's a letter to the editor coming out soon, things like
• 1:08:08
  that. So we'll keep in touch.
• 1:08:13
  Fantastic. OK, feels cruel asking you this
• 1:08:17
  question but I always like to freestyle this question
• 1:08:21
  depending on what the topic at hand is etcetera.
• 1:08:25
  What's the biggest lesson you've learned from US taxes?
• 1:08:31
  Well, I mean, I'm still learning from it as I.
• 1:08:34
  Know. I mean, the biggest thing I've
• 1:08:36
  learned is I don't trust the IRS and I'm going to keep a close
• 1:08:40
  eye on my transcripts and other things with the IRS just to make
• 1:08:43
  sure that they process, return and do what they're supposed to
• 1:08:47
  do and not just assume that they process something when I send it
• 1:08:52
  or give it to them. Is there anything you could have
• 1:08:55
  done differently? I mean, I, I completely put all
• 1:08:58
  the blame on their side from hearing sort of the basics of
• 1:09:01
  your story, it does just sound like a fuck up on their part.
• 1:09:04
  But is there anything you could do differently?
• 1:09:07
  I mean, obviously you mentioned that some of the systems now are
• 1:09:10
  more digitized, you can get E versions and stuff like that.
• 1:09:14
  But is there anything else maybe you've learned from this that
• 1:09:17
  you're taking forward? Well, I mean, I probably should
• 1:09:21
  have like looked at my transcripts more.
• 1:09:24
  That's probably the big thing because then I would have
• 1:09:26
  noticed that they never processed the return or, or I
• 1:09:29
  should have at least called the IRS and asked questions about
• 1:09:31
  that return or something sooner. I should have tried to do more
• 1:09:35
  to catch this in 2021 instead of catching it in 2023.
• 1:09:40
  Whenever it's years after the fact, it's a lot harder to
• 1:09:43
  resolve. We didn't know about it, to be
• 1:09:46
  fair. Yeah, I didn't know about it,
• 1:09:48
  but. I didn't know about it, but
• 1:09:51
  that's one thing I learned that I probably should have done.
• 1:09:53
  I I can't, I've learned I can't trust the IRS to just process
• 1:09:58
  something if I send it to them. I have to walk them like a baby
• 1:10:02
  to make sure that they go where they're supposed to go and do
• 1:10:05
  what they're supposed to do. Sorry, I, I should laugh, but
• 1:10:11
  it, it is funny like we, we have the same issues here in the UK
• 1:10:15
  with, with certain systems and it's painful.
• 1:10:20
  I'll, I'll give you a quick example from, from the UK tax
• 1:10:22
  system, right. So because I'm self-employed, I
• 1:10:27
  earn income from lots of different sources, right?
• 1:10:30
  Sometimes I earn free music and acting whatever, and I have to
• 1:10:34
  declare that via a yearly tax return, right.
• 1:10:38
  But then the other ways that I earn money are what we call
• 1:10:40
  BACS, which is, I can't remember what it stands for, but it's tax
• 1:10:45
  that's worked out on your behalf via regular employment.
• 1:10:49
  You don't have to worry about it.
• 1:10:50
  It'll be on your pay slip. It'll just tell you what it's
• 1:10:52
  deducted, right? And they calculate that based on
• 1:10:56
  how many hours, how much money you're getting, blah, blah,
• 1:10:58
  blah, blah, blah. So if you're doing both types of
• 1:11:02
  work, you have to declare that you're earning through backs,
• 1:11:08
  earning through regular employment as well as the
• 1:11:10
  self-employment. Right Now, just like in the
• 1:11:14
  states, we get different tax codes as well.
• 1:11:16
  So you might get taxed more or less depending on how much you
• 1:11:20
  earn, but they base it on predictable or predictability.
• 1:11:24
  So they assume that you earn a certain amount, which you know,
• 1:11:30
  as the old saying goes, if you assume you make an ass out of
• 1:11:32
  you and me because there's been tax codes I have where I've
• 1:11:36
  never earned a penny through that particular job.
• 1:11:39
  There's been others where I earned intermittently, which is
• 1:11:43
  more likely what's going to happen anyway at this point I, I
• 1:11:48
  had like two or three employers on the go, two of which I was
• 1:11:51
  actually earning from and then self-employment, right?
• 1:11:56
  Two different tax codes. I was getting taxed more or from
• 1:12:02
  the job that I was obviously earning more from, but it wasn't
• 1:12:07
  the correct tax code. It was like an emergency 1.
