Versailles and the Sound of Sacred Music

Let's change channels, folks, and move on to more interesting topics.

Starting earlier this week and continuing over the weekend is the annual Versailles au son des orgues.  This is a series of organ concerts at churches and chapels all around Versailles:  Notre Dame, the St. Louis cathedral, the Chapelle Royale at the castle and many others.  Even my parish church, Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie, is on the program.

If you just happen to be in town tonight you have a choice between a concert in honor of Elisabeth Brasseur at the Eglise Sainte Jeanne d'Arc  or a free conference, "Histoire, architecture et facture d’un orgue" (History and architecture of the organ) at the Atelier Numérique.

To my deep regret I haven't attended any of the concerts this past week because of my appointments at the clinic but I am planning on making either Saturday's concert, "Musique allemande pour chœur et orgue" (German music for choir and organ)  at Saint Symphorien or  Sunday's concert at the St. Louis cathedral with Daniel Roth.  Both are free to the public.

Have a great weekend, everyone, and if you are interested in going to one of the concerts just let me know via email and we can meet over a little sacred music.  And if you haven't darkened the doors of a church in many many years, just relax and I'll walk you through it. :-)

An American Abroad Pays Her Annual Tribute to the U.S.

Not too long ago this American abroad, with the help of her accountant, finally filed her U.S. taxes for 2011.  It was quite an impressive package that I printed out and sent off to the IRS.  In it were forms I'd never heard of and one that I'd heard way too much about, the 8938 which is basically a duplicate of treasury Form TDF 90-22.1 (FBAR) which I filed earlier this year.  Ah, the U.S. government is such a marvel of efficiency.

I am so thrilled to be done with it.  After many hours of work poring over bank statements, my 2011 French income tax declaration and other stuff from my archives, my accountant sent me the final version and I sent it off registered mail with a deep sigh of relief.  For 2011 I am in that exalted state of full compliance (knock on wood) with the U.S. reporting requirements.  Oh joy.

Especially since my final tax return yielded a rather distressing outcome:  I owed a lot more money than I had thought.  How did that happen?

Phantom gains:  Because we had sold  our last piece of investment property that year, I was aware that I would be paying capital gains on the sale and was prepared to the cough up a couple thousand U.S. dollars.  What I did not know was that I would "make" more money on paper because of the different exchange rates:  from Francs/Euros to U.S. Dollars.  That was something of a shock but even so I'd heard that this is a frequent problem for other Americans abroad - this issue of "phantom gains" on property or mutual funds that come about simply because we (Americans abroad) are doing business in local currency but the U.S. government insists that everything be converted to U.S. dollars using the IRS-approved exchange rate for that filing year.

Unemployment is not Earned Income:  I was unemployed and collecting French unemployment insurance for the year 2011.  To my utter disbelief this income is not excludable under the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.  So basically it appears that I had to pay American taxes on my French unemployment benefits.  Amazing.

So what was the final damage?  9,000 U.S. Dollars (late filing fees and interest included).

Now that, mesdames et messieurs, is not at all a trivial amount.  All the more because I already paid taxes in France so the money sent to the US is on top of all I paid that year to the French "fisc."
And frankly it is an amount I can ill afford since I am being treated for cancer here in my host country and it will be a few months before I can look for work again.

Now at this point I am sure there is a "donneur de leçon" (know it all) in the audience who is conducting an inner dialogue with him or herself using one of the following rationalizations:

"Surely some of this money came from the U.S. originally or she has assets in the U.S."

No, not one dime of my money came from the U.S. I left America right after university (like 20 years ago) and built my career in Europe.  The investment property that we bought a few years ago was purchased with money earned entirely in France and with a loan from a French bank.  And I don't own anything in the U.S. - no property or stock or stuff like that.  My life is here in France.  End of story.

"I'm a U.S. expat and I've never ever owed anything so I don't understand what is going on with this lady but it sounds fishy to me."

For those Americans abroad who have very simple situations (studying, teaching English or working for a company that manages their U.S. taxes for them) chances are that they will spend their time abroad either never having made enough money to file or doing anything to complicate matters like getting married, purchasing property or investing locally.   That's fine and I make no judgments about how people live their lives.  However,  we all need to be very careful here and understand that situations are different and that one should not take one's personal experience as being globally true.   To someone who tells me, "I don't have to file or pay U.S. taxes," my reply is simply, "Not yet anyway" and "Are you really so sure about that?"   Why?  Because here's the thing we know about migrants (even American ones):   The road from "temporary" to "permanent" residency happens to the best (and the worst) of us.   Live abroad long enough and you will do something that will trigger a reporting requirement.  I guarantee it.

