The problem isn’t really the expats.
It’s the estimated $21 Trillion in offshore tax havens that isn’t being collected on....and last I checked it wasn’t poor people with offshore accounts.
Not to mention the US companies that set up shop in other countries to avoid paying taxes here in the US.
Not that they do that either.
Most of them are subsidized to the point where they pay nothin if not get billions of dollars of the working peoples’ tax money that was collected.
Companies like GE, Shell Oil, Boeing, Apple, etc, etc...companies that make record profits year after year on the backs of the working man.
People need to wake the fuck up.
Yes, you are right. Rich expats have accountants and lawyers that minimize their tax bill. We need to get that fixed.
I was referring to the middle class.
There is a tax law, FATCA, that punishes middle class expats. Because many US legislators get their funding from 'fat cats', tax laws favor their sponsors. FATCA places onerous requirements on telling IRS about your income and you have to pay the extra taxes if you are an expat from the US which other countries do not have.
Some Americans are renouncing their citizenship because of this.
Article:
"Renunciations of citizenship have soared because of a 2010 law, the
Foreign Tax Account Compliance Act, which requires foreign financial institutions to report assets held by American clients or face a 30 percent withholding tax. In response, many foreign banks will no longer take American clients and are terminating existing accounts. The Economist says this
“heavy-handed, inequitable and hypocritical” law will cost American banks alone $800 million a year to implement. Moreover, the magazine
reported, “seasoned tax dodgers are not so naïve as to hold money in their own names.”"
Comment:
"I am 26 years old. I have lived in the United States for 22 of those years. For the last four, I've been living overseas, in Japan, Taiwan, and New Zealand. I make about $50,000 a year. I'm no banker or millionaire, just an average guy trying to start my career with some international experience. In fact, after four years abroad, I am moving back home to Seattle in January and I couldn't be more excited. As much as I love being an expat, there are some great, great things about living in the States.
Each year, at tax time, my blood runs cold. If you've never worked or lived overseas long-term as an expat American, you can't possibly understand what it's like. The onerous and mind-bendingly unintelligible FATCA laws are a genuine, unnecessary hardship for US expats. America says to it's expats: we don't give a (expletive) about you.
The worst part is that there is not a single other country in the world which does this to its citizens. The solution is astonishingly simple: end citizenship-based taxation, and institute residence-based taxation, just as every single other government in the world does.
This issue needs more exposure. US expats are law-abiding citizens, we love our country, and yet come tax time we are forced into regulatory hell. Whatever we do, we feel we are breaking the law. We are normal people making normal money--not tax evading tycoons.
Repeal FATCA."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/opinion/why-im-giving-up-my-american-citizenship-passport.html
