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Why I gave up my US passport

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#91

Post by beedogs »

pekk wrote: post #52
beedogs wrote: post #2

I haven't renounced yet, but it's so very tempting. The arrogance of the US's dual-taxation bullshit is enough of a reason to consider it.

Be honest: it's not really about your perception of arrogance in a tax policy. It's really about the money. You think you are entitled to the privileges of US citizenship but somehow exempt from its legal obligations.

Which "privileges"? The ability to say I'm American? Tell me how that's worth it. Tell me how it's fair that I should be criminally liable to report my income and bank balances every fucking year to a country I neither live in nor draw a paycheck from.

You'll be unable to come up with a reasonable explanation for this, but feel free to insult me again by ascribing my desire to live elsewhere unmolested to a sense of 'entitlement' or some other garbage.

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#92

Post by beedogs »

bandushrew wrote: post #57
NamTaf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefit from paying income taxes, exactly? You're not living there, so you don't benefit from any of the social services that income tax funds. Just about every other country I can think of does not tax citizens abroad who do not earn money on their native soil. What makes you think the US system is right and all the others are wrong?

and yet you do not want to give up your citizenship, so clearly you feel you are benefiting from some of the social benefits that your income tax funds.

Which "social benefits" are you talking about? The ability to go home and visit my family? The ability to return to my place of birth to live and work should I so desire? The net cost to the rest of the country for these things is zero. Nil. Nada. But, somehow, these are now "social benefits" that must be supported by a tithe and not, you know, human rights?

Why does the US effectively charge a membership fee for the kinds of basic privileges every other country simply offers for free? As I said in my original post, it's unbelievably arrogant.

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#93

Post by MichaelGG »

mabhatter wrote: post #70
jmreardon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the exception of children of foreign diplomats, if you are born in the USA, you have citizenship. Who your parents are is irrelevant.

This is the core of our immigrant problem with Mexico. If they get momma over the border to have her baby she's set... Because the baby is a US citizen so his/her parent gets a pass to be In the country.

That is incorrect. A person is not eligible to sponsor a parent until they're 18 (or 21?). So while a mother running over the border to have a child does benefit from better medical care (most likely), the child's citizenship doesn't help her for a long time, if ever. (The child would need to meet all the sponsorship requirements for parents, which aren't trivial.)

At best, this helps the child's future opportunities, which may help the family. It in no way gives the parents a pass. A cursory review of sponsorship laws would reveal this. Yet for some reason, people parrot this silly saying as if it was somehow true.

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#95

Post by greg5green »

ArchD wrote: post #80
chrsstrm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty flimsy metaphor, but just because I go on long trips and stay in hotels, doesn't mean I'm not obligated to pay rent on my apartment back home. My status as tenant is recognized through my contribution of my monthly rent. Without it, I have no standing. My decision to live elsewhere, either in the short term or longer, means I either have to deal with paying double housing or give up my apartment.

Of course it's a flimsy metaphor. How do you make the choice to liken a country to an apartment with a long-term lease instead of a hotel that charges by the day or a club where you pay dues and can suspend your membership and due payment for a while? If the US were an apartment, it would be a very strange apartment with numerous people entering and exiting it everyday.

So it's like prison. Got it. Very American.

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#96

Post by leecbaker »

clueless123 wrote: post #20

I wonder what is going to happen to all those US citizens living abroad with the new health insurance requirements.. Will they be forced to pay even they can't benefit from the services ? ( Specially if they are already covered by their host country healthcare system. )

As I understand it, if you ar a resident of the another country as defined for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (330 days a year outside the US _or_ have permanently settled with no evidence of intention to return to the US), you are exempted from the insurance requirements.

This really sucks for people who leave the US long durations (8 months in my case) at a time, but return occasionally. Have to either get insurance for the 8 months that isn't usable, or pay the fine.