"She must have had an incompetent accountant because with the foreign tax credits she shouldn't owe anything to the U.S. government."

I'm very fond of my accountant and the service I use to file every year.  God knows I couldn't figure it out all by myself - the tax forms and instructions as applied to someone who lives 100% outside the U.S. are damn near incomprehensible to me.  So I rely on an expert to get me through this and I check what she does to the best of my ability.  But at some point I have to sign and pay up.  It did occur to me when I saw the bill that I might want to get a second opinion but let's think for two seconds what that would entail;.  I would have to 1. find another expert and provide all that information again and 2.  pay that expert his or her fee while racking up even more penalties and interest.  In the end this could  cost me much much more than the 9,000 USD I ended up owing.  So I paid.

If anyone out there is still thinking that I did a dumb thing by sending that payment off to the IRS then I challenge you to help me out.  If you are an accountant then I would be very happy to send everything to you and you can (having waived your usual fee of course) go over it and tell me what my accountant or I did wrong.  If you are not an accountant, then please write me a check for at least 5000 USD which is about what I would need to pay to get an expert second opinion from an international tax lawyer.  In either case I would happy to post the results on this blog.  Perhaps my experience could help someone else out.

So how do I feel about the good old U.S. of A (my home country) after having done what I have been told is my patriotic duty?

Honestly?  I feel like I'm paying tribute to a warlord.  I don't live in the U.S., I don't use any services there and am unlikely to do so anytime soon.  So what is my 9000 USD buying me?  Well, according to some homelanders I've talked it's so the U.S. Marines will come and get me if I get into trouble in my host country.  Interesting hypothesis but somehow I don't think the local government here (the French) would go for that.  No to mention that by offering it up as a reason for me to cough up money every year the homelanders are basically saying that this is "protection money."  Alas, this feels a lot more like "If you don't pay up we'll burn down your house, seize all your assets and put you in jail," as opposed to the more positive "You may live abroad but you're still an American citizen and we are here to help you if you get into trouble or you need us and that's why we need something from you."   Why they insist on the former instead of the latter is beyond me - do these people have any clue what that message sounds like to those of us who live outside the U.S.?

My U.S. citizenship is looking to be more and more of a bad bargain - a little like having sex with a gorilla. As a citizen of a very powerful and very intrusive state, I'm definitely at a disadvantage when the government decides to throw its weight around.  Essentially whatever the gorilla decides is what's going to happen and I just get to sit there and take it as long as that rather aggressive primate decides that I belong to the troop.

For the record I am not OK with paying nearly 10,000 USD a year to the U.S. on top of the substantial taxes I already pay to the French government just to have a pretty blue passport, no services to speak of, lots of stress and anxiety and the very very strong sense that I am being royally screwed over.

If anyone has another take on it, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

The Biblio-Mat

From Open Culture (one of my favorite sites).

This device, called a Biblio-Mat (Biblio-Robot), was inspired by Stephen Fowler, owner of a second-hand bookstore in Toronto, Canada and instantiated by Craig Small.

This lovely little device will dispense random books for the very modest price of $2 (that's two Canadian dollars which is about 1.5 Euros).  What a cool concept.

It's been installed in a Toronto used book store called The Monkey's Paw.  I think it would be well worth buying a plane ticket from Paris to Toronto just to be able to walk in there, use the device and get a random book.  Why?  Because it perfectly satisfies my inner geek, my bodice-ripping book lust and the hidden joueuse (gambler) who intends to play the cosmic crapshoot of life as long as she can.

Of course there are other reasons as well to visit the fair city of Toronto so I'm going to put it at the top of the list of future Flophouse destinations once I get well enough to get on an airplane again.

And many thanks to Patrick Moore of Toronto who was passing by the Monkey's Paw and was kind enough to send along this photo.  Merci infiniment, Pat. 

The BIBLIO-MAT from Craig Small on Vimeo.

The TAS: Your Voice at the IRS

A name to know in the Diaspora Tax War of 2012.

TAS stands for Taxpayer Advocate Service and they are the U.S. government agency with a mandate to keep an eye on the American "fisc."

The TAS is run by the NTA, the National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson, who is, in the eyes of many Americans abroad, a queen among women, an ally, and our heroine.  Why?

Because in her 2011 annual report to the US Congress released earlier this year Madame Olson singled out the IRS' treatment of U.S. persons abroad in the amnesty programs (aka OVDP - Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Programs) saying that the way the program was applied to certain categories of non-compliant taxpayers was positively draconian and may even have opened up the U.S. government to legal challenges.

