Tax Leads Americans Abroad to Renounce U.S. Citizenship
December 18th, 2006And the wait to do it has increased, “from a few days to more than three and a half months.”
Via: New York Times:
She is a former marine, a native Californian and, now, an ex-American who prefers to remain discreet about abandoning her citizenship. After 10 years of warily considering options, she turned in her United States passport last month without ceremony, becoming an alien in the view of her homeland.
“It’s a really hard thing to do,†said the woman, a 16-year resident of Geneva who had tired of the cost and time of filing yearly United States tax returns on top of her Swiss taxes. “I just kept putting this off. But it’s my kids and the estate tax. I don’t care if I die with only one Swiss franc to my name, but the U.S. shouldn’t get money I earned here when I die.â€
Historically, small numbers of Americans have turned in their passports every year for political and economic reasons, with the numbers reaching a high of about 2,000 during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.
But after Congress sharply raised taxes this year for many Americans living abroad, some international tax lawyers say they detect rising demand from citizens to renounce ties with the United States, the only developed country that taxes it citizens while they live overseas. Americans abroad are also taxed in the countries where they live.
“The administrative costs of being an American and living outside the U.S. have gone up dramatically,†said Marnin Michaels, a tax lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in Zurich.
haha, jee whiz, what a surprise.. they’re trying to tax Americans as badly as England was taxing our forefathers.. and that’s one of the reasons they escaped England in the first place, to find the USA, a nation where taxation would be fair.. and look at what happened now, history repeats itself. OF COURSE people are going to run away, the USA has turned into a police state.. what do you expect them to do? How can we Americans, who were told we had the best country in the world, democracy, government “by the people for the people” (yeah, right!), a fair taxation system.. who in their right mind would sit there and look watch as the opposite of what their country told them they stand for, happens before their eyes? I have yet to renounce my US citizenship myself – but I know two things for certain. 1) I’m never going to go back and live in the USA, you couldn’t pay me to do it. 2), I’ve cut my ties with the IRS, after the horrible experience I had with them last year. It’s not as hard as most people think, if you live overseas. You basically stop dealing with US banks, US credit cards, all that stuff.. just be done with it, bank offshore, and the rest is history. They can send all the “Dear so and so, we have not received your return for tax year 2004 bla bla bla”, they go right into the shredder. Kiss my ass IRS!
Must see movie:
Fiat Empire – A Closer Look at the Federal Reserve
http://tinyurl.com/t7uke
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5232639329002339531&hl=en
http://naam.pair.com/aftf1626/AFTF/blog/afftfblog.html
I think the article didn’t dig deep enough regarding the reasons why people are leaving. Over 10 million American live abroad right now, but I don’t know how many have renounced their citizenship. I think taxes are a relatively tiny reason to leave, actually. I’d like to have seen an in-depth report on this.
The expatriot communities around the world are quite large, actually and taxation is not listed as one of their primary reasons for leaving the States. Politics and it’s related fascism is.
I lived in Canada for 7 years and always filed a big zero on my tax returns since my tax home was outside the U.S. If you have income and property in the U.S. , you will be taxed just like everyone else. I would like to know the details of the woman’s situation.