Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I renounced my US citizenship

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 83 posts

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#31

Post by arcanus »

skywhopper wrote: post #29
letitleak wrote: post #12

Charging for renunciation is the most ridiculous part. You are paying for a process that: is expensive only since they want to investigate you as a presumed criminal or tax dodger (the movie Brazil comes to mind) is a result of their non-compliance with international norms is the result of the US declaring you have a status that was never requested As an expat I consider all US citizens to be indentured servants due…

I'm curious, what is stopping expats with foreign citizenship and an objection to the paperwork from just letting their US passports expire (or for the "accidental americans" not ever establishing one) and just not complying with all the annoying rules?

You could find yourself having a great deal of trouble coming back across the border.

So kiss vacations or business travel to the USA goodbye.

If you can live without that, I suspect you are fine.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#32

Post by gozur88 »

british_india wrote: post #6
protomyth wrote: post #4

This is one of those things that should be repealed. I've frankly gotten tired of the punishing of normal people by dumb privacy invading laws[1], or frankly, taxing them when they are not in the US. There are easier ways of going after people and companies (looking at you Monster Cable) that play fast an lose with our tax laws. I am all for only taxing income / revenue earned in the US. 1) we can get rid of all the…

Really FATCA is one of the most excellent laws that has been passed. Prior to this, you had expats who had milked the US and then they wanted to waltz off with their proceeds. Americans gain huge benefits from the taxes paid by prior generations. The entire US system is the envy of much of the world--and how did it get that way? Americans paying their taxes. Whether or not you have kids--you must pay property taxes t…

>Americans gain huge benefits from the taxes paid by prior generations. The entire US system is the envy of much of the world--and how did it get that way? Americans paying their taxes.

This always amuses me. Previous generations didn't pay for things with taxes. They paid with debt. All those (crumbling) things that are "the envy of much of the world"? I and people my age paid for, decades after they were built. Just like future generations will pay for the things being constructed now.

>Whether or not you have kids--you must pay property taxes that fund your local schools. Unfair? Hardly. Those schools don't come out of thin air--taxpayers who came before you paid for them. Stop your whining.

How is that not unfair? Why should I have to pay for your kids to be educated just because you live near me? Educate your own damn kids. And if not, well, the world needs ditch diggers too.

> If you are a US citizen and you get in trouble somewhere on earth, the US government will come to your aid. That's what you're paying for...

Anybody who's actually been in trouble can fill you in on the limits of this fantasy. Assuming by "get in trouble" you mean get arrested, the US government will do things like contact your family, verify that you are a US citizen, and try to find you a lawyer.

If you're mistreated they will file a formal complaint with the host government. And I'm sure that's incredibly helpful.

In short, the US government will do pretty much what every government everywhere does for its nationals that "get in trouble".

>That's what you're paying for, in addition to paying for the next generation of Americans to have schools, roads, public utilities and the like.

This is all state and local stuff, except for highways. What does it have to do with the federal government?

>Really, whining about having to pay your share--no matter where you have run off to--is ridiculous.

The problem with this attitude is a lot of us have paid our share and your share too. There's a limit to the amount of rapaciousness a person should be expected to tolerate. Particularly if I'm living in another country, driving on that country's roads, sending my kids (if I had any) to that country's schools, etc.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#33

Post by letitleak »

skywhopper wrote: post #29
letitleak wrote: post #12

Charging for renunciation is the most ridiculous part. You are paying for a process that: is expensive only since they want to investigate you as a presumed criminal or tax dodger (the movie Brazil comes to mind) is a result of their non-compliance with international norms is the result of the US declaring you have a status that was never requested As an expat I consider all US citizens to be indentured servants due…

I'm curious, what is stopping expats with foreign citizenship and an objection to the paperwork from just letting their US passports expire (or for the "accidental americans" not ever establishing one) and just not complying with all the annoying rules?

Foreign Banks will refuse you service if they discover you are a US person with no intention/ability to comply. If they don't they face tax penalties on any US holding and possibly local penalties due to treaties with the US.

*Over time the US will enlist more and more help with these kinds of methods (for example many foreign employers would have obligations from paperwork they signed to accept US customer payments) so at some point you will probably have to come into compliance if you aren't somewhere totally at odds with the US.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#34

Post by cmrdporcupine »

arcanus wrote: post #31
skywhopper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what is stopping expats with foreign citizenship and an objection to the paperwork from just letting their US passports expire (or for the "accidental americans" not ever establishing one) and just not complying with all the annoying rules?

You could find yourself having a great deal of trouble coming back across the border. So kiss vacations or business travel to the USA goodbye. If you can live without that, I suspect you are fine.

Nope, if you are in Canada for example they'll just take your assets. They strongarmed the Canadian banks into forcing disclosure of all US citizens bank account contents.

