Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

Posted on by Posted in Issues regarding US persons abroad 19 Comments

Per bubblebustin and badger discussion:

I don’t recall ever seeing it before either. It was apparently written 7 months ago by lenxdart. Other links associated with this writer lead to Marylouise Serrato of ACA.

I thought by posting it here, it could potentially add to the debate Pink Jelly’s attempting to initiate over how homelanders perceive the benefits of US citizenship.

(Note: **See below for Pink Jelly’s request for a post, included in this one – It’s not the roads! A plea for stronger arguments against Citizenship-Based Taxation .)

https://www.penflip.com/lenxdart/aca-cbt-proposal-book

RBT

Residence-Based Taxation: A Necessary and Urgent Tax Reform
Working Paper, updated March 2013, submitted to the International Tax Reform Working Group of the Ways and Means Committee

This document can be found as a PDF at www.americansabroad.org, the website of American Citizens Abroad. link

ACA is reorganizing as a U.S. tax-exempt organization operating under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. American Citizens Abroad Foundation will operate alongside it as a publicly-supported charity under Section 501(c)(3).

Please address comments to: Marylouise Serrato by email info@americansabroad.org or by phone +1-202-322-8441

Contents

RBT

Executive Summary

Introduction

Understanding current law

Residence-based taxation

Positive consequences of RBT for the United States

Implementing RBT

How much tax revenue will RBT bring in?

Conclusion

Updated by lenxdart (view history)
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( https://www.penflip.com/lenxdart/cbt-faq-2)

What is CBT?

CBT is an acronym for citizenship-based taxation.

What is citizenship-based taxation?

Citizenship-based taxation is the government practice of personal taxation whereby a country’s citizens are taxed no matter where they reside in the world.

CBT is currently practiced by the US alone among first-world countries.

CBT contrasts with RBT, residence-based taxation, whereby only a country’s residents are taxed.

What is the problem with CBT?

There are multiple problems with CBT, as they apply to US citizens living outside the US:

  1. It forces individuals to pay for government services – roads, highways, dams, bridges, public schools, hospitals, fire services, police, courts, national parks, military protection – which they can never enjoy.
  2. It prevents individuals from opting out of the fiscal system (“voting with their feet”) by leaving the country.
  3. In conjunction with the US practice of conferring citizenship to children born to a.) foreign parents temporarily in the US, or b.) US parents permanently resident outside the US, it forces itself upon people with no ties – familial, cultural, political, or otherwise – to the US.
    This creates, for example, absurd situations like Canadian “border babies”, whose parents have no ties to the US, apart from the fact that at a certain moment in time the closest delivery ward was just across the border in the US, and where their child was born. That child will forever be required to file tax returns, and pay taxes, to the US.
  4. In conjuction with FATCA, it creates incentives for foreigners – banks, business partners, employers, even spouses – to eschew relationships with US citizens in order to avoid being caught in onerous and risky reporting and documentation requirements.

But many other countries tax worldwide income; why shouldn’t the US?

This question confuses two issues:

  1. Taxation of residents on their worldwide income. This is, in fact, a characteristic under residence-based taxation (RBT), and is what is practiced by many countries (though not all, since some countries restrict themselves to taxing on a local, territorial basis).
  2. Taxation of non-residents on income derived in their country of residence or elsewhere, but either way outside the jurisdiction of the taxing country. This is CBT, and what this FAQ discusses.

What are the alternatives to CBT?

The alternative to CBT is RBT, residence-based taxation, which is practiced by practically all countries outside the US. Under RBT, broadly speaking, taxpayers only pay taxes or file tax returns to the country (or countries) in whose jurisdiction they are resident or commercially active.

Why don’t non-resident Americans want to pay their fair share of taxes?

Non-residents do pay taxes to the countries in which they reside and where they receive government services. In fact, most non-resident US citizens live in countries in which the tax burden is greater than that of the US.

And anyway, what is the “fair share” of tax that should be paid by an individual who receives no government services in return? As things stand, 96.6% of the world’s population (i.e., everyone outside the US) thinks that the answer to that is zero.

Isn’t US CBT set up in such a way that it relieves most non-resident taxpayers from paying any taxes to the US if they already pay taxes elsewhere?

