Switzerland in the age of automatic exchange of banking information

Post by mulmen » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

jjcm wrote: post #58

dbrgn wrote: post #9

To me as a Swiss citizen, born in Switzerland, living in Switzerland, it's an impertinence that every time I open a bank account with a Swiss bank I have to fill out at least 1 form with information about my relation to the US, about my travels in the US and whether I might have to pay taxes there. As a side note, the only other country besides the US that collects taxes based on citizenship and not based on residenc…

For myself (a US citizen living abroad), my biggest annoyance isn't that I'm taxed on my income overseas, it's that it effectively is taxation without representation. Even though I'm paying tax overseas, there's no US Representative who fights for my interests. I have one who fights for the interests of the residents of a district I lived in years ago, but I have no relation to that anymore. I have a US senator who f…

Post by angry_octet » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 5:13 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #37

Scoundreller wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the basic benefits is always being able to return to the US. Being inside American borders is very much safer than being anywhere else if/when the next major global military issue arises. It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life. Meanwhile, those developed countries with functioning health care systems that you can return to whenev…

>It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life. Does it actually? I assume that disparity is more to do with the populations of impoverished people around this very diverse country that can't compare to smaller European countries that just don't have those populations. There is no Mississippi in Germany, those populations are in other countries.…

Post by dcolkitt » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #62

jjcm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For myself (a US citizen living abroad), my biggest annoyance isn't that I'm taxed on my income overseas, it's that it effectively is taxation without representation. Even though I'm paying tax overseas, there's no US Representative who fights for my interests. I have one who fights for the interests of the residents of a district I lived in years ago, but I have no relation to that anymore. I have a US senator who f…

There are enough US citizens abroad to justify about 7 or 8 members of the House of Representatives, but how would you allocate them? There are enough in Mexico, and enough in Canada, and maybe enough in the Philippines to have one Representative for each of those. The rest, though, are sufficiently spread out that when you group enough different countries together to get enough US citizens for a Representative, that…

Post by rexreed » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

jjcm wrote: post #58

dbrgn wrote: post #9

To me as a Swiss citizen, born in Switzerland, living in Switzerland, it's an impertinence that every time I open a bank account with a Swiss bank I have to fill out at least 1 form with information about my relation to the US, about my travels in the US and whether I might have to pay taxes there. As a side note, the only other country besides the US that collects taxes based on citizenship and not based on residenc…

For myself (a US citizen living abroad), my biggest annoyance isn't that I'm taxed on my income overseas, it's that it effectively is taxation without representation. Even though I'm paying tax overseas, there's no US Representative who fights for my interests. I have one who fights for the interests of the residents of a district I lived in years ago, but I have no relation to that anymore. I have a US senator who f…

Post by kube-system » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #33

kube-system wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most obvious is something like state department emergency assistance, but there's plenty of US government programs without a residency requirement. For example: federal student aid doesn't require US residency. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/international Also, the taxes that the US imposes on citizens overseas has some pretty significant exceptions. US citizens can deduct over $100,000 worth of their foreign…

That’s part of the mess: the US tax system isn’t the same as others’, so you now have to optimize for 2 systems. Differing rules of what’s a short-term vs long term capital gain. E.g.: Canada doesn’t tax capital gains on your Primary residence when you sell it, but US does. And buying a non-US ETF can create another tax mess since you’ve now bought into a multibillion dollar trust that doesn’t file with the US gov. T…