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Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

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811–820 of 876 posts

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the current situation is a semi-failure WOuld you care to expand on that? I'm curious what in particular about the US immigrant culture you would like to see adopted, and what about the current German system prevents that culture from developing.

Sadly I can't find good polls on some of the things I want to talk about, so this has a bit of an anecdotal note. But I've been living in a majority turkish subdistrict for most of my life, and have many german-turkish friends, as well as friends and family teaching in schools with many turkish and arab descendant kids. But first some facts: "People with a migration background", which includes their children and chil…

Thank you for taking the time to explain your point of view.

I suppose this is just the unavoidable result of too many immigrants arriving around the same time. And when they have their own communities, they have no reason to integrate into the host culture.

Has Germany done anything to reduce the number of new immigrants coming in?

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're software engineer in Poland and spend some time architecting your contract, you can pay only 5% income tax (+ irrelevant amount for social security) as "R&D tax relief for commercializing IP rights". Point you're making applies to countries like Belgium or France.

If you're using IPBox as average software engineer that has nothing to do with actual R&D or innovation then you should feel ashamed cuz it's straight doubtful from ethical and moral standpoint

The whole schema was architected for that.

I'm all for progressive taxes, but fuck system where Comarch CEO pays fraction of my tax percentage.

I'm not doing it tho, 15% ryczałt (lump sum?) is low enough to not care, and ipbox seems like tax trap. I'm not paying money to villains like Memcen to lower my taxes.

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#813
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% is a gross exaggeration, though. Romania has lower salaries than Poland, as far as I know, and in Romania as a senior engineer in a decent company you can get a total > compensation of €3.5k - €4k per month, that would be ~$4k - $4.8k per month, so ~$48k - ~58k. Again, net. And probably more since there are companies that give you RSUs/ESPPs, so you can go along for the ride. Not as many as in the US, obviously,…

I don't know if whether the numbers you quote for Romania are correct or not (Polish salaries for devs are not even remotely close to that), but a salary that nets you €4k/month after taxes is not very common in Sweden - which is considered a richer country than Romania.

You can get that in Poland and it's not uncommon. [0] 22000 PLN net on B2B contract gets you >18k after tax (15% ryczałt), which is around 4k EUR.

[0] https://justjoin.it/remote-poland?tab=with-salary&sort=salar...

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#814

By most western standards my family teeters on the line between middle and upper middle clas. We sold all of our US property last year; and now we are shopping for 4-6 unit buildings within 100km of Barcelona to get our Golden Visas. Our goal is to get citizenship and access to the EU then renouncing my US citizenship. It isnt about money, I am juwt ashamed to have an American passport and know my tax dollars are bei…

>It isnt about money, I am juwt ashamed to have an American passport and know my tax dollars are being spent on war and murder in the name of christ and oil profits. You know Bush isn't president anymore, right? That hasn't been a a popular (and I would say erroneous, even when it was popular) talking point for more than a decade. I do find it interesting that expatriation trends seem to pivot in years with president…

I just realized, I never mentioned Bush, you did. See, I didn't even have to mention Bush, just his legacy, and you instantly knew what I was referencing.

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#815
post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how the IRS can know what you do in foreign banks

Because they apparently require foreign banks to report it. Now, how do they actually enforce that supposed "obligation"? I do not know. But it doesn’t surprise me. The US has already enforced it’s laws on foreign companies' dealing abroad merely because they had used dollars in their transactions.

They say you play ball or lose access to the US banking system, which is pretty much a death sentence.

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#816
post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the revenue is not very great but if there were a blanket exception I think you’d suddenly find a lot more people gaming then system to not technically be US residents and thereby escape large amounts of liability.

That's pretty easily dealt with through residency thresholds. We do this in the UK, counting people resident for tax purposes if they spend more than so many days in the UK in a given year. I would be very surprised if the US doesn't already do this to determine non-citizens tax status.

