
Number of people renouncing US citizenship reaches a new record in 2017 - rodionos
https://axibase.github.io/atsd-use-cases/Expatriation/
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Maultasche
I'm currently living in the US, but from what I hear, it can be a real PITA to
be a US citizen living overseas since the US introduced new laws to catch
wealthy citizens hiding their wealth from taxes.

In their zeal to find and tax such hidden wealth, the US has passed a law
mandating that all banks must do extensive reporting on the assets of all US
citizens living outside the United States, or they will be faced with high
penalties. So any bank who does business in the US or has any sort of assets
in the US is required to do this. The law applies to all banks everywhere, but
the US can only reach what's located in the US.

The banks overseas find this requirement to be quite onerous and costly. The
result? Many banks in other countries are refusing to take US citizens as
clients and many US citizens living in other countries finding themselves
without bank accounts and have to work to locate a bank who will be willing to
accept them as a client.

The taxation of non-resident citizens overseas is once again aimed at the
wealthy escaping taxes, but it affects the non-wealthy too. The average
citizen living overseas won't end up having to pay taxes on their income (at
least if the US has a tax treaty with the country they are living in) unless
they make a lot of money, but they still have to declare all their assets and
file taxes.

It's a lot more complicated filing from other countries than filing taxes when
you're located in the US, especially if you have a range of assets like
property, investments, and earned income. You also have to balance what you
pay in US taxes vs what you pay in local taxes and figure out what to deduct
on which tax return. This means a citizen has to find a tax expert who is
familiar with the tax laws of the US and the local country, and that tends to
be expensive.

So all the measures to tax the wealth of wealthy people fleeing the country
end up significantly negatively affecting the lives on non-wealthy US citizens
living in other countries.

So I'm not surprised that US citizens living overseas are increasingly giving
up their US citizenship. As time goes on, US citizenship is slowly becoming
less of an asset and more of a liability for anyone living outside the United
States.