• 1:12:09
  So I was getting taxed way higher than I should be and then
• 1:12:13
  I was getting taxed the lower rate on the one I barely ever
• 1:12:16
  earned anything from. So I said to them, OK, this is
• 1:12:20
  ridiculous. You can't be taxing me like 3-4
• 1:12:22
  hundred pounds in a month. Like I'm earning minimum wage.
• 1:12:26
  Like this is ridiculous. Like surely there's something
• 1:12:28
  wrong here. And they're like, yes, there is
• 1:12:29
  something wrong. We're going to fix that.
• 1:12:31
  We're going to look at that blah, blah, blah, right?
• 1:12:35
  Then I learned something new. I learned that you can switch
• 1:12:39
  tax codes around. And what they essentially offer
• 1:12:42
  me is, oh, we'll put the higher tax code on this other
• 1:12:45
  employment that you have, but you'll for a while you'll be
• 1:12:48
  taxed 50%, which I just thought was fame.
• 1:12:52
  But I was like, OK, I'm not earning enough, but OK.
• 1:12:55
  And so we did that and I started getting taxed normally from that
• 1:12:58
  point onwards, but they did in fact take 50% on my other
• 1:13:02
  employment. Fast forward to a year later and
• 1:13:06
  I look at like if I'm going to get a tax rebate or not and I
• 1:13:11
  do. I get a substantial 1, the
• 1:13:12
  biggest one I think I've ever received in all of my working
• 1:13:16
  problems over the years, because I always knew that they were
• 1:13:19
  overtaxing me. And the way they do it in the UK
• 1:13:22
  is they'll probably overtax you and then pay you back later on.
• 1:13:27
  But there's different ways they can do that.
• 1:13:28
  Sometimes they might add money to your pay packet because
• 1:13:34
  they've overtaxed you, or more likely they'll pay you at the
• 1:13:37
  end of the year. But that's.
• 1:13:40
  Only US. Records.
• 1:13:42
  The record in the US under the current system, you usually have
• 1:13:47
  to at the start of the year, you usually let the you have a form
• 1:13:52
  that you fill out with your employer basically saying things
• 1:13:56
  like how many dependents you have, whether you made, whether
• 1:14:01
  it's your only job, And they try to estimate how much taxes to
• 1:14:05
  withhold from you with the goal being that you at the end of the
• 1:14:09
  at that whenever it comes time to your tax return, you
• 1:14:12
  shouldn't actually get any. You shouldn't pay anything and
• 1:14:15
  you also shouldn't get anything back.
• 1:14:17
  That would be the. Goal.
• 1:14:19
  Same here. Usually, but usually people end
• 1:14:21
  up getting a little bit back. But I mean, it's that's the that
• 1:14:27
  system is basically the same as states.
• 1:14:29
  Now. They don't add it to individual
• 1:14:30
  pay packets or anything like that, but they basically they
• 1:14:35
  just basically like attach it to a yearly refund that you usually
• 1:14:39
  get sometime February, March time frame usually.
• 1:14:46
  Right, couple of final questions for you, completely unrelated to
• 1:14:50
  today's topic. What's the best advice you've
• 1:14:53
  ever received? Best advice I've ever received.
• 1:14:59
  That's actually probably the hardest question of the whole
• 1:15:01
  podcast. I mean, now the real hard
• 1:15:05
  questions are coming. I mean, I can't really think of
• 1:15:10
  it the best advice that I've ever received.
• 1:15:12
  I mean, I can give the best advice that I think is possible
• 1:15:15
  me to give somebody and that'd be just never be a way to ask
• 1:15:20
  for help. You never know what my what
• 1:15:22
  doors it might open. Like I've got a phone call ID to
• 1:15:25
  that task clinic that's going to impact millions eventually and I
• 1:15:30
  all I had to do is ask them for help with my taxes.
• 1:15:34
  The great quote? Never be afraid to ask for help.
• 1:15:36
  You don't know what doors it will open.
• 1:15:38
  Fantastic. What's the biggest life lesson
• 1:15:41
  you've learned so far? Now the biggest life lesson I've
• 1:15:46
  learned is never is you can't predict the future.
• 1:15:51
  You never know when something unexpected will happen, like
• 1:15:55
  with your taxes or something else, and it just your life
• 1:15:58
  takes a total turn turn in a different direction.
• 1:16:03
  Do you say there's anything from from this whole debacle?
• 1:16:10
  Is there any like key thing you've learned from it all just
• 1:16:14
  in general other than not trusting the IRS?
• 1:16:18
  Probably the key debacle I've learned is that, I mean, I'm
• 1:16:23
  still learning as I go out now I'm trying to learn a bit more
• 1:16:26
  about black marketing and stuff like that because I'm trying to
• 1:16:29
  get the word out on my taxes and the legal issues around them.
