Mr. Chair, LIB-7 enables the Minister of Finance to establish a Canadian form for people to fill out instead of requiring the use of IRS form W8. The agreement between the two governments makes it mandatory for Canadian financial institutions to approach Canadian account holders who might be U.S. persons and puts the burden of proof on them to fill out this form and declare they are not U.S. citizens and are not subject to U.S. tax.
The problem with this W-8BEN form, if you look at the instructions on the form, is the IRS provides an estimate of how long it takes to fill out the form and that time seems to be quite excessive. It is seven hours and 10 minutes: two hours and 52 minutes for record keeping; two hours and five minutes for learning about the law or the form; two hours and 13 minutes for preparing the form.
What we would like to simply do is to allow the Canadian government, allow the Minister of Finance, to have the option of establishing a similar but less onerous process so that Canadians can declare that they are not subject to U.S. tax.