For most taxpayers – yes. However:

  1. It doesn’t relieve them from having to file taxes to the IRS every year, in addition to whatever filing requirements they have in their own countries. In fact, given the US’s extremely complex tax system, the expense of preparing a tax return for the US can be thousands of dollars. This may a be greater expense than the tax return they prepare for the country in which they live and work, frequently only to show that no US taxes are due.
  2. This setup covers most but not all non-resident taxpayers.

Further, we would argue that non-residents shouldn’t be “taxpayers” in the first place.

Isn’t US CBT set up in such a way that it avoids double taxation of non-resident taxpayers?

In theory, yes. In practice, not really.

For people with very simple life situations – such as those having a salary, and perhaps a recognized pension plan – US CBT avoids double taxation. However, for people with more complicated life situations – such as self-employed individuals or business owners who might have unrecognized pension plans or other deferred savings, investments in mutual funds or more exotic vehicles – US taxes will frequently take a chunk out of assets and income that have either already been taxed or been defined as tax-free or tax-deferred under the laws of the country in which they were earned.

The value you get as a US passport holder is that if you ever get into trouble somewhere in the world, the Marines will come and rescue you. That should be worth paying your taxes for, isn’t it?

  1. The majority of non-resident US citizens live in stable, democratic countries, such as Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan, the EU in general, and so on. They are extremely unlikely to require the Marines saving them at any time.
  2. In those cases where a person holds dual nationality – of the US and another country – the US can by international law not offer diplomatic help anyway when that person is in the other country.
  3. Any help that a US citizen receives for evacuation from a trouble zone is fully charged. The government is required by law to seek repayment of expenses for the evacuation of Americans from overseas locations. Source. Having paid a lifetime of taxes to the US still does not guarantee free diplomatic or military assistance.

If you think paying taxes to your homeland is so bad, why don’t you just leave?

We’re already talking about people who have “left”, in the sense that they no longer live in the US, or never even lived there. Here are some kinds of people to whom CBT applies:

  • People who were born in the US, but who decided to leave and live elsewhere
  • People who were born in the US to foreign parents and who left the US when they were kids
  • People who were born abroad to at least one US citizen parent who automatically transmitted citizenship to them
  • People who came to live and work in the US, received a green card, then decided to return to their home country but didn’t formally announce their departure

This means that “leaving” in the colloquial sense of the word does not help those caught by CBT. The only sense in which one could “leave” that would be usefully be applied to this discussion is by renouncing US citizenship.

If you don’t see any value in holding US citizenship, why don’t you just renounce?

There are a variety of reasons for not renouncing US citizenship:

  • A person holds no other citizenship, and would remain stateless if he gave up his US citizenship
  • Renouncing would anyway not extinguish any of the obligations under CBT up to the time of renunciation, meaning that any outstanding tax returns and payments (the reason for renunciation) still need to be completed
  • For people who have significant assets or income, renouncing triggers a massive exit tax, even if those assets or income were wholly built up overseas by the renunciant while living overseas
  • Renouncing costs thousands of dollars in fees (which were recently raised four-fold due to the large number of people exercising this option, and despite the US being signatory to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which precludes denying a person the right to change his nationality)
  • Renunciants are concerned by rhetoric by US politicians that threatens to bar them from ever re-entering the US, where they may still have family or where they might wish to visit as tourists.

Isn’t there a streamlined program to get out of this mess quickly?

The streamlined program still requires three years of tax returns and six years of FBARs. It is not an expedited ability to renounce. It is a way to get into the US tax system, which exactly what is being protested against here. A participant in the streamlined program does not get a CLN1. To achieve this, renouncing still requires five years of tax returns (two more than required by the streamlined program). Credit

What if everyone who didn’t want to pay taxes just left the US?

Probably nothing too dramatic. Other countries, which are no less modern and offer no less of a social net to their residents, have contended with this issue without requiring their expatriate citizens to keep paying and/or reporting taxes.

CBT has been in force for a very long time, and non-resident Americans have always had to file their taxes to the US. What’s changed now?

CBT was never very strongly enforced. The recent enactment of FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, is forcing banks worldwide to report on their clients defined as “US persons” (a term defined much more broadly that might naively appear). Some of these clients are indeed the intended target of this legislation as US residents hiding assets offshore. However, most of them are non-US-resident US