On 12 November 2013 the Maltese Parliament decided to offer Maltese and European citizenship at the price of € 650,000, but implementation of the law has been postponed due to strong domestic and international critiques. On 23 December, the Maltese government announced significant amendments, including a higher total amount of € 1,150,000, part of which has to be invested in real estate and government bonds. Several other European states have adopted ‘golden passport’ programmes. Should citizenship be for sale? In November 2013 EUDO CITIZENSHIP invited Ayelet Shachar of the University of Toronto Law School to open a debate on these controversial policies. Twelve authors have contributed short commentaries, most of which refer to the initial law adopted by the Maltese Parliament. An executive summary by Rainer Bauböck provides an overview over the main questions raised in our forum. For further information on investor citizenship programmes see Jelena Dzankic’s EUDO CITIZENSHIP working paper on the topic and consult the news section of our observatory.The issue of taxation is peripheral at best in most of these contributions. Yet for those interested in fundamental questions about belonging that are as yet unanswered in the tax policy literature, and specifically how FATCA and other automatic information exchange developments increase the possibility of citizenship-based taxation like never before, understanding whether and why citizenship should be a tie that binds a person to a state is fast becoming a critical issue.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Shachar & Baubock on Citizenship for Sale
Ayelet Shachar, who previously published The Birthright Lottery, a book about how citizenship is an inheritance that can make or break individuals' life chances, has edited a compilation of twelve short essays on the question of whether citizenship should be a commodity, together with Rainer Baubock. Here is the abstract:
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The main issue for "other" countries in terms of whether they wish to adopt citizenship based taxation is getting the US adopt domestic FATCA reciprocity. Remember for most other non US countries the largest percentage of their non resident citizens live in the US. Additionally if you look closely at the Obama Administration FATCA reciprocity proposal in their 2014 budget request it only covered non resident aliens non US dual citizens or other non US citizens residing in the US itself.
ReplyDeleteThe whole reciprocity angle of FATCA is one that is still underreported and misunderstood.