Many of the people who went into these amnesty program were not criminals, they were simply folks who finally realized that they had a reporting obligation and wanted to make it right.  For their willingness to come forward, they were "rewarded" with penalties (not necessarily back taxes mind you) that would have wiped them out financially.   Some of these cases have been resolved and the fines and penalties lowered or forgiven entirely but I can assure you that trust for the IRS and the U.S. government right now is at an all time low.  Another amnesty program has been announced by the IRS and I don't know of anyone who is even contemplating joining - they'd rather do a deep dive and never set foot in the U.S. again even if it means not being able to take care of elderly parents back home.

For all of the IRS chest beating over the "success" of these amnesty programs, the casualty has been trust and the willingness of non-compliant Americans abroad to come forward voluntarily.  In fact I would even say that where many of the non-compliant middle-class American expatriates once felt that they had a moral obligation to set things right and file those damn forms, they now feel that they have a good moral case for NOT complying.  This means that IRS will have to work harder and spend more taxpayer money bringing them (kicking and screaming all the way) back into the fold. As Madame Olson warned nearly a year ago in her report:

"The IRS’s miscommunication has consequences. If the government does not appear to treat benign actors fairly when they try to correct honest mistakes, then fewer people (even well-advised people) will try to correct their mistakes, and voluntary compliance will suffer. even if it were inclined to do so, the IRS does not have the resources to rely entirely on enforcement. the IRS needs taxpayers to cooperate and comply voluntarily. While an estimated five to seven million U.S. citizens reside abroad, the IRS received only 218,840 FBAR filings in 2008. By comparison, the government closed only 2,386 FBAR examinations and initiated only 21 criminal investigations in 2010.
While the ovdp attracted 15,364 applications (perhaps less than one percent of those who did not file FBARs), a more effective initiative would have prompted even more taxpayers to come into compliance without leaving those who did come forward feeling terrified, tricked, or cheated. By generating such ill will and mistrust, the IRS is squandering an opportunity to improve voluntary compliance. "

And now The Taxpayer Advocate Service and Nina Olson have come out with their 2013 objectives and how thrilled (and relieved) I was to see that Americans and Green Card holders abroad have not been forgotten.  Click on the Areas of Focus link and scroll down to page 21 where they say:

TAS Will Continue Advocating for American Taxpayers Abroad Who 

Are Expressing Fear and Frustration about FBAR, FATCA and Other 

International Penalties

Yes!  And such efforts deserve positive reinforcement, don't you think?  Madame Olson has a blog here where you can submit comments and I think a "thank you and please keep up the good work" for TAS' efforts would be a darn good idea.  Clearly they have been listening and looking into it and they don't like what they see.

Those of us who are living this nightmare are screaming and kicking at the doors of our lawmakers trying to get some attention to how these issues impact the average mostly middle-class American citizen or Green Card holders abroad.  For our trouble we are often dismissed out of hand because clearly there is no such thing as a middle-class American abroad, right?  My answer to this one is simply to say if we actually had the kind of money we are accused of hiding then we'd be doing the American thing and buying ourselves a couple of politicians to vote on our behalf.  Since that isn't happening and U.S. lawmakers hardly give us the time of day (much less respond to our mail) I think we can safely say that that those billions and billions of ill-gotten gains supposedly hidden in offshore bank accounts exist only in the minds of the American homelanders.  

But we do have one ally within the U.S. government who is taking us seriously and both the TAS and the NTA have my eternal gratitude for their excellent work.  

A Daily Date with a Particle Accelerator

The adventure continues.  This week I began radiotherapy (aka "les Rayons") at the cancer center.  As my primary care physician promised it was a whole different kettle of fish from the chemo.  No nausea and no long lazy afternoons on the drip (and that's a huge relief) but also a lot less "amitié solidaire" which I miss.  A lot.

It all started on Tuesday with an interview with a manipulatrice (operator) who explained to me their system for getting one month's sessions done as efficiently and effectively as possible.  There is a schedule and every day I have a date with the accelerator, a Clinac 600.  The exact time of each treatment varies each day so one morning I'm up and out the door early for a 10:30 AM session and on another day I can "faire la grasse matinée" (sleep in) because I don't have to be at the clinic until 3:30 in the afternoon.

