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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

#341

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…

> There are some benefits to being a US citizen, like that the army will rescue you if there is a civil war This is a common myth. If you don't intend to return to the USA there are no benefits to US citizenship, only downsides. The US may or may not rescue you if there's a civil war (see the fate of people in Yemen), but if they do, they will charge you for it at military rates you almost certainly cannot afford: ht…

"If you don't intend to return to the USA there are no benefits to US citizenship, only downsides."

Seriously? US citizenship means you can travel with a US passport, which allows visa-free travel to many, many countries: https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#342
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. You must file FBAR for all of your accounts only if the sum of them ever exceeded US$10,000 during the year. That requirement has been around for many years. The IRS rules concerning FBAR are here: https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Emplo... And the pertinent text from that page: "Who Must File an FBAR United States persons are required to file an FBAR if: 1. the United States person had a f…

This is only if you are self-employed or a small business owner, correct? If you are an American living abroad and working for a company does FBAR apply to you?

Any United States person has to file if they have more than $10,000 held in a overseas account.

A United States person is defined as:

"United States person includes U.S. citizens; U.S. residents; entities, including but not limited to, corporations, partnerships, or limited liability companies, created or organized in the United States or under the laws of the United States; and trusts or estates formed under the laws of the United States."

(There are exemptions for very specific circumstances)

A lot of United States persons living overseas are unaware that they need to file, and a lot of permanent residents or H-1Bs in the US are unaware that they also need to file if they still have assets held overseas. They have ramped enforcement up over the last few years so a lot of people are out of compliance and don't realize it. Thankfully at least at the

See:

http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/taxes/unc...

(Disclaimer: Not an accountant. Consult an accountant for tax related advice)

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#343
post #329
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you are supposed to register if you live outside the USA with the State department.

Actually, no. There is no "supposed to." You can register with the State Department if you live outside the US, just like you can register with the US if you travel outside the US. The web site is http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/go/step.html . Do you really think that every one of the millions of American citizens who travel or live overseas each year is supposed to tell the US about their current locati…

Do you really think that every one of the millions of American citizens who travel or live overseas each year is supposed to tell the US about their current location?

I didn't presume there was such a requirement, but I also wouldn't have been surprised if the fine print somewhere made it a selectively enforced requirement. It doesn't strike me as more or less onerous than some other actions that are currently required.

There is no "supposed to."

I think you are correct, but when an official government agency "encourages" a certain behavior, it's not too much of a stretch to presume that one is "supposed to" do it:

  We encourage all U.S. citizens travelling or residing 
  overseas to notify the closest U.S. Embassy or Consulate of 
  their contact information so that, in an emergency, we can 
  contact them to provide important safety and security 
  information, or support during a crisis.
https://step.state.gov/STEP/Pages/Common/FAQ.aspx

What would your guess be as to the chances that some sort of registration will be made requirement in the future?

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What premium is that over say being the holder of passport from the UK, NL, DE, FR, ES, IT, CH, SE, DK, NO, FI, BE or any one of a host of other countries that don't have such crazy tax rules?

> What premium is that over say being the holder of passport... You tell me; there's a whole article written here about how hard it is to give up the US passport. Here we have a woman who doesn't live in the country and doesn't want to pay taxes to the country, yet is torn up about not being "American". I don't get it.

One of the supervisors for my Master's thesis was American but has lived in Canada since the '70s. He hasn't bothered to get Canadian citizenship. He's now retired living in BC. I'm wondering if he'll do it now.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#345

>Her voice cracks and her eyes well up. She is in the process of relinquishing her American nationality. Soon she'll visit the US embassy formally to renounce her citizenship, she says, under duress. >"I'm very proud of being an American. It's what I am when I look in the mirror. >"If it weren't for Fatca [the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act] and the decision by the bank, I'd never be doing this. Never ever. It's…

You are, seemingly deliberately, failing to understand that this isn't a 1% problem. The 1% have tax advisors and CPAs paid to take care of this for them. This is affecting expats and accidental americans in their daily lives, even if they have no income. I am not the first to suggest it, but reread the article, and image that you earn $30K and live in france, and for some reason you're account is being closed, and y…

