Posted on 11/03/2016 4:07:00 AM PDT by NYer
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 that vote decidedly Republican: the need to repeal “FATCA,” the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.
If you’ve never heard of FATCA, you are forgiven. FATCA does not affect domestic voters, and won’t show up on any pollster’s list of important issues. But for Americans in foreign countries, FATCA increasingly wreaks havoc with their businesses and access to basic financial services, not to mention their privacy rights. If those Americans were polled, FATCA would surely top the issues list.
What is this benign-sounding law that has Americans abroad so agitated?
FATCA was initially conceived to combat offshore tax evasion and recoup tax revenues, requiring U.S. citizens, including those living abroad, to report all financial accounts held outside the country—an arguably reasonable purpose and measure. But the Democrats took that simple, targeted goal and addressed it by trapping every American abroad in an insanely expensive regulatory dragnet of questionable legality.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Ping!
I am surprised Americans aren’t up in arms about the cost of becoming an expatriate. The TAX is onerous. And if you renounce your citizenship, a new record as of this year jumping to 20% of people leaving the us, the cost is HUGE.
Here in Germany (I can speak to this)...most banks will just say ‘no’ when you walk in and want to open an account. Doesn’t matter if you own a pub, a hotel, or a regular business.
A handful of banks will handle your situation but there’s extra paperwork, extra charges, and if this is a business....more hassle and charges. A guy who just owns a bar can probably make with the current situation. If you own a business pulling in several million a year...you might as well get yourself a passport via another country (like Albania or Cyprus) and just open a regular German account with that passport. I think residency in Cyprus runs around 6 to 7 thousand dollars, with some yearly fee involved. There are probably forty countries that you can now ‘buy’ your residency or passport through.
The whole law built to make it this bad? I’m not sure what Congress intended but it’s probably one of the biggest jokes that put onto paper and made into law.
What harassment could the US govt mete out to a bank with no presence in the US?
Interesting thread! Had no idea.
So does FATCA levy special taxes on expats?
What are the rates of additional taxes to expatriate?
See, any American living abroad must have extra money, and we want our piece of it, regardless of the burden imposed!
(I’d add a /s, but this is much worse.)
From the article:
FATCA doesn’t simply target a few suspected tax cheats; instead, it requires each and every foreign financial institution (“FFI”), including banks, brokerages, pension funds and insurance companies, to annually identify and report to the IRS all clients who are “U.S. persons” (a broad category, including businesses where even one American has signature authority on a financial account), and to turn over to the IRS detailed information on each client’s total assets, account balances, transactions, account numbers and other personal identifying information. Any noncomplying institution faces draconian penalties, including the withholding of 30% of U.S.-sourced income.In essence, FATCA coerces FFIs to become IRS lackeys, making them conduct wholesale warrantless seizures of Americans’ private financial information on behalf of the IRS, without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
Furthermore, the FFIs must comply with these requirements at their own significant expense. As FATCA regulations have metastasized into hundreds of dense, complex pages that must be followed to the letter by each individual institution (mostly in non-English-speaking countries), implementation and administration costs have skyrocketed, and are projected to run over $100 billion worldwide.
All of this effort will allow the IRS to collect—get ready—some $790 million annually (according to optimistic estimates), enough to fund the federal government for perhaps 90 minutes.
BTW, Democrats rammed this bill through Congress in 2010. Republicans have been fighting it ever since.
For those who don't like America well enough to live here, who cares? For those who are required by employment or service to live overseas, it is a point of concern.
There are those who serve as short term, or long term mission workers overseas. Not the missionary themselves, but as coworkers. They face a multitude of regulations.
I recently had to Fedex an absentee ballot overseas. It cost $85 to ship it. It came back and was turned into the SOE.
Two years ago, that same missions worker had to meet someone on a dock, fill out the ballot, seal and sign it, the ballot was then taken by the other person with them, when they flew back to the US. After returning, the individual mailed to me. I then delivered it to the SOE.
But, people can't show ID’s to vote, vote multiple times, and fill in ballots for the dead, infirmed, and mentally handicapped.
We need a more secure process. By the way, the missions worker went to the SOE and let them know months ago that they would be out of the country. What's with letting people vote absentee, without a good reason for not being able to get to the polls on election day?
I would think this would also be a point of concern for many immigrants who come here, live perhaps most of their lives here, and become citizens, but would like to spend their last years in their country of origin (possibly for cost reasons, if naught else.) This information should be distributed to as many such people as possible...
Yes. I have the opportunity to vote absentee, because I work the polls every election day. But the district I work is within a couple of miles of my home and my polling place a couple of blocks from home. So I stop by on my lunch break. Some folks can't pull that off on an hour break because of distances, taking time to walk and feed the pets, whatever.
OK?!
I would like to know and thought someone might have insight...Why? Because I am interested...
Yes, I read the article—just wondered if there were specific taxes (tax rates?) associated with people living abroad or if they Expatriate.
I’m just surprised there aren’t small banks in Germany with no US presence and which have no ‘US sourced income’ which could be used just as there are small local banks in the US which have no German presence and no German sourced income.
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