17.4x Eddie Gets the News

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4x   Eddie Gets News
Hearing Professor Edwardes about Edwardes's US tax problem, Eddie guessed someone back in the Bronx had informed the tax authority on Edwardes. Anyway, now that Edwardes is expatriate in Tokyo, he, like Eddie, seemed immune from the long arm of tax collectors. And it was true - in the 1980's.

 But, flashing forward, by 2012 Eddie had been expatriate from the Bronx 37 years. His marriage to a Japanese gives special resident status and after 20 years he applies for and gets a permanent visa. From that moment on he is legally like a Japanese, he no longer will need to apply for visa renewal. So he forgets about the tax risks.
   And his account is making money, as anti-Semites might say, like a Jew with 6 hands. Eddie's bank gave foreign account holders a telephone adviser who one knew by first name and who directed investment in money market funds and foreign currency futures that doubled the money in 5 to 10 years. Presently Eddie's adviser, Patric,  calls every 3 months for the next round of investment.
   Eddie is not in the habit of searching the news so he is not aware the U.S. made a law in 2010 that would affect him. But one day in December 2012 he gets an end-of-year call from Patric. After the usual niceties about Christmas and New Year and dealing with the latest of investments, Patric says: "By the way, Edward, we have a new system for the new year and are sending all our American account holders a questionnaire and other material. We expect return by latest 31 March." Eddie listens blankly. Something icy clutches his heart.

A week later a thick sheaf arrives from Switzerland. He waits a month before opening the big brown Manila envelope. He reads its contents at leisure. It is one page asking questions about his nationality and residence status, another page giving the bank permission to give all information to the requesting tax authority, and a page which is a request directly from the tax authority for taxpayer ID number and other information about his tax paying status in the past.

Two months pass.  Eddie has calmed down helped by his hourly reposes after putting a pentagin quarter-pill under tongue.
   He realizes this is a problem that in worst case could end with him in jail. But he judges whatever will happen, it will not start for another year and it may be a prolonged process. He guesses that, inevitably, he is going to have to send in the bank's request papers completed or he will have his account terminated and need to find another bank. And the problem there is that all the Swiss banks have been forced to sign up for the same law so a transfer only means troubles with a new bank. He needs a lawyer who can speak to the bank's uppers and get inside info.
   He sends an email to the best lawyer in Zurich. 

Eddie goes through several ideas in his head and shares them with the lawyer. First, fleetingly he plays with the idea of seeking Japanese citizenship but quickly gives it up. It is too complex, and in the investigation could dig up things he prefers remain buried.
   Then he thinks about transferring the account to Ryo, who as Japanese is not subject to his government's tax law. That had long seemed a good idea and had made him very relaxed about the problem he now faced. But after his lawyer makes inquiry, for which Eddie pays, it becomes clear it would not solve the problem of his presently having the account in his name. If he hands off to wife he would still be liable for having had it, and it is such a patently dishonest ploy, the lawyer says, that the bank would, one way or another, not consider it a valid reason to exempt his signing the papers and answering the questions.
   At 80 years old it is not surprising that a man's memory starts to fail, and in fact Eddie had just completed an EEG brain wave which showed early changes of aging. He transmits all this info with his decision on how he would proceed to his lawyer, and the lawyer  assures him that as long as he cooperates with the bank, he should be able to delay returning the questionnaire until later in the year.
   And in fact the deadline passes and he learns a new deadline is set for 30 June. As his thinking about how to proceed evolves, he realizes the best place for him to dig in with his money is Japan because his status here is secure and, short of acting criminal, he would not be deported to U.S.A.. He also realizes his U.S. passport vulnerability. The present passport expires in 2016, only 3 years in future. Immediately he applies and gets a new one that expires 2023, by which time, if alive, he will  be 90 and, he says to himself, "Who cares what happens by then?"
   April passes, and May, and Eddie comes to realize he should, as he says, "repatriate" enough money to Japan to take care of old age expenses, so he starts to transfer each month the equivalent of US dollar 100-thousand.

Early June, and Eddie one day is lying down on a futon in afternoon pentagin repose. Here are thoughts about this experience, a realization of how his response and reaction and decisions evolved under the stress of Patric's original telephone words. It is a paradigm on how to respond to bad news.
   First comes the panic when you find out the news. And the anxiety is constant and paranoid. In this case, it is a vision of Eddie getting kicked out of Japan, brought to USA in handcuffs, and getting homosexual rape in disgusting U.S. jail. Also the sheer embarrassment of a self-touting wise man ending up just another wiseguy. Especially in this age of internet's world wide web - all of his old acquaintances, chuckling to themselves thinking, hoisted with his own petard.
  This early time of bad news is not a time to make crazy decisions that get acted out quickly - like suicide, or running away far from the madding crowd into the obscurity of homelessness. And it is not a time to start crazily spending one's money on the idea use it or lose it.
   I am lucky, thinks Eddie. The pentagin allows me to think crystal clear with logic and rationality.
   Thinking at first brought out the various ploys: Give up your citizenship?  Hand off the account to wife or friend?  Set up a trust fund?  Transfer the money to Chinese or Russian bank free of US bullying?
   It is important not to act out such schemes but to check them out.  That was the first need for a good lawyer, which he got. And the lawyer needed to be in the venue of the bank.

Later, in early AM lying on futon next to sleeping Ryo, a pentagin under his tongue, he thought through what is probably going to happen and what should be his best responses. Running such scenarios is important so as to lower anxiety and, most importantly, to reach the right decisions.
   The first phase is try to avoid, or if not avoid then by all means delay - as he is doing. That means not quickly sending back the sheaf of questions and his signature giving the bank permission to reveal his account. He knew the bank wanted his signature there to avoid client law suits when they broke a client's promised privacy as they would now be forced to do by the bullying U.S.A. which had threatened to freeze the bank's U.S. operations if they did not cooperate. But there is a limit to the delay, a limit that might be forced by the bank terminating his account and forcing him to take his money elsewhere as its letter threatened if he did not sign and return the questionnaire.

   After this meditation on the problem under the anti-anxiety effect of pentagin, his head sinks into his pillow in sleep.

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