The simple solution would be to synchronize FBAR and FACTA to use the same reporting amount as this would remove the vast majority of people from having to report. $10K is far to low given exchange rates. $50K-$100K or higher would probably be a more realistic number.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, doesn't own a car, and spends most of his time in third world nations doing said philanthropy - but I'm not here to talk about his relative merits, just that fatca is ineffectual.

so he just earned all his money without using any government built/administrated infrastructure or any technology that was developed using government/tax money or any common good? I'm impressed. Must be hard developing your own internet, electrical network, build your own road infrastructure, legal system and police enforcement, schools and hospitals for your employees and in the end still end up billionaire. As much…

Perhaps some of those assumptions that you take to be axiomatic regarding the role of taxation in society, he did not agree with.

Use of public resources does not obligate you to pay taxes. The enforcers with guns obligate you to pay taxes. If you can escape the enforcers, you can escape the taxation. And that guy escaped the enforcers.

Also, you may want to take a closer look at the ownership and maintenance of communication networks, power grids, and hospital systems. Many of the so-called "public utilities" in the US are actually for-profit corporations that sometimes have to answer to a government regulator if a customer complains loudly enough. In fact, the only federally owned power grid company that I am aware of within the US is the Tennessee Valley Authority (though plenty of hydroelectric dams elsewhere are also federally owned), and it still buys 10% of the power that it sells from privately owned sources. It should also be noted that the TVA is not supported by taxes, but actually turns a profit.

As tax dollars are also spent on such meritorious projects as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the Vietnam War, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the F-35 joint strike fighter, domestic surveillance networks, eminent domain abuse, civil forfeiture abuse, forced insurance schemes, chronic fiscal mismanagement, and countless others that an unfortunate minority of voters may consistently object to, I suppose that someone who avoids or evades paying taxes will have to replicate those things on his own as well.

If you tie an ethical obligation for paying taxes to anything a government does, you necessarily imply that withholding payment is an ethical means of protest against anything you object to the government doing, in proportion to the amount it spends on doing that thing. That strays dangerously far from the realpolitik situation, where your government will take its pound of flesh from you, whether you like what it does with it afterward or not.

The heart of the matter is that anyone or anything with an obscene amount of money has to eventually deal with London and New York, and the latter connection provides the access point by which the US IRS can bully and browbeat international banks into complying with any arbitrary and capricious rule that the US cares to institute, with the threat of losing an extortionate portion of any quantity of their money that passes through New York.

Many Americans suffer from the common delusion that life should, in some way, be fair, despite all available evidence to the contrary. This fuels all sorts of irrational outrage and bad behavior. In this case, expatriates are left to wonder "why is the US government spending so much effort on screwing me over for no reason?"

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some benefits to being a US citizen, like that the army will rescue you if there is a civil war This is a common myth. If you don't intend to return to the USA there are no benefits to US citizenship, only downsides. The US may or may not rescue you if there's a civil war (see the fate of people in Yemen), but if they do, they will charge you for it at military rates you almost certainly cannot afford: ht…

"If you don't intend to return to the USA there are no benefits to US citizenship, only downsides." Seriously? US citizenship means you can travel with a US passport, which allows visa-free travel to many, many countries: https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

TIL that both UK and US passports are the most powerful passports in the world.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#349
So is America still the land of the free?

It looks more like a prison: - Follow rules (that you are supposed to somehow know) - Forced to take on debts to survive - Hope you don't get penalized or - God forbid you need healthcare

It's a great country for people with money and resources. The common man is just screwed.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#350
post #217

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…

What do you mean by "austerity"? The US government has spent $8T under Obama in new debt (and that beats the previous record set immediately before by George W Bush- it's not a partisan thing, both parties over spend.) As an american who has lived overseas, I totally agree with you about FBARs, it's beyond unreasonable. But where is the austerity?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_sequestra...
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