I renounced my US citizenship

It's not the IRS to worry about, but a department within the treasury called the "Financial Crimes Enforcement Network." So the concern is very much still valid.

Amazing how every rich expat who hates FATCA attempts to complain that it goes after "middle class Americans". How convenient if FATCA were repealed and the good old days of Tax Evasion could resume.

It is precisely rich expats who have themselves to blame for FATCA.

If you find the paperwork onerous--why not just renounce your citizenship? Must be that you get some advantages you're not disclosing by keeping your US citizenship.

Every American who does their taxes has to deal with this stress. So, you're special and should get your US citizenship advantages without paying for them? You looking for expat welfare?

FATCA will never be repealed. On the contrary, it's being copied by other governments all over the world. But you had to have known that the tax evasion party was going to eventually come to an end. If you consider yourself a victim of FATCA, then your anger should be directed at other rich expats who abused the system so badly that they inspired Congress to pass FATCA with both Democratic and Republican support.

So, you want to ride in the wagon and have other domestic Americans pull the wagon? Do you think the whole consular system is just on ice until you need it? Boy wouldn't it be nice if none of us had to pay taxes--while still having the entire expensive governmental infrastructure on ice--ready for us?

Unfortunately, in the real world, if you want to benefit from something you need to shoulder its true cost. $50 a year won't cover that.

Did you miss the part where I do not have a way to save for retirement? And why on earth do you assume that I am rich? Because I live in Norway? I barely qualify as middle class. Thanks to student loans and zero support from my family, I still have a significant negative net worth, despite the fact that I live as thriftily as possible and have been working as an engineer since 2010.

If you are a US resident and mess up on your taxes, you do not get fined into bankruptcy. You just have to pay what you owed. The fee structure is the insane part of FATCA, not the taxes themselves.

As soon as I get Norwegian citizenship, if FATCA has not been repealed by that point, I will seriously consider renouncing. Because of the above reasons, not because I am some rich fat-cat wanting to evade taxes. If I wanted to evade taxes, I would move back to the US, which is a fantastic tax haven, instead of living my life here in Norway.

What the heck is "expat welfare"? The only relationship I have with the US government at this point is stress and expense from these forms every year, along with my inability to save for retirement. Literally no other developed country imposes this stress and compliance cost on their residents abroad. It is not welfare to expect to be treated like everyone else. And, if it was just filing regular taxes, and then getting it excluded with the FEIE, that would still be annoying, but fine. However, there is a whole extra set of insanely confusing forms to navigate, where you get fined into non-dischargeable bankruptcy if you mess them up, even non-willfully. People develop mental health issues and have even had their marriages destroyed from the stress of this prospect. It is not "just some extra forms" or "expat welfare" to want this onerous burden to be removed.

Sometimes I walk past the US embassy because it is in downtown Oslo (it looks like a prison and is a total blight on an otherwise charming neighborhood, btw), but I do not get any kind of "expat welfare" from it. I suppose I will visit there when my passport needs renewing in a few years, but that is it. If I wanted to contact them or voice my concerns about the pension issue (which could be resolved if they updated the tax treaty, like Germany has done), I have no way of doing so.

Why are you trolling this thread with support for FATCA when it is clearly a terrible thing for millions of people? You have no idea what you are talking about. Ugh!

>So, you want to ride in the wagon and have other domestic Americans pull the wagon?

I think your life situation and mine are very different. I've been pulling that wagon my entire life. I've been a lead horse. I don't owe other Americans anything. It's quite the reverse, actually.

>Do you think the whole consular system is just on ice until you need it? Boy wouldn't it be nice if none of us had to pay taxes--while still having the entire expensive governmental infrastructure on ice--ready for us?

The consular system would be there regardless of whether or not expats needed it. That's not its primary purpose. And as I pointed out, the US government does about what a relative would do.

>Unfortunately, in the real world, if you want to benefit from something you need to shoulder its true cost. $50 a year won't cover that.

I generally expect to pay for the services I use. $50 is an overestimate.