The first appointment on Tuesday was the longest - about 30 minutes - because in addition to the tattoos I got last time and the orientation, the technician drew arcane designs on my chest in permanent ink.  These are used in order to properly position the device for each session.  I thought about taking a picture and showing it to you but to tell you the truth the way my scarred, tattooed, inked torso looks these days scares the hell out of me.  Something tells me that you would find this to be TMI (too much information).  So let's just say that the area between my neck and my waist looks something like a cross between this:

And this:

So how does it work now that I've been drawn and quartered?  Every day I walk to Versailles-Chantiers, take the train in to Saint Cloud, go to the radiotherapy reception desk where I flash my membership card and pick up my chart.  Then I take the elevator down into the bowels of the clinic (-3), slip my chart through a slot in a door and find a seat in the waiting room.  When they call my name I enter a small dressing room where I store my things, hang up my coat, undress to the waist, slip on a sweater, and walk into the chamber with the accelerator.  The operator then positions me under the device and leaves the room.  A bell chimes and then the machine takes over and starts moving about (reminds me of every Terminator movie I've ever seen).  When the device stops in what I presume is the correct position, I hear clicking noises that I imagine is the device shooting the photons into me.

 What is my job in all of this?  To stay as still as possible and relax.  Not too hard since the entire session lasts for less than 5 minutes.  As of yesterday that was 4 session downs and about 20 more to go. I will be done just before Christmas.

The whole business is quite efficient.  The process is clear and thus far every appointment has been on time and I am literally in and out in a matter of minutes.  And that turns out to be both a good and a bad thing.  The good part is that I have a schedule and I can plan my day around my appointments.  The part I don't like so much is that there isn't really much human interaction in the process. I present a card and get my file.  I slip my file into the door and wait until my name is called.  After being positioned on the table under the machine I am left alone in the room while I'm being radiated.  It's a little like an assembly line and while almost everyone is very kind there really isn't any time to talk and to get to know anyone.

Not that I'm complaining about the staff mind you.  These people are trying to save my life which means they have my eternal gratitude.  But I am missing the solidarity that I experienced in the chemo service where one really feels like it's a team effort and everyone (staff and patients alike) has the time to get to know each other.

That was my impression after my first week.  Perhaps my feelings about it will change over the next few days.  In fact it is far more likely that I will find unexpected treasures in this new experience if I can learn to let go of the old one and stop judging.  In fact there is something really funny about me feeling nostalgic for chemo. No reason to think that radiation therapy will be better or worse than chemo - just different.  And as Pema Chodron said, "Everything in our lives can wake us up or put us to sleep, and basically it's up to us to let it wake us up."

Les Jeudis Musicaux

Last Thursday the younger Frenchling and I made our way to the Versailles castle for what turned out to be an extraordinary evening.

Les Jeudis Musicaux (Musical Thursdays) are concerts organized by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles at the Versailles Castle. And not just anywhere in the castle mind you but in the Royal Chapel.    

Sacred music in a sacred place.  What an incredible experience to hear the music written for chapels and churches hundreds of years ago.  The music that people listened to when they went to Mass.


And what was on the program last Thursday evening?

Jean-Jean-François Dandrieu
Magnificat en La 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ave verum

Louis Grénon
Petite Messe en la majeur (A Major)

And for the last they kindly provided both the Latin and the French translations in the program so that we could all follow along as the choir sang the mass.  It was really something at the end when they chanted Domine salvum fac regem (God save the King):

Domine salvum fac regem
& exaudi nos in die
qua invocaverimus te

Seigneur sauvez le Roy
& exaucez-nous au jour
que nous vous invoquerons

God save the King
and answer us the day 
we call on you

These Musical Thursdays are just one of the many cultural events held here in Versailles that are not nearly as well known as they should be.  (Another is the incredible show put on by the  L'Académie du spectacle équestre (The Academy of Equestrian Arts) in the King's Stables).

And would you believe that these musical feasts are completely free to the public?  You don't even have to buy a ticket to get inside the the castle - you just go directly to a door adjacent to the chapel, say you are there for the concert, and they usher you right in.  Amazing.

Don't miss it next time you are in the city.  And if you send me a note ahead of time, I'll go with you.

In fact, I'd go every Thursday if I could.  This is the kind of "stuff" I love and I personally think is well worth paying for.  I am so very grateful that I live in a country that sees nourishment for the soul and the mind as something worth offering to everyone.

Demographics, Immigration, and the U.S. Election

The aftermath of the U.S. election is really something to see.  The Democrats (Obama's party) are jubilant while the Republicans (right-wing) are in a state of shock.  Between you and me, I think both sides need to watch what they say - people in the grip of strong emotion are often not terribly coherent and apt to say things they later regret.  Restraint of pen and tongue should be the order of the day until everyone gets enough distance to be rational and cool-headed.

