2 thoughts on “Catholic Online: Rather than pay ridiculous taxes, Americans renouncing citizenship”

1. The South China Morning Post managed to find & quote some people with a clue for their article on EB-5 green cards. Same thing we’ve been saying all along: if you’re one of those “wealthy tax cheats” whom FATCA purports to target, you can afford an advisor to structure your affairs for you. It’s ordinary folks who can’t afford all this crap.

   http://www.scmp.com/business/economy/article/1308540/us-tax-law-no-red-light-chinese-green-card-seekers

   There are 10,000 US green cards available each year, and Reaz Jafri, head of US and Asia immigration at Withersworldwide, an international law firm, said that in recent years, 75 per cent had gone to Chinese nationals. “They’re applying often unaware of Fatca and America’s taxation on worldwide income for green card holders,” he said.

   Erik Wallace, a partner at Withersworldwide, said: “One would think the interest of mainland Chinese in the EB-5 programme, which is a type of green card, would have diminished. However, we are not seeing a drop in interest. Instead, these persons are implementing comprehensive tax plans to diminish the US tax impact before acquiring their US green cards.”

   In contrast, Feingold said, many US citizens and US permanent residents in Hong Kong and on the mainland were exploring how to renounce their US ties. “Those seeking more information are not only billionaires, but also moderately wealthy or even middle-class,” he said. The US Internal Revenue Service said 228 expatriates gave up US citizenship in 2008, but that number jumped to 1,810 in the first half of this year.

   One of the biggest frustrations for US citizens or permanent residents living abroad was that financial institutions increasingly refused to open accounts or provide other financial services to them, Feingold said. “This is because the costs of compliance with Fatca and risks from non-compliance outweigh the profits from having account holders,” he said. Wallace said that under Fatca, US citizens and green card holders were also finding it more difficult to invest outside the US.

   Simon Parfitt, chief executive of Guardian Life Management, the Hong Kong arm of Guardian Wealth Management, an international financial planning firm, said it had seen “a marked increase in the number of calls from US clients who have been turned away by [financial institutions] as they don’t want the cost and complexity of complying with Fatca”.

2. All I can say to the situation in Kingston is YOU GO JAMAICA! This is going to cost you so much money you cannot afford and I applaud the fact that so many are opting out. That nation is very poor and the fact that this is imposed upon them is shameful.

   I do wish these authors would stop stating that most of this is about “taxes” It’s not about taxes if as American Citizens Abroad’s stats say 82 percent of all expats would not ever owe the U.S. any taxes. They all seem to have this need to put the word “taxes” in the headline which just confuses the most serious problems of FATCA.