Earlier quoted context omitted.
And take away their right to vote. I’m an expat and I’m not allowed to vote and I don’t owe my home country any taxes (Canadian in the US) That’s the way it should be. I shouldn't tell my home country how to live a life I have no stake in, and they should not charge me taxes for services they cannot render abroad. End taxation and voting abroad!
Spoken like someone who is not stationed abroad, just for one off the cuff easy example. Perhaps I'm wrong but there must be countless reasons and situations like that which make this simple idea in fact merely simplistic. I certainly expect to still receive all manner of services while abroad. I expect my property to still be mine and protected by the police. My home should not revert to being owned by the state jus…
> I certainly expect to still receive all manner of services while abroad. I expect my property to still be mine and protected by the police. My home should not revert to being owned by the state just because I went on vacation.
There are huge numbers of foreign owners of US real estate that enjoy these benefits by paying property taxes and income tax on any income that may be derived from such property. This is also the standard way foreigners and expats are taxed in every other country on earth save for Eritrea and the United States. So there is only an exception made for only one class of people in the United States, and that class is the group of citizens who move abroad and pay taxes abroad. They are punished for leaving, and I use this word very specifically - the law came into effect during the revolutionary war to punish US citizens that became turncoats for the British. It is a punishment that hasn’t been repealed. Oh, and if you do some Google searches you will find examples of the US criticizing Eritrea for citizenship based taxation, calling it an unfair punishment of its expats.
> If I move to some other country fully, and want to participate in it's policy direction, then I expect to do whatever is required to gain the new citizenship and reliquish the old.
Many, many, many US expats are trying to go this route, but the US has jacked up the renunciation fees in recent years, limited the maximum annual number of renunciants, and made it extremely difficult to “pass” the exit test which involves a ton of subjectivity on behalf of angry embassy employees.
> Maybe double dipping shouldn't be allowed, but being remote should mean essentially nothing by itself.
Except it means essentially everything for citizens of nearly every other country on the planet. Born in the UK and want to move to Papua New Guinea? No problem. Pay the UK only on income still derived from the UK and pay PNG based on any income derived there. Simple.
Also, don’t get me started on all those accidental Americans born prematurely while their parents were on vacation, or born to one American parent, or who lived in the US for their first year of life and have never been back. Citizenship and US taxation haunts them for the rest of their life unless they are one of the lucky few to be “allowed” to renounce.
> Even fairly extended residence where you have a local job and rent a home etc shouldn't constitute some sort of automatic change of citizenship. That should only happen if and when you actively choose to do it. People get sent places for work. People go places for school or research. People have to take care of family. People are in the military. There are all kinds of situations requiring a person to be somewhere other than home, for any amount of time, even years, without changing what is "home" and what is "away".
Residency has a pretty bright line legal definition that varies by country. In Canada, if you spend 183 days there you are a resident for tax purposes and need to pay Canadian income tax on your worldwide income. The US is the same. In some countries it is based on your “economic locus” so they take a bit more holistic approach to see whether your behaviour indicated you were a resident (resided in a home, had a job, etc etc).
What you refer to about “automatic change of citizenship” almost never happens (though, funnily enough, the US tried that shit too, stripping Vietnam draft dodgers of their citizenship until the US Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional). We are talking here about tax residency - not citizenship. For example, in every other country you can retain your citizenship while automatically losing your tax residency obligations simply by becoming a tax resident of another country.
In the above, I’ve played fast and loose with some things to simplify and not bore people to tears, but everything is approximately correct.