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The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

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Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#131

Post by tallanvor »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #48
mikeash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with what that quote is saying. Americans living abroad can still vote, and therefore are still represented. It's true that Americans living abroad don't all have the same representatives, since they're represented by the elected officials from where they're registered to vote in the US, but that's a far different thing from saying that they have no representation at all.

I'm an american living in Norway. I can vote for president, sure. Supposedly I am allowed to vote in the district I last lived in the states, but trying to get any of this done is difficult, especially since the state I live in requires proof of address for voter registration. I understand the likelihood of the representatives there to care about any issues I have is pretty minimal. After all, americans living abroad…

Living near the embassy doesn't make things any easier. I live about a 5 minute walk from the US embassy in Oslo, and you have to have an appointment to do anything. The embassy is supposed to accept ballots, but for all intents and purposes only does this for presidential elections, so I still end up going to the post office.

It's incredibly frustrating how even when living overseas you have to have some sort of residential address for many things. I use my father's address for this purpose, which is useful since he lives in a state with no local income tax, reducing some of my paperwork.

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#132

Post by PopeOfNope »

lnanek2 wrote: post #23
mikeash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with what that quote is saying. Americans living abroad can still vote, and therefore are still represented. It's true that Americans living abroad don't all have the same representatives, since they're represented by the elected officials from where they're registered to vote in the US, but that's a far different thing from saying that they have no representation at all.

You seem to be agreeing with the quote. Note it doesn't say no one represents them. It says no single member. Influence spread across all members isn't really going to get much work done for them as if they had their own specific to their problems who considered it their job to represent them and talk about them, etc..

They can't all pitch in and hire a lobbyist, like every other special interest group?

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#133

Post by hysan »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #48
mikeash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with what that quote is saying. Americans living abroad can still vote, and therefore are still represented. It's true that Americans living abroad don't all have the same representatives, since they're represented by the elected officials from where they're registered to vote in the US, but that's a far different thing from saying that they have no representation at all.

I'm an american living in Norway. I can vote for president, sure. Supposedly I am allowed to vote in the district I last lived in the states, but trying to get any of this done is difficult, especially since the state I live in requires proof of address for voter registration. I understand the likelihood of the representatives there to care about any issues I have is pretty minimal. After all, americans living abroad…

Yup, came here to say the same thing. Most people who haven't lived abroad for a significant amount of time don't realize the difficulty of trying to vote. In addition to that, the effectiveness of getting your voice heard by your "representatives" (the reps from your last permanent residence in the US) is much more difficult. I used to be able to pick up my phone and get myself heard on issues that I cared about. Living abroad, the best you can hope for is to contact your rep online and hope they care enough to give you a copy-pasted response.

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#134

Post by vidarh »

deong wrote: post #88
ptaipale wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there will be no difference except for inconvenience. There also appears to be a factor of risk. I'm not American but have had Americans in my team. A slight procedural error, either by themselves or by the IRS, can be a huge financial and legal problem, and expose the person to litigation. It seems draconian and unfair to me. Thus the practical consequences are more than minimal.

I actually talked with an accountant in the US my first tax year living year, and her advice was "don't use an accountant". I have no idea if this is true or not, but according to her, the IRS's view is basically, "we know this is complicated stuff, so do your best, and if you make a mistake, no big deal", whereas if you hire an accountant and get something wrong, the assumption is that you're trying to avoid taxes.

It seems tax authorities can be surprisingly flexible as long as they don't get a whiff of attempted tax evasion anywhere.

E.g. at some point around 2000 or so, I'd just moved to the UK, and my personal finances were total chaos around the move. I'd sold quite a lot of shares in Norway, and traded quite a bit on NASDAQ via a US brokerage account (in 2000... yes, it got ugly; thankfully not that much money), and had income from both UK and Norway split between employment and contracting in the same tax year. And transfers back and forth between my UK, US and Norwegian accounts... To make it more annoying, UK and Norway have different tax years (Norway follow calendar year, UK does not). And to be honest my record-keeping at the time was shoddy to the extreme.

So I wrote a letter to UK and Norwegian tax authorities where I set out the details of my income, assets and losses as best I could. I told them I had no clue how to accurately figure out exactly what was due (for the US it was easy because it was all losses that year; the US brokerage account was just relevant because it provided deductions for losses on my Norwegian taxes). Gave them a number each that I thought was close to correct. Filled in my tax returns with estimates (and explained in my letters that the numbers were estimates). Both just accepted my estimate with no arguments, and no requests for further documentation. No fines, or angry letters, or conflicting estimated tax calculations or anything, which was what I feared when I sent it all off.

