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Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

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Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#271

Post by cylinder »

masklinn wrote: post #14
youngbullind wrote: post #4

This affects my girlfriend. She has a dual passport but only lived in the US to the age of six months. We are are British but live in Spain which already makes for complex tax arrangements, and this on top of things is just crazy. How the hell does the US think it has the right to tax people who haven't lived there for over 30 years?

That's debatable but as the article notes citizenship-based income tax has been part of US law for a long time without that much issue (the standard deduction is already pretty high, it's just a pain in the ass that you have to declare it but most expats have been living with that for a long time). FATCA is utterly bonkers though.

They couldn't enforce much before FATCA. Now they can easily see and potentially seize your account funds.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#272

Post by lhopki01 »

jbritto wrote: post #249
lhopki01 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt there are many Indians in Yemen. It's a poor country and doesn't have many migrant labourers like the UAE or Bahrain do. Also the Americans I knew seemed to expect helicopters to come pick them up and all that. Saying to your citizens they need to get out and we've got a navy ship in port that you can get on if you want isn't really evacuating your citizens.

A simple search would lead you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raahat_(India)

So people went to a port or airport. It's not really a rescue as much as just having a few more planes picking people up than usual.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#273

Post by tokenadult »

From the article, "In 2010, just 1,006 gave up being US citizens, but since then the numbers have risen every year."

Let's think quantitatively to see if there is really a net trend here. In the most recently reported year, there were approximately 680,000 new United States citizens through naturalization.[1] So barely more than 1,000 United States citizens renouncing citizenship is swamped by several hundred thousand new citizens each year. I am an American citizen who has spent two three-year stays working and living abroad during my adult life. I've read about this taxation issue for decades, and filed United States tax forms from my place of foreign residence, but I've never seen a good reason to renounce my United States citizenship, nor has anyone else in my family.

The most common complaint about United States policies around citizenship that I see here on Hacker News is the complaint that it should be much easier to come to the United States to work on an employment-based visa. (It's more difficult than many participants on Hacker News desire, but settling in the United States with an employment-based visa is sufficiently easy that I know people just in my own social circle here in the Midwest who have settled here from Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, Taiwan, China, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Ecuador, Argentina, Korea, and a variety of other countries. Many people would like even more employment-based visas to be available, but they are already available by the tens of thousands.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/archive/archive-news/naturalization-fa...

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#274

Post by lhopki01 »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #262
lhopki01 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt there are many Indians in Yemen. It's a poor country and doesn't have many migrant labourers like the UAE or Bahrain do. Also the Americans I knew seemed to expect helicopters to come pick them up and all that. Saying to your citizens they need to get out and we've got a navy ship in port that you can get on if you want isn't really evacuating your citizens.

Helicopters would come pick them up from the airport or embassy if it was necessary. The violence in Yemen started relatively far from the population centers where most expats are/were and progressed relatively slowly. They had plenty of time to get out of the country via normal transportation options. If outright combined arms conflict had suddenly erupted in the city, you can bet the various developed militaries of…

You can bet that if outright combined arms conflict had suddenly erupted in the city various developed militaries of the world would have provided protection for their citizens to leave. That's visibly demonstrated by every civil war. Give me an example of a developed military that's gone into an armed conflict to rescue citizens. The closest I can think of is the rescuing of hostages. That's not quite the same thing though and very rare.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#275

Post by kaitai »

bespoke_engnr wrote: post #71
timthelion wrote: post #24

I am an American living in Prague and will be among those to give up their citizenship. The new FBAR requirements and the recently pushed through changes that require foreign banks to report are really a huge burden. It is a significant legal risk to be an American overseas. The fines are insane for failiure to report, even if you owe no taxes! You can easilly land yourself with a $20 000 - $80 000 fine for having a…

I'm an American living in Europe. I report my income to the IRS every year, like you. Reading your comment gave me a scare -- what exactly would trigger the $20,000-80,000 fine or asset seizure? Is it a failure to report income taxes at all? Or do you make so much more than $100k/year that the double taxation is killing you? I'm just trying to figure out what, other than their already-reported income being audited, h…

For me, I got an inheritance that I didn't really remember from a relative who passed away years ago. It was put into a foreign bank account since this person wasn't a US citizen and passed away in the country of their birth, and since I got it as a minor I basically ignored it, figuring I could just leave it as a bit of an emergency fund.

