Free Republic

Admittedly, living abroad as an American has always made for a complicated tax situation. That is because the United States is one of the only countries to tax based on citizenship, not residency. And the U.S. government has tightened its rules in recent years to make it more difficult for Americans to evade taxes by hiding money offshore. For Americans who reside in foreign countries, that can make it more difficult to find financial institutions who will let them open accounts. Swanson experienced those restrictions first hand when he was denied a bank account. “It wasn’t anything personal or even...

I've previously argued that the Trump administration should stop funding the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development because of its advocacy of higher taxes and tax harmonization. At the time, I was told that my position could be perceived as hypocritical because our government is responsible for the adoption and enforcement of the hideous Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Let me address this omission. FATCA, which was passed in 2010 by a Democratic Congress and enacted by President Barack Obama, requires law-abiding Americans with legitimate bank accounts outside the country and foreigners working in the United States to turn over...

The Obama-era Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) horror show may be coming to an end. With President Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress, critics and victims of the scheme, dubbed the "the worst law most Americans have never heard of," are launching a fresh push for repeal. From foreign political leaders and powerful CEOs to embattled Americans overseas and domestic activists, pressure is building on Republicans to adhere to the GOP platform calling for abandoning the controversial measure. And with major tax reform high on the agenda for the new...

Surprisingly large numbers of Americans live abroad.  According to State Department figures, nearly 9 million U.S. citizens currently reside in foreign countries.  If “Abroad” were a state, it would be America’s 11th most populous.  Most election years, these voters are not particularly noticeable: they do not vote as a bloc, but are divided according to their respective states of registration; and their vote is not unified, as a variety of issues affect them and their respective countries of residence. This election, however, may be different.  There is a single issue unifying the usually-disparate overseas vote, and likely to turn...

In his speech yesterday, following the Treasury's crack down on corporate tax inversions, Obama blamed "poorly designed" laws for allowing illicit money transfers worldwide. Since the speech came at a time when the entire world is still abuzz with the disclosure from the Panama Papers, Obama touched on that as well: "Tax avoidance is a big, global problem" he said on Tuesday, "a lot of it is legal, but that’s exactly the problem" because a lot of it is also illegal. There is one major problem with that: of all the countries in the world, it is none other than...

One million American citizens in Canada face double tax troubles. Max Reed explores these challenges in a spring series. This spring, a new tax law hangs heavy over U.S. citizens who call Canada home. The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, has generated a lot of attention because, as of July 1, 2014, it requires Canadian financial institutions to send information about their U.S. account holders to the Canada Revenue Agency, who will hand the info off to the Internal Revenue Service. It’s all part of an IRS crackdown on foreign tax evaders that began in 2011. FATCA,...

“I had been living in Switzerland for ten years, and then out of the blue I got a letter from my bank, saying that since I am an American citizen I had to file some extra paperwork,” Jonathan Weiss tells The Local. “Two weeks later, my bank account was frozen.” Weiss was born in the US, but has lived abroad since age ten, in both Asia and Europe. “I was just living in Switzerland, working there, minding my own business,” Weiss recalls. “And then I was caught up this net. I had no idea what to do.” That was his...

To comply with unconstitutional pseudo-treaties negotiated by the Obama administration without the consent of Congress or any semblance of constitutional authority, the IRS announced that it will be sharing private financial information on U.S. bank account holders with foreign powers. No warrant is needed for foreign governments or tyrants to peruse the sensitive information at will — including brutal communist regimes and possibly even criminals or hackers.

The IRS has unveiled a secure web application, the International Data Exchange Service (IDES), for cross-border data sharing. IDES will allow Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) and tax authorities from other countries to transmit financial data on U.S. taxpayers’ accounts, via an encrypted pathway, to the IRS. The tool is part of the IRS’s effort to track U.S. taxpayer income globally. It is intended to assist FFIs and foreign tax authorities in their compliance with the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The act requires that financial institutions send to the IRS financial information of American account holders or face...

Over the last two years, the U.S. has had a spike in expatriations. It isn’t exactly Ellis Island in reverse, but it’s more than a dribble. With global tax reporting and FATCA, the list of the individuals who renounced is up. For 2013, there was a 221% increase, with record numbers of Americans renouncing. The Treasury Department is required to publish a quarterly list, but these numbers are under-stated, some say considerably. The presence or absence of tax motivation is no longer relevant, but that could change. After Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin departed for Singapore, Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob...