• 1:16:34
  And that's an area I'm trying to learn about.
• 1:16:36
  And I'm kind of curious about your story about marketing and
• 1:16:39
  stuff and because I've heard you said that you're sort of into
• 1:16:42
  marketing. I did a degree and I worked in
• 1:16:45
  the field for a few years. Yeah, so I have like AI mean the
• 1:16:49
  trouble with marketing is it shifts and changes all the time.
• 1:16:53
  So when you fall out, the loop takes a bit of time to catch up
• 1:16:56
  again. But there's different types of
• 1:17:00
  marketing. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:17:01
  There's like social media marketing, e-mail marketing,
• 1:17:04
  there's classic forms like billboard advertisements,
• 1:17:07
  there's paid ads, there's analytics, there's and the list
• 1:17:12
  goes on and on and on with what you're doing.
• 1:17:16
  I think it's a good idea to just kind of get the word out as much
• 1:17:20
  as possible, keep talking and be talking to the right people.
• 1:17:24
  And well, like you put it, not being afraid to ask for help and
• 1:17:29
  be like, Hey, would you feature this?
• 1:17:30
  Hey, would you consider this? Hey, what about this?
• 1:17:33
  Like I, I think with something like that, the newspapers are
• 1:17:36
  the people you want to be talking to and just bugging with
• 1:17:38
  this, like, hey, this is an important story.
• 1:17:40
  Hey, you should be talking about this.
• 1:17:41
  Why aren't you talking about this?
• 1:17:42
  I'm angry about this. And so on and so forth.
• 1:17:46
  I know in my particular case, the local paper will be
• 1:17:49
  featuring a statement soon here in Timiska being Shores, and
• 1:17:58
  that'll be the first time that it's in an actual paper paper.
• 1:18:01
  Before that it was just online. It's interesting the actual
• 1:18:05
  spread of this story. It started off originally
• 1:18:10
  confined primarily to I first posted about it online on the
• 1:18:15
  expat community, which the major advocate there is John
• 1:18:20
  Richardson. He's a major lawyer here in
• 1:18:22
  Canada that's been advocating for tax reform.
• 1:18:25
  I first featured in on a on a Twitter space with him and I
• 1:18:30
  gained a lot of followers from that, basically a lot of the
• 1:18:32
  people who were into the expat tax community.
• 1:18:35
  But then that connected me into another group, the Fair Tax
• 1:18:39
  community basically to a degree. And then I was on a little thing
• 1:18:45
  with them, on a Twitter space with them.
• 1:18:49
  And then after that, I started reaching out to podcasters and
• 1:18:52
  came across John, It's Among Us, and shared my story with them.
• 1:18:58
  And then after that, I reached out to you because I'm thinking,
• 1:19:03
  well, I need to market this and get this out more.
• 1:19:06
  And your podcast sounded interesting to me because it's
• 1:19:09
  kind of connected to what I'm trying to do with my story.
• 1:19:12
  Get it out there. Yeah, this show is all about
• 1:19:15
  stories and. Yeah, your, your podcast is
• 1:19:19
  there is some overlap with Johnson among us compared to
• 1:19:22
  your podcast. Like I mean, very inspirational
• 1:19:25
  stories on that one, but yours is more ward and also a
• 1:19:29
  different audience base. Yours is more spread out in the
• 1:19:32
  United States and in the in Europe.
• 1:19:37
  Yeah, and interestingly so you asked about my audience, Like a
• 1:19:41
  lot of the people that listen to this show are American.
• 1:19:44
  It's it's a big split between USUK and Europe, which I've
• 1:19:48
  always found quite interesting, especially when I do live stream
• 1:19:51
  sometimes. And there's more Americans.
• 1:19:54
  I've always wondered like what the interest is there, you know,
• 1:20:01
  but you know, it's just one of those things, isn't it?
• 1:20:03
  You know, you never know who your audience is going to be.
• 1:20:05
  You never know who you're going to capture.
• 1:20:06
  Obviously your audience, you know exactly who your audience
• 1:20:09
  is. It's very, very clear cut and.
• 1:20:13
  For now I do. I don't know where it's going to
• 1:20:15
  spread out from now. I mean, I don't know where your
• 1:20:17
  podcast will go with it. Like I said, probably USUK
• 1:20:21
  Europe. Basically it will be useful for
• 1:20:24
  anyone that's that's living abroad for sure.
• 1:20:26
  And then it will connect with the other people who've heard
• 1:20:28
  the other podcast. It will eventually.