That's how state taxes are dealt with in the US and a number of people go to great pains to make sure they stay exactly the number of days in some high-tax state that lets them skirt liability. I'd be surprised if similar things didn't happen in Europe but I don't pretend to be as familiar with what goes on there.

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it unfair to have fallback option? because natives with just one passport don't have that option. > Is it unfair to California.. California and Texas are in the same country

>because natives with just one passport don't have that option. If by natives, you mean Native Americans, they have their own sovereignties. Many have do have tribal passports in addition to US passports. If by natives you mean, John Q Public, then that's just crab-bucket thinking. The majority of Americans have zero passports, leave alone one. By your standard, it should be wrong for people to have one at all since…

I don't mean native Americans - I mean the residents of any country who also hold some other passport/citizenship.

> By your standard, it should be wrong for people to have one at all

By "having a passport" I mean eligibility for a passport aka citizenship, not literally whether you've applied for one. Equal opportunity should exist - whether it is taken advantage or not is another matter.

> It's a matter of a person's choosing to meet the requirements to obtain one or not

How does one choose hereditary requirements? Or capital requirements (aka golden pass)?

> your argument was one escaping to another jurisdiction

Maybe there are similar issues between state jurisdictions, but I talked specifically of national/country jurisdictions which aren't really similar; especially wrt tax.

In any case, I think the point is moot since all US citizens are (equally) fairly free to cross state lines. The point isn't that it's unfair to move to another jurisdiction with another as fall-back, but that not all are equally able to do this - which is true of states.

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#818

It's so irritating to be an American that has moved overseas. Basically the only country in the world that charges taxes on money you make and spend somewhere else, just because of where you were born. Thanks to IRS regulations, 90% of investment firms will just reject me outright rather than deal with the paperwork. Getting someone to help file my inordinately complex taxes costs thousands of dollars more than I act…

You wrote: Thanks to IRS regulations, 90% of investment firms will just reject me outright rather than deal with the paperwork.

Sorry for your troubles. Do you know about https://www.interactivebrokers.com? They are an ultra-low cost international brokerage. It seems they specialise in handling complex regulations! They can open brokerage accounts for local residents in an incredible number of countries -- all legally. Even India, which very difficult! Normally, they have a tiny office in each location to handle local financial regulatory requires (KYC, AML). FYI: The head office is in the United States, which is great for strong securities regulations. I strongly recommend it. And they aren't some start-up. They have been around for a long time. Their product range is similar to a large investment bank. You can trade everything under the sun that is listed on an exchange.

Save the best for last: They recently scrapped their minimum monthly fees for low balance accounts.

(Re-reading this post, sorry if I sound like a 'shill'. Everything I wrote above can be independently verified with some Google searching!)

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#819
post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You compare obligations to debt (which do have an upfront playout) but then state there is a benefit. How does that work with debt? Why would a jury of peers be a benefit, unless you assume positive bias? How does that work with the draft?

If you’re paying an electric bill the benefit associated with the debt was receiving electricity. How does that work with debt? For debt like a credit card bill it’s the money you spent when buying stuff etc. If you meant taxes then it’s government services already received, for example a strong military. Why would a jury of peers be a benefit, unless you assume positive bias? It’s an option, you don’t need to be tri…

> it’s government services already received, for example a strong military

but you no longer benefit from the military and other services abroad?

> It’s an option, you don’t need to be tried by your peers

but you are obligated to jury duty, to the extent you have to pay to leave?

> Look at all the countries that have been invaded

all all the ones that haven't? Doesn't seem like a draft is needed.

Re: Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship

#820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish tax and legal system is a nightmare. Have you looked at Portugal?

Yes, but my wife has spent the past four years learning Spanish and every time I suggest Portugal she gets a murderous look in her eyes. My preference is actually Denmark, but it is an order of magnitude more difficult to move there, and my wife hates the language :(

Look where the rich Spanish Twitch streamers are migrating: Andorra.
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