And there are plenty of people around the world who have discovered they have US citizenship without knowing it before. And now they have to file with the IRS.

Glad I never got dual citizenship through my grandmother. In the past having USian citizenship would be nice. Now it would just be a pain.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#35

Post by protomyth »

bertiewhykovich wrote: post #7
protomyth wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you miss the part where the foreign bank does its own reporting, and how said banks are starting to refuse to have US Citizens as customers.

The author herself doesn't seem to be experiencing outrageous banking pain, though. She's paying no US taxes, and could almost certainly fill out her own tax forms if the thousand-Euro fee is onerous. It's completely unclear what, exactly, is so burdensome about her citizenship.

I would say her experience and stress of that experience are shown in her "Violation of Privacy" section. The final part "If they do not match, the US threatens excessively large fines, entirely out of proportion to the totals reported in those accounts, enough to wipe out one’s entire savings. Many banks, meanwhile, are beginning to refuse to do business with US citizens in order to lower their compliance costs." seems pretty painful. I would worry a lot if an error could subject me to a lot of problems.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#36

Post by bruceb »

1. Having American citizenship allows her to travel easily and often visa free to many countries.

2. Allows her to work in America with no visa issues. Access to top companies in the world including most of the ones we see on HN.

3. Allows her potential kids to have access same benefits and go to universities cheaper and again easily work in the US even if they didn't grow up there.

Should renunciation chargers be changed? Probably. Maybe if you don't earn very much you could pay less. Are there somethings that could be reformed? Yes. But she is complaining about forms and doesn't even pay taxes.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#37

Post by cpursley »

tn13 wrote: post #25

Congratulations. I think some small country should negotiate a deal with all other nations and come up with a citizenship program that gives good value for their passport and then allow Americans (or any other highly taxed nationals) to settle there. For example Lala-Land does some background checks and issues passport to its citizens which can then be used to travel almost all the countries in the world. Lala-Land w…

It's called St. Kitts and Nevis (and there's a few more).

https://www.henleyglobal.com/citizenship-saint-kitts-nevis-c...

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#38

Post by graeme »

skywhopper wrote: post #28

It sounds like she didn't pay US income tax, she just had to file a tax return, which seems reasonable. The idea that the US government doesn't track US citizens bank accounts if they live in the US is laughable. Of course they do. Banks have to report all kinds of details of large transactions and balances. We don't have to fill out forms because the government can go directly to the banks to get the information. Th…

The IRS is a nightmare to deal with abroad. I'm Canadian, do not owe any US tax returns. Once, they thought I did because a payee filed the wrong form.

Took three years to resolve. I had to physically visit an IRS office while on a trip to confirm it, because email, mail, and phone communications all resulted in form replies.

In fact, the IRS office couldn't even confirm it. All they could confirm is that there no longer were asking for a return.

Wait times of over an hour by phone. And incredibly complicated forms to figure out.

There's a reason people are paying $3000 to avoiding it. Not even getting into the banking difficulties for Americans abroad.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#39

Post by Retric »

peyton wrote: post #30
danudey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who lives outside of the US: your political and economic system is at best illogical, and at worst incomprehensibly clueless. Your government spends billions of dollars on wildly unsuccessful defense projects while at the same time arguing the there's no way to deal with poverty, access to education, homelessness, etc. By cutting back on defence spending, the US could still remain the most powerful militar…

I'm sorry, I have to comment. I don't think your characterization of the US is fair. It is insulting and doesn't seem topical to the current post, which is about the paperwork burden of living abroad. Suggesting slavery is "how it got that way" is uniquely tasteless. A lot of people gave their lives to abolish slavery. Many of us have relatives who were slaves or died fighting for its end.

Proceeds from 245 years of slavery is not a small thing.

However, everyone involved is dead and the speration on who is alive now that benefited or suffered from slavery is not clear cut.

Re: I renounced my US citizenship

#40

Post by serge2k »

> To get the same records in the US, law enforcement would have to get a subpoena

Don't any deposits over a threshold get reported domestically as well? IIRC 10k is the limit.

> At the same time, the US has worked out Intergovernmental Agreements (IGA’s) with many countries, including the Netherlands

Worked out... bullied. As I recall the threat was to stop allowing business with the US.

> By the US definition, they are US citizens as well, and should have been filing US income tax forms every year. Many only discovered this recently and are now under threat of huge fines if they do not get compliant with the US taxation laws. The same goes for children of US citizens, like my son, who are born abroad but qualify as US citizens.

Don't you have to apply to get citizenship? I thought it was more of you are entitled to citizenship. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't tell the US gov't to get fucked in this situation, unless you actually are taking advantage of being a citizen.

So glad Canada (and nowhere else but what, 1-2 countries?) have this global taxation BS.

Post reply on HN