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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

#361

Post by anothermouse »

ssmoot wrote: post #306
anothermouse wrote: post #228

I am British, and am married to an american. My wife moved to the UK and has never worked since. I had no idea about her obligation to file anything. She's been here for over a decade. Like a lot of people we use a joint bank account. My salary, and anything else goes in there. A couple of years ago I sold my flat in central London, and had 400K (600K USD) in there at various points. I have no idea how to bring my wi…

I don't know if this applies to you, but state-side the sale of an asset wouldn't be counted as income. According to this: http://time.com/money/2803550/income-taxes-on-home-sale/ If you lived in your previous home for at least 2 years, then you'd take it's original sale price plus closing/brokerage/etc costs as your "basis". Then take your later sale price subtracting those same costs. You get a $250,000 credit on p…

The problem is not that I made a profit in selling my house, it is that my wife had money in a bank account at all.

As she didn't file, she didn't know that you need to file an FBAR annually for each foreign account. And the penalties for not doing so are those mentioned above 25% of the balance a year for 5 years.

and there are plenty who do file who don't know to file an fbar too.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#362

Post by _cudgel »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #161
forgetsusername wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Patriotism can be as deeply ingrained in people as religious beliefs. From an outsiders perspective the US seems like one of those countries where people defend it blindly like they would a religion.

I think it's important to note that, for the most part, both patriotism and religion need to be deeply ingrained in a person at a very young age for them to defend either so blindly.

US families take care of the religious aspect; US public school take care of the patriotism. If you weren't of the age where you simply don't question what you're told yet, I believe (perhaps hope?) both of these would die out in a few generations.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#363

Post by rahimnathwani »

fapjacks wrote: post #353
rahimnathwani wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

If you have a Euro passport, you might as well torch your American one. There is no benefit to being identified as an American overseas when you have a European passport. In fact I would argue it is more dangerous. My family that were stuck in Kurdistan were able to avoid violence against Americans because they had Swedish passports. That little blue book is a death sentence in some places where something else wouldn…

"If you have a Euro passport, you might as well torch your American one."

Even if that were true, what proportion of US citizens living outside the US (the class to which my comment and the immediate parent referred) have a 'Euro passport'?

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#364

Post by dalke »

Slippery_John wrote: post #340
smazero wrote: post #199

The use of the term "expat" rather than "immigrant" is interesting. I read a piece in the guardian the other day which framed that distinction in terms of white vs non-white ( http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-... ), but it's obviously a bit more complicated than that. I don't think the two terms are synonyms, but they are very close, and once you try to pick apart the differences, I think t…

The distinction is the focus on old vs new. The term 'expatriate' is much closer to emigrant than immigrant, where the emphasis is more on the fact that they left their home country rather than the fact that they came to another. It also lacks the emphasis on permanency that emigrant/immigrant have. Additionally, the term 'immigrant' is much more ambiguous than 'expat'. An American expat is clearly an American citize…

I believe the nuance is in how to decide if "left their home country" is more important than "came to another".

If a US citizen goes to Saudi Arabia for 5 years to work in the oil industry and earn a lot of money, then is that an expat or an immigrant?

If a Mexican citizen goes to the US for 5 years to work as a farm laborer and earn a lot of money, then is that an expat or an immigrant?

If a Cuban left for Miami when Castro came to power, is that an immigrant or an expat? Even after 50 years? For example, quoting http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-expats-america-weigh-return-islan... :

> Cuban expatriates in America, including many who risked their lives to escape the communist island, are torn about whether to return after Havana and Washington formally reestablish ties next year. ... The surprise move, which clears the way for bilateral trade and normal diplomatic relations, also offers unexpected new options for Cuban-American exiles, who once believed that choosing one of the two countries meant forever closing the option of living in the other. ...

That would imply that someone can be an expat without believing there's a chance of returning.

Similarly, http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130926-in-search-of-miamis...

> And in 1959, as generations of Cuban expatriates began to settle in Miami following the Cuban Revolution, both the city’s Cuban community and the sandwich thrived.

How do you get generations of expatriates?

My thought is that we don't like Castro, so we focus on how the Cubans "left their home country", so call them expats. While with Haitians, who don't get the same treatment as Cubans, we focus on that they came to the US, and call them immigrants.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#365

Post by jerf »

SteveLAnderson wrote: post #315
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.

You mean the 2013 budget sequestration never happened? Tell that to the departments that are getting $1.1T less over an 8 year period. Between the sequestration and the lack of budget increases, the US has been going through a period of federal austerity.

Maybe it's just me, but when I think "austerity" I don't think such small-single digit percentages. If our government is that sensitive to such small piddling decreases in income, then the problem lies in the government anyhow, not the income decrease... on the timespan of your life, there will be years where the income will have to go down. Be it major famine, major natural disaster, or the need to fight an actual war again, you can't build a government edifice that only works if you feed it 105% of what it got last year, every year, after inflation, or it will fail anyhow.

Of course, expecting fiscal responsibility from a government is a fool's errand. Screaming like a stuck pig and running around yelling "AUSTERITY! AUSTERITY!" if one even breathes a threat to feed them less, and then blaming everything bad that ever happens again on the AUSTERITY is exactly what I'd expect from them. What on Earth will they actually do when something bad happens?

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#366

Post by ferentchak »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #293
77pt77 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How so? The US and RU have a history of helping each other in situations like this.

Know of any examples where I can read an account of this.

It brings up my Rocky 4 warm fuzzy

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#367

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #348
rahimnathwani wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

[deleted]

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#368

Post by toomuchtodo »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #363
fapjacks wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a Euro passport, you might as well torch your American one. There is no benefit to being identified as an American overseas when you have a European passport. In fact I would argue it is more dangerous. My family that were stuck in Kurdistan were able to avoid violence against Americans because they had Swedish passports. That little blue book is a death sentence in some places where something else wouldn…

"If you have a Euro passport, you might as well torch your American one." Even if that were true, what proportion of US citizens living outside the US (the class to which my comment and the immediate parent referred) have a 'Euro passport'?

Very, very small, and only those who've lived in the EU long enough to obtain citizenship.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#369

Post by anothermouse »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #345
anothermouse wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My other comment (in reply to another comment) shows how I, a brit, have gotten myself into a problem with far more that 100K, without having any idea.

The best option would be same country exemption for FBAR and FACTA. Or stop taxing non-resident citizens.

Re: Why expat Americans are giving up their passports

#370

Post by [deleted] »

furyg3 wrote: post #324
geomark wrote: post #170

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?

[deleted]
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