• 1:20:30
  The expat community will probably talk about your podcast
• 1:20:32
  a lot. If you've not gone on to Reddit
• 1:20:35
  yet, obviously I know that might be where you discovered the
• 1:20:38
  show. I don't know if you discovered
• 1:20:40
  it through other means, but Reddit would be a good shout as
• 1:20:46
  well. There'll probably be some
• 1:20:48
  subreddits there for with people looking for help.
• 1:20:51
  It's often been a good resource for stuff like that when people
• 1:20:54
  reach out and like, hey, I'm having this problem, can you
• 1:20:56
  help me, blah, blah blah. That's.
• 1:20:58
  Where I met, that's where I found your podcast.
• 1:21:01
  Where I met Johnson Mungus was who read it.
• 1:21:04
  But like like have you looked at any like specific subreddits
• 1:21:08
  like for US expats and and stuff I.
• 1:21:12
  Mean I've I've looked through all those reddits and stuff I
• 1:21:15
  mean. OK, cool.
• 1:21:15
  So you know, you know. But the audience, it's kind of a
• 1:21:20
  with social media, it's kind of a situation where you get into,
• 1:21:27
  they're kind of into their own little areas, like their own
• 1:21:30
  audience. There's like the taxes, there's
• 1:21:34
  people with taxes, and they kind of get in their own subculture
• 1:21:36
  where if you post about something, it's amplified
• 1:21:39
  through that audience, the algorithm, which kind of tends
• 1:21:43
  to keep things confined. Yeah, it's tricky to branch out,
• 1:21:48
  man. I mean, I've been doing this
• 1:21:49
  show five years, 300 plus episodes.
• 1:21:52
  It's it's tough building an audience.
• 1:21:54
  It's tough reaching people, but not impossible.
• 1:21:57
  It's never nothing is ever impossible.
• 1:22:00
  I mean, you wedged like in that pan baby wedged 1000 people.
• 1:22:03
  You got probably a a pretty good strong core audience.
• 1:22:07
  There, but there's a core following.
• 1:22:11
  Like, I mean, I've, I've been criticized before for not having
• 1:22:14
  like a massive following, but I can tell you what, I have a
• 1:22:16
  following, people who've followed for years, in fact.
• 1:22:19
  And that's hard to come by. Doing a podcast is, is arguably
• 1:22:26
  from a content perspective, one of the toughest things you can
• 1:22:29
  do to consistently do it as well.
• 1:22:31
  People give up all the time. Like I've seen people give up
• 1:22:34
  after 30 episodes, 7 episodes, 100 episodes.
• 1:22:38
  I've seen successful podcasts come and go and we're still here
• 1:22:43
  doing our thing. So there you go.
• 1:22:46
  Final question for you. Do you have any upcoming
• 1:22:48
  projects or final thoughts that you'd like to share with our
• 1:22:50
  listeners? Not that I can thank you.
• 1:22:53
  I guess the my current plan is just to take it a day at a time.
• 1:23:01
  Absolutely, man, what thank you so much for sharing your story
• 1:23:03
  here. It's been a real pleasure to
• 1:23:07
  kind of deep dive into this with you and to learn a bit more
• 1:23:10
  about this. And you know, I for what it's
• 1:23:13
  worth, I hope it I hope it does go through gets passed through
• 1:23:15
  Congress, and I hope it leads to less headaches for US experts
• 1:23:20
  and hopefully just better life, better lives moving forward.
• 1:23:25
  You know, people shouldn't be penalized for for moving away
• 1:23:28
  from the States, you know, so hopefully it leads to a change.
• 1:23:33
  Yeah, maybe you will be on a future podcast with me later.
• 1:23:36
  You never know. You never know.
• 1:23:38
  Thank you so much for or. Maybe you know people who would
• 1:23:41
  like to give them their podcast. I'm sure I do.
• 1:23:44
  Here it is, guy who anyone's watching, man.
• 1:23:46
  Get Gabriel on your show to to share his story far, far and
• 1:23:50
  wide. Thank you so much for being on
• 1:23:52
  the show. It's been a pleasure to all the
• 1:23:54
  listeners of the Christian Reeve podcast so much.
• 1:23:57
  Thank you so much. Sorry for listening and watching
• 1:24:00
  the show wherever you may be listening or watching spin an
• 1:24:05
  interesting show. And as always, if you like what
• 1:24:09
  we're doing here, make sure to leave us reviews.
• 1:24:13
  Check out the patreonpatreon.com/christian
• 1:24:16
  Reeve to get yourself bonus content and support me.
• 1:24:19
  And yeah, if you would like to see future guests or future
• 1:24:22
  stories shared on this show, please reach out to me.
• 1:24:26
  Links are in the bio. Thank you so much for watching
• 1:24:28
  and listening, and I'll see you all in the next one.