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#135

Post by jleyank »

deong wrote: post #68
TimSchumann wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with $10k of financial engineering the problem goes away for forever As an American this upsets me greatly to hear. I feel it makes living abroad, especially to families of average means in this country, almost an impossible feat. I also wonder if only leaving the country for short duration vacation/business contributes to the "We're the best country ever!" mentality here and the "Wow, look at those weirdos over in…

If you're "of average means", then you can simply color within the lines, do exactly what the law tells you to do, and almost certainly have no problems at all. You only need the $10k to successfully cheat.

I think I've posted this before, but contributing to the thread...

Doing my US taxes takes about 3 hours, as it's basically updating the previous year's forms to reflect whatever changes have been made and adjusting for salary and exchange rate. As I live in a country with higher taxes than the US, I don't pay anything. US-ians living abroad will become familiar with form 1116 and 2555...

Yeah, FATCA introduces additional paperwork (or web-work at the moment). But, I have to fill out similar paperwork for my current country to account for my US-resident accounts. So I guess both countries wish the other would just go away?

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#136

Post by jleyank »

mike_hearn wrote: post #112
ckozlowski wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarly disagreeing, but when you say "many" (And that 266% increased made headlines everywhere), I feel it needs some context: 8.7 million abroad. 3,417 renounced citizenship. Or, .039%. I'm going to take a stab at this and guess that's some of the 1% right there who had millions stashed abroad. Maybe the tax law was painful to them, but for the rest, it's hardly a crisis.

The statistics on renunciations may not be correct. There are lists of people published who renounced, but every time I read a story about FATCA I keep coming across comments posting by people who claim they gave up their citizenship and never appeared on these lists. The real question is how many people would like to give it up, but can't, because obtaining citizenship where they live is extremely tough and because…

This is Hacker News, right? Way easier to work in SV with that blue passport/screaming chicken than otherwise (except possibly countries such as Canada). Throwing away easy access to the Valley strikes me as a reasonably high price for non-retirees to pay.

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#138

Post by rwallace »

crdb wrote: post #72
matthewmacleod wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question though – why should citizens living abroad (i.e. not using US public services) pay for those services through taxation?

The key is to look at the current budget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_bud... It can be split into three families of spending: - defense, which benefits you globally via Pax Americana, free trade routes etc. and should you require it, "Captain Phillips" style rescue. - "socialism", in the form of benefits that everybody has to pay for and that you can receive if you trigger certain situati…

- defense, which benefits you globally via Pax Americana,

This is, to put it mildly, a controversial claim.

- Most expatriated Americans probably already benefitted from free education which is included here.

When I point out the insanity of the law that denies free choice of public schools, its defenders usually try to justify it by saying schools are funded by local property tax rather than national income tax. Is this not the case?

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#139

Post by jleyank »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #28
morgante wrote: post #17

It really doesn't make sense how the US is the only country which insists on taxing their citizens, no matter where they live. It makes American labor less competitive and promotes the insularity of American culture. I'm living abroad and you can definitely see the impact of the US tax system in the background of expats: Americans are severely underrepresented. The same salary, when offered to a British expat and an…

Not the only country. Norway will also tax citizens in certain circumstances. I believe though Norwegians can state they have left the country permanently (though can still return) and lose rights to social benefits such as unemployment payments until you have been working in the country again.

One advantage of the US system is that they don't care when you switch your country of residence. My understanding of places like Canada and Australia is that emigration can cause a tax hit as you have to logically liquidate your assets in a final tax filing. Can non-US-ians comment on this?

Re: The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

#140

Post by [deleted] »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #28
morgante wrote: post #17

It really doesn't make sense how the US is the only country which insists on taxing their citizens, no matter where they live. It makes American labor less competitive and promotes the insularity of American culture. I'm living abroad and you can definitely see the impact of the US tax system in the background of expats: Americans are severely underrepresented. The same salary, when offered to a British expat and an…

Not the only country. Norway will also tax citizens in certain circumstances. I believe though Norwegians can state they have left the country permanently (though can still return) and lose rights to social benefits such as unemployment payments until you have been working in the country again.

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