When I found out about the new rules and then remembered the bank account (10 years later!) I realized I was probably not in compliance. That's one thing that spooks people: $2000 in a bank account you forgot about can lead to disproportionate fines. I had to do a lot of paperwork to get into compliance, and because I had to transfer the money I actually lost a lot in a poor exchange rate (due to various constraints).

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#276

Post by adidash »

jbritto wrote: post #249
lhopki01 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt there are many Indians in Yemen. It's a poor country and doesn't have many migrant labourers like the UAE or Bahrain do. Also the Americans I knew seemed to expect helicopters to come pick them up and all that. Saying to your citizens they need to get out and we've got a navy ship in port that you can get on if you want isn't really evacuating your citizens.

A simple search would lead you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raahat_(India)

Air India also played a major role in the 1990 evacuations from Kuwait. Considered to be the largest civilian evacuation, airlifting 170,000 Indians stranded in Kuwait.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_airlift_of_Indians_from_K...

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#277

Post by 77pt77 »

xenihn wrote: post #267
mike_hearn wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-yemen-us-citiz... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16061379-post8.html

Didn't know about that situation with US citizens in Yemen, one of the comments posted in response to the LA Times article says Russia ended up evacuating them? Is that true, or just propaganda? The only source is RT..

> LA Times article says Russia ended up evacuating them?

This would be irony overload.

For someone who still remembers the cold war this is almost unthinkable.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#278

Post by cylinder »

josh_fyi wrote: post #51
IIAOPSW wrote: post #15

I don't even have to click to know what this is about. God damn government wants to tax me despite being overseas. Don't get me wrong here. I love my country but hot damn do I hate our government. HK or UK or Canadian passport would probably be nearly as good but without any of the bullshit.

No, this is NOT primarily about taxes. It is about expensive reporting requirements -- the sort of paperwork usually done by billionaires and big corporations must be filled out by every American, even those with low-incomes.

Yes, taxes are still an issue! Look at how the Mayor of London just had to pay capital gains taxes to the US because he was born there. He sold his primary residence, which is cap gains tax exempt in the UK, and the profit exceeded the threshold in the US, so he had to fork over money to the IRS. It's a complete joke and scam.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#279

Post by jbooth »

oldmanjay wrote: post #242
jerf wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What austerity are you talking about? That's not a US thing. There's been no austerity here; government spending has continued fairly normal growth once you factor out the stimulus spending. Although since that seems to be what a lot of EU governments are calling "austerity", perhaps we have had it.

Remember how a large percentage of gov't administrators complained that their normal annual budget increase being lowered slightly was a cut? Remember how they cut services that didn't even depend on that increase in response? Calling it "austerity" is at least as honest.

If you have union contracts dictating that your costs go up by X% a year to roll over personnel, then a budget increase of less than that is indeed a cut as you'll be laying off personnel to meet the budget.

See also: Every departmental budget ever, public or private (non-unioned employees expect a small annual raise as well)

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#280

Post by knowaveragejoe »

lhopki01 wrote: post #274
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helicopters would come pick them up from the airport or embassy if it was necessary. The violence in Yemen started relatively far from the population centers where most expats are/were and progressed relatively slowly. They had plenty of time to get out of the country via normal transportation options. If outright combined arms conflict had suddenly erupted in the city, you can bet the various developed militaries of…

You can bet that if outright combined arms conflict had suddenly erupted in the city various developed militaries of the world would have provided protection for their citizens to leave. That's visibly demonstrated by every civil war. Give me an example of a developed military that's gone into an armed conflict to rescue citizens. The closest I can think of is the rescuing of hostages. That's not quite the same thing…

> That's visibly demonstrated by every civil war.

No it's not. Especially so with the civil wars in the Arab world, they didn't spring up virtually overnight and almost across the board started well away from the capital cities where most expats and embassies/consulates are.

> Give me an example of a developed military that's gone into an armed conflict to rescue citizens. The closest I can think of is the rescuing of hostages. That's not quite the same thing though and very rare.

There are a variety of examples of this by practically every developed country. In the last two decades it's been relatively common in Africa and the Middle East. The US in particular has a number of such cases which can be found in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...

Hostage rescues are very rare, I agree. That's an extreme measure.

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