Canadians unfairly targeted by IRS

US citizens and residents receive their tax refunds from the IRS in under 3 weeks, however if you are Canadian or foreign the IRS can take until December to pay out your tax refund. Under a new US law the IRS have until 6 months past the due date of June 15th to pay out your tax refund. That's right Christmas of this year to get back a tax refund from last year!

The following is a link to the IRS website that states their new processing time for foreign persons tax refunds.

http://www.irs.gov/Refunds/Nonresident-Aliens-Filing-Form-1040NR-for-Refund-of-U.S.-Source-Income-Withheld

The IRS state they need this extra time to make sure they were paid the tax before in turn paying it out. They believe that if the tax is paid to a "foreign" person they won't be able to recover it. However this is faulty logic on a number of grounds;

a) If a US withholding agent is the one not remitting the tax then the US should take action against them not the innocent foreign taxpayer

b) If a criminal is filing false tax returns to claim a tax refund then pursue the criminal (most countries co-operate on international fraud), not the innocent foreign taxpayer.

The United States has created a two tier system for tax refunds. Citizens and residents get their tax refunds right away and document matching occurs after the fact, despite widespread domestic identity theft and other fraudulent refund claims. Foreign persons, including foreign students, investors and others have to wait nearly a year to get their tax refunds.

Please circulate this petition so that we can present this to the Canadian Minister of Finance, to protest this unfair action by the IRS.