ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Ed. note: William Olenick has been active in Republicans Abroad in Switzerland, where he is a longtime resident. He sent the following email letter to friends 28 January; we reprint it in full as part of our coverage of the ongoing problems for US citizens in Switzerland.“Dear all,
Read the article below my comments and you will see why I also have my problems with the banks and I am tax compliant.
For the last 25 years I have been busting open nitch markets for American products, contributing to lowering the trade deficit, developing new markets for US producers, creating employment for my brethren back home, increasing the tax base where they live.
The only way to do this is to be on the ground in the countries you are selling.
In my case, my markets were Europe, North Africa and the Middle East so it made sense to set up a base of operations in Switzerland, as it was close to the markets, was a well run country, my wife happened to be Swiss, from a large, close-knit family, so it was a no brainer.
Two months ago my bank informed me that I could no longer make wire transfers to the states.
That being the case how will I pay my suppliers?
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I can’t help but think that he’s making a terrible mistake. He should just stay in Switzerland with his Swiss wife. But then, he’d have to find a job doing something other than what he’s doing. Great article.
Also, he mentioned the Nazis in the article.
Confirms what Roger Conklin has been saying all along. The US would rather shoot itself in the boots on the ground in other countries promoting and selling US goods.
Same story; different time.
The America in this guy head has been dead for a long time now and I can’t understand how he can make references to the Nazis and still want to return to the fatherland.
*This experience takes me back to Brazil when President Ford signed into law, in October 1976, the Tax Reform Act of 1976. It was retroactive to January 1 of that year. With that stroke of a pen my combined Brazilian plus US tax increased to 81% more than that of the citizen of any other country living in Brazil with my exact same income and family status.
So I also packed up and came back home. My wife and kids were American and so my roots were not as deep as some of our friends who chose to become Brazilian citizens and, according to the US consulate, automatically lost their US citizenship.That was before the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to automatically deprive Americans of their citizenship if they became a naturalized citizen of another country.
So I closed down the $10 million business selling US exports and watched from afar as a French company moved a very capable general manager to Brazil from Paris, hired several of our ex-employees and – 8 years later was responsible for $1 billion in French exports to Brazil. Meanwhile the US share of that market dropped to near zero. I finished construction of the new house we were constructing from afar, rented it and finally sold it. With the exchange controls that existed then it took several years to move the proceeds of that sale out of Brazil, but finally t got them all out.
And yet there are multitudes in Washington that honestly believe that having Americans abroad is of no value in capturing export sales. That is why the US today has a per-capita $2,300 trade deficit and depression era unemployment while Germany has a $3400 per-capita trade surplus, the lowest unemployment rate in 21 years and is recruiting qualified foreign workers to relocate to Germany to fill jobs that are going begging.
The blind lead the blind in Washington, and the whole nation falls into the ditch..
Bad idea to criticize an extorted family man. A family man has a responsibility to his family, and the principles of resistance are a terrible burden to impose
*Wonder how his wife, her extended family and their kids feel about this.
*She will have to go to the US consulate to apply for a visa in order to be able to move with him and their US citizen children to start a new life in the US. It should be a fairly simple process. The most difficult part may be leaving her relatives in Switzerland.
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A die-hard American hard done by America.
As I listened to some of Obama’s empty speechifying today, I was struck by one thought: how can the U.S. ever have successful immigration reform without companion emigration reform, and the necessary tax reforms that must underly both, starting with the elimination of citizenship-based taxation? Discuss.
It’s like every big problem that America needs to solve is being viewed through a toilet paper tube so that only a tiny bit of the issues get any attention. Same thing happened with “Obamacare”, forcing everyone to purchase private health insurance so everyone will be covered, when private health insurance itself is the real problem, vampirically sucking all the dollars out of people’s pockets with zero value-added in return. Completely missing the point with nothing there to be proud of.
Now, with taxation, you have smart, seasoned guys like 30-year who know full-well that FATCA is a complete train-wreck, but who refuse to speak-up and fight it, or do anything useful about it except maybe counsel people to use lots of lube so maybe it won’t hurt as much – and by the way, here’s your bill. How heroic.
Is this how the American experiment is truly destined to fail? A population of hundreds of millions of people completely oblivious to what’s going on around them and refusing to respond with any kind of character or integrity when they do find out? Where have all the good people gone?
The saddest thing about this story is that this poor bugger still dreams of coming home to a peaceful retirement on his little hobby farm. Even after all Uncle Sam is putting him through he still doesn’t realize that the best place he could possibly be is right where he is. This is a case study in how the American Dream morphs into the American Delusion on its way to becoming the American Nightmare. Pathetic.
Deckard1138 –
Nice piece of prose. Olenik is a case study in someone born with an American lobotomy. No amount of “foreign” experience can overcome the natal surgery. Wired to die!
Roger, it should be simple but might not be. An American my husband works with was transferred back down to the Gulf Coast. His wife is Canadian. It too nearly a year to get permission for her to move down there with their son.
*William’s relationship with the USA was not a one night stand. Now he feels betrayed. His ‘Packing up, going home’, was not necessarily the most logical decision, but definitely the one most likely to get his point across. I hope he is not only tax compliant, but FBAR compliant as well.
He should take some inspiration from Tina. If he’s going to change careers anyway, why not take up something in Switzerland? Can’t be any more difficult than going from sales to farming in the US. Cut the damn umbilical cord!
*@bubblebustin.
He can’t, cause love’s got everything to do with it.
Gosh! To be done in like that by Uncle Sam, and yet he would rather go back to the States than renounce?
I guess it’s his decision and all, but it’s not what I would’ve done.
WhiteKat:
A love of what? Something that’s akin to an abusive spouse?
@WhiteKat
I once heard this saying:
You know that funny, nervous feeling you get when you fall in love? That’s common sense leaving your body.
*@mjh49783
Something like that, except that you are just becoming aware of how abused you really are.
Excellent question, nobledreamer. Where do they fit into the story? Maybe they’re staying behind.
@calgary 411 nobledreamer
I wondered about the wife and family also. I assume that if he had to go it alone back in the excited states, that he would have mentioned the anguish and cost of losing his family too.
@bubblebustin
That is too funny!
I can’t help but think there is more to this story. Wouldn’t he have the option of moving his business bank account to, say, Citibank? Citi has been in Switzerland since 1963 and, at a minimum, has private banking operations in Switzerland and probably also commercial banking if not plain, old retail.
*Edelweiss, this is incorrect. Citibank in Switzerland only offers investment services (I just talked to them on the phone (+41 58 750 50 00) to confirm this. It has no private or business accounts. GE Money Bank, a US bank, has a savings account, but it rejects US clients. To my knowledge, there is no American bank in Switzerland which will accept Americans as customers for private banking.
“I refuse to give up my citizenship, as I am 100% American, to my bone marrow.
I could have been Swiss, through my marriage to my wife, but I am not Swiss, I was born American and will die American.” — William Olenick
It’s hard to understand how someone who’s clearly been brainwashed to that extent could have left the USA in the first place. In any case, I hope for his sake that he doesn’t wake up one day and realize how far removed the real USA is from his patriotic fantasies. If he does, he just may be devastated to find himself on that farm in a country which he’d rather have nothing to do with.