101–110 of 179 posts
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Right right, no problems there. I'm comfortable, not wealthy, and a remote worker :)
You'll still have a $5k tax return to pay $0 in tax, have significantly higher penalty risk and have a hard time doing banking outside of the USA.
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Doesn't the U.S. have a problem with citizens voluntarily and deliberately acquiring citizenship from foreign countries?
Yes it does, but people do it anyways. If you become a U.S. citizen, you're expected to renounce your other nationalities. Edit: The biggest case was Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin renouncing U.S. citizenship for the tax savings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Saverin 2nd Edit: some discussion on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3979669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416258
http://www.immihelp.com/citizenship/dual-citizenship-recogni...
I wonder if there will ever be a time when there is a marketplace of citizenship. There are plenty of non-americans who want to become US citizens or immigrate legally. And at the same time there are US citizens going the other way. An example could be an Italian wanting to move to the US because he works in Tech and a US citizen wanting to move to Italy because he works in Fashion. A marketplace would allow the two…
If such a marketplace were to be legally implemented it should be far more complicated than a simple swap of citizenship between two people. Even then, the liquidity of citizenship would undermine its value, for better or worst.
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You're right on all accounts except the intent of the policies. The polices were intended for people like you. They are popularly SOLD as being against "rich tax evaders", but government, always and everywhere, wants more and more control, and that's why the requirements apply to people with 5 figure bank accounts rather than 8. Unless sufficient checks are in place, governments will grow their power and control ever…
I agree with your comments except the money laundering part. For money laundering, doesn't the source of the proceeds have to be illegal?
It used to be an "ancillary" crime, but now it's simply illegal to move money while looking like you're trying to hide the source.
This type of article appears every few years. Frankly, I don't think the numbers are very impressive, and they seem to be declining. "In 2013, 2,999 Americans renounced their citizenship; in 2014 so far, it’s a little more than 1,500 people." The population of the US in 2012 was about 314 million. So 0.000009% renounced their citizenship...
I know, from news here in Canada, that they have introduce some delays that are preventing thousands of dual citizens to renounce their US citizenships until 2015 at the earliest. Furthermore, you can not renounce your US citizenship if do not have citizenship in another country. So, of course, most Americans can not do this and to use the population of the US as a relative base for your count is meaningless.
So it's hard to judge how big or meaningful this story is. But anecdotally, I too am in Canada and I have definitely been hearing a lot recently from American friends who are finding US citizenship to be a PITA because of taxes.
I'm going through this IRS bullshit -personally-. I was under the impression filing taxes was simple, hell why would they make it complicated. But nope, if you live abroad it's twice as complicated for an ex-pat. Worse still, if you're self-employed (like I am) and a freelancer it's ever more paperwork and edge cases to be careful of. And the cherry on top! Software engineers have a whole different set of tax rules.…
As someone quite familiar with the situation, you're better off saying "Fuck you Intuit". They spend millions of dollars a year lobbying to keep the tax system complex. You can start here: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-... For what it's worth, as a dual citizen of UK and New Zealand I've only filed a tax return twice in my life - when I was a contractor.
Random question: If you had dual citizenship (e.g. Canadian + US), do you even need to tell a bank about your US citizenship when opening an account? Can't you just open it as if you were a Canadian only? Even your US SSN wouldn't be associated with it, so for all the US G and the bank know you're just someone with the same name and birthday. As a random aside: The US Gov is practically the only country in the world…
> If you had dual citizenship (e.g. Canadian + US), do you even need to tell a bank about your US citizenship when opening an account? If they bank (or its parent) wants to be able to do business in the US, yes. This is part of the same overreach as insisting data resident in an Irish data centre, belonging to an Irish entity, is subject to the US courts in violation of Irish and EU law.
As an American living in the US with a bank account abroad renouncing American citizenship isn't an option. What can people in this situation do?
The kicker comes if you decide to move back home and either have a green card or US citizenship.
I was personally bit by this (FBAR non-compliance). I worked abroad and was unknowingly violating it; found out about it from reading the news and hired a pro to extricate myself from the situation. The bank account held five figures. The cost to come into compliance was low five figures. The potential penalties were easily high six figures. It was much larger than the either (a) my total earnings from 4 years abroad…
You're right on all accounts except the intent of the policies. The polices were intended for people like you. They are popularly SOLD as being against "rich tax evaders", but government, always and everywhere, wants more and more control, and that's why the requirements apply to people with 5 figure bank accounts rather than 8. Unless sufficient checks are in place, governments will grow their power and control ever…
The laws were always on the books but rarely enforced. Only once the UBS thing broke did the IRS start cracking down. Then the OVDI happened, which presumes guilt (ie intentionally evading taxes) from the get go. So based on the timing, I always thought things got to the point they are because of swiss bank accounts and tax evaders. And I thought penalties were structured the way they were so the IRS could throw the book at those guys when they were caught.