July 1 might go down in history as the beginning of the end of the comprehensive, progressive income tax. A progressive income tax, in which the government attempts to tax all labor income and capital income, such as interest, dividends and capital gains more than once, cannot help becoming so complex that it eventually dies of its own weight. This is particularly true when the government attempts to tax the worldwide income of its “tax persons” rather than the income located in its own territory. The complexity is caused by the never-ending attempt to define what income is and what...

It broke Ruth Freeborn’s heart to give up her U.S. citizenship that fateful day last year. Unfortunately for the Oklahoma native, though, it was either that, or her family. Ruth’s Canadian husband of 33 years, who earns all of the middle-class family’s income, “simply could not go along with this situation,” she explained. “To find myself suddenly not able to live, bank, save or to keep peace in my marriage while being American at the same time was shocking at first and deeply disturbing to me.” Ruth wrote “what must have been” hundreds of letters to U.S. senators and officials,...

Write Down This Date: July 1st, 2014 On this date, U.S. House of Representatives Bill "H.R. 2847" goes into effect. It will usher in the true collapse of the U.S. dollar, and will make millions of Americans poorer, overnight. You now have just several months to prepare ... Snopes Opinion: Mixture of Truth & NonTruth Origins: This item about the passage of H.R. 2847 causing the U.S. dollar to collapse as of 1 July 2014 is another example financial scarelore put out in conjunction with an investment come-on, in this case an ominous sales pitch put out by the folks...

The Dark Road: The Worst Tax Law You've Never Heard About 08 April 2014 A little-known tax law threatens the privacy, and even lives, of millions of people and the stability of the U.S. economy while laying the foundation for a global tax regime. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act ( FATCA ) ... Full Article:http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/item/17986-the-dark-road-the-worst-tax-law-you-ve-never-heard-about

Many people laughingly remember the image of the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld. If you did anything out of order or that he didn’t like, “No soup for you!” Sadly, thanks to the upcoming Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in the US, banks around the world are turning away US passport holders, “No bank account for you!” But you don't even have to do anything wrong other than having been born a US citizen. Decades ago holding a US passport was a ticket to worldwide opportunity. Today it is nearly the opposite. First it started with the erosion of the...

A new IRS tax regime in 2014 will be devastating for the U.S. economy, and for millions of Americans working abroad, especially those in the middle class. New U.S. Tax Regime is "Devastating," Experts Say The New American 30 December 2013 Already facing “pariah” status worldwide due to onerous IRS requirements, millions of Americans living and working abroad are preparing to deal with a deluge of even bigger problems in 2014, when a byzantine new tax regime starts going into effect. Known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, the deeply controversial and incredibly complex scheme is...

Beware the sledgehammer used to crack the nut. In this case, the nut is the U.S. government's laudable goal of catching tax evaders. The sledgehammer is the overreaching effect of legislation that is alienating other countries and resulting in millions of U.S. citizens abroad being forced to either painfully reconsider their nationality, or face a lifetime of onerous bureaucracy, expense and privacy invasion. The legislation is Fatca, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. To appreciate its breathtaking scope along with America's unique "citizen-based" tax practices, imagine this: You were born in California, moved to New York for education or work,...

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, is forcing millions of Americans living abroad to reconsider their U.S. citizenship, a lawyer, Colleen Graffy, writes in the Wall Street Journal. "The legislation is Fatca, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. To appreciate its breathtaking scope along with America's unique "citizen-based" tax practices, imagine this: You were born in California, moved to New York for education or work, fell in love, married and had children. Even though you have faithfully paid taxes in New York and haven't lived in California for 25 years, suppose California law required that you also file...

Senators to Unveil the ‘Ex-Patriot Act’ to Respond to Facebook’s Saverin’s Tax ‘Scheme’ Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again. In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut this week. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap...

Buried in an ostensible jobs bill signed by President Obama last year is a little-noticed job-destroying government regulation that threatens to trigger a massive outflow of capital from the American economy. The U.S. economy is in bad shape. Many want the federal government to fix it -- to end the deficits, create jobs, and get America back onto the track of growth and stability. President Obama came to Washington with great promises: to restore international respect for the United States and to bring back the jobs. When signing the HIRE Act of 2010 on March 18, 2010, President Obama said:...