But there is one theme coming out of the election post-mortem that is worth discussing here.  More than one analyst has pointed to demographics and immigration as key reasons for the Republican's loss.  Their argument is summed up by Juan Williams in the Wall Street Journal:

The critical political message from President Obama's re-election victory Tuesday is that he cemented a new coalition of Democrats, led by the Latino vote, which threatens to reduce Republicans to an afterthought in future national elections.

Who belongs to this new coalition that William's is referring to?  African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, young voters and others.  Who is presumably not part of this coalition according to Mr. Williams?  Something called "white voters" - basically those Americans of Northern European origin whose numbers are declining.  In order for the Republicans to stay relevant, says Mr. Williams, they must broaden their base and appeal to other groups like Hispanics.

Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post concurs and argues that the call for the Republican party to adapt to demographic realities is very very true when it comes to Hispanics who are in his words, "a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example)."  So why then in his view did Hispanics vote for Obama?  Immigration issues, says Mr. Krauthammer.  The Republican party should never have been so strident about enforcement of the immigration laws and should have offered an amnesty or some sort of path to regularization/citizenship for 'illegals' in the U.S.

Versions of this argument were around before the election and have gained a great deal of steam since because the Republicans lost (no hiding that grim reality) and must explain that loss to their supporters.  It may be more palatable for American conservatives to blame forces like demographics instead of focusing on their platform and their message.  But there is truth in it.  This 2011 Pew study showed that Hispanic voters do tend to lean toward the Democrats and feel that they (as opposed to the Republicans) show "more concern for Hispanics."

But does it necessarily follow that Hispanic voters are deeply concerned about immigration issues and voted accordingly?  Not necessarily.  This Gallup poll from June 2012 showed that healthcare, unemployment and the economy were the top issues for registered Hispanic voters, not immigration.  As for U.S. adults overall,  immigration was dead last on the list of their top concerns.

This is a very good example of why immigration is such a deadly topic for politicians.  There were many passionate voices in the Republican party that called for electric fences no amnesty, and punishing the "illegals."  In reaction to that many Republican candidates were genuflecting in the direction of those voices. - falling over themselves to prove how tough they were going to be on the "sans papiers."  Did this help them?  Probably not.

On the other hand there was the Obama administration who over the past four years presided over massive deportations of undocumented migrants and, in some cases, U.S. citizens.  Did this hurt Obama and the Democrats?  Doesn't appear to have had much of an impact.

So what lessons am I taking away from this election?

Race and ethnicity still matter so much in the U.S.  After many years living outside of the U.S. I find it shocking to see how Americans are sliced and diced and poured into racial categories in a way that you don't see in other places. It took me a moment to realize that I fall into the category of "white voter" in the U.S.  Now if I were to become a French citizen, would the French refer to me in that way?    Don't think so and while there are other categories like "Français de souche" these are used primarily by a few and are not invoked systematically as a way of dividing up the French population along racial or ethnic lines.

Race in the U.S. seems to trump almost all other ways of looking at the population.   Some of the categories are pretty dubious and clearly cultural constructs since they seem to have been created solely by Americans for other Americans.  Are there other countries that use race and ethnicity in this way?   Not that I know of but please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.  Forgive me but I don't see much "E pluribus unum" going on in the U.S. these days.  But hasn't that always been true and doesn't that Latin phrase represent more of a wish than a reality?

Immigration may not be that big a deal to most Americans:  For all the passion behind the debate the rhetoric and the reality doesn't seem to have changed people's minds.  Hispanics did not refuse to vote for Obama because of stricter immigration enforcement and it doesn't appear that Americans in general were all that concerned about immigration policy and enforcement when it came down to voting for or against a candidate.   Lot of noise around the issue but in the end it didn't really matter.

Perhaps American politicians would do better to just stop talking about it at all. So much of immigration policy is simply beyond the control of the U.S. authorities.  The U.S. can staple as many Green Cards as it likes to immigrants' diplomas but that won't change the growing attractiveness of other destinations.  The U.S. can put up all kinds of fences along the border with Mexico (good luck with that - it's a long border) but determined migrants will always find a way in.  Nearly 30% of immigration to the U.S. is from Mexico which means that an intelligent approach to U.S. immigration policy would be to treat it as a regional migrant management issue. And that means working with the Mexican government which already asked the U.S. back in 2006 to consider a joint approach.  

And isn't it interesting that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats floated that idea to the American people?  Just a suggestion for U.S. lawmakers whatever party they belong to:  Kick the entire business up to some regional supra-national committee and be done with it.

After all, this does seem to be a viable strategy for some European politicians who are more than happy to have the EU take this contentious issue off their hands. :-)