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#97

Post by rodgerd »

hrasyid wrote: post #56

Is there any historical examples of a representative democratic country simplifying its tax code? How was it done? The United States have been around for centuries, and each elected governments and congresses have their own idea about how the tax code should look like. Probably that's why now we have very complicated system, because it's the aggregation of centuries' worth of ideas. The logical step is to simplify it…

New Zealand has dramatically (dramatically!) simplified our tax for ordinary (salary/wage employees), especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Given the period was one of dramatic economic and social change I doubt most Kiwis could give you a remotely impartial account (myself included); a couple of key elements that appear to be completely absent in the US culture are:

1/ A willingness to accept loophole losses. I have almost nothing I can really claim on as a salaried employee - childcare and charitable donations are about it. There used to be more. I certainly can't claim deductions for "having a mortgage", for example. If I was a lot poorer or had a lot more children (7+) I could get a tax redution for that, but nothing like as generous as the US rates are.

Most of the loophole reduction went hand-in-hand with tax cuts, but we're talking dropping from a top rate of >60% by the end of the Muldoon government down to the 30s for the top tier.

2/ Much of the compliance burden and risk falls on employers, so business groups tend to support simplification, because it mitigates risk and reduces costs for them.

3/ There's more a perception of getting value out of taxes paid in New Zealand than the US. Mainstream political dialogue tends to be around fixing perceived problems in government, not nuking it to a smoking hole, pissing in the hole, and sowing the ground with salt.

Many US progressives/lefties I've spoken with seem to react with suspicion and horror at the idea of being able to have the IRS estimate your taxes on your behalf in case they swindle them out of their tax breaks, which is both a nice combination of 1) and 3), and illustrates the gulf operating. Mainstream left/progressive voters in New Zealand are not commonly of the opinion that accepting the IRD's estimate on owed taxes is going to stiff them out of thousands of dollars in loopholes.

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#98

Post by yapcguy »

philiphodgen wrote: post #84
LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do it with Turbo Tax for 50 bucks. The thing is not to open an account outside of the US. If you follow that rule you are fine and your return won't be longer than US return. If you really, really need that account in a foreign bank simply don't advertise left & right you are an US citizen and open an account using your local (German, Canadian, whatever) driver's license. I have lived in Poland 3 years so far with…

The strategy of using your local ID (and hiding your U.S. status) will work for a little while longer. Google for the acronym "FATCA". Sooner or later your bank will ask you to certify that you have no U.S. connections. No, the real key to keeping your paperwork simple is to keep the balance in all of your non-U.S. bank accounts below USD 10,000 at all times. The form is TD F 90-22.1. Your U.S. tax return should be v…

Worth adding that most expats probably want to live a 'normal' life in their adopted country.

That means using local bank accounts / credit cards, getting a mortgage, etc.

Being resident and working probably means the state will automatically open social security and pensions in your name.

Also, expats still have to do the tax return for their adopted country, and the tax year may not be based on a calendar year so they can't just re-use the same figures!

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#99

Post by bowyakka »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #76
bowyakka wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of the US tax system is easy compared to the EU, seriously because I come from the UK and being in the US is the first time in my life I have had to even file a tax return. The US system seems to guarantee you need an accountant.

Ever heard of Turbo Tax? If I can do it in 2 hours each and every year a day before the deadline being US citizen in Poland, yeah you need a lot of bad faith to have issues.

Ok somewhat fair, but again (and I admit I do not come from Poland, and can only use the UK, French and German tax systems as anecdotal evidence) I didn't need tax software before I came to the US.

In the UK I do my taxes in 0 minutes most years, maybe in 10 minutes if I get a small return through the post.

Fwiw (I didn't use turbotax but some other online software) when I did my last US tax return; it was wrong and I had letters come through adjusting the calculations.

Re: Why I gave up my US passport

#100

Post by jmspring »

Current citizen, wife with dual citizenship. Long term we will probably end up in her country (an EU nation), we are already looking at strengthening some of those ties.

She had to divest some interests when she took up residence here, if we decide to go back over there (likely in the next 3-5 years), we will look carefully at whether or not staying in vested in the US makes sense. The US feels like it is trying to turn every benefit into something akin to a 401k -- HSA accounts, etc. Which isn't ideal, but they still aren't separating things from the employer based healthcare model...so in a sense many are getting the worst of both worlds.

Healthcare may actually be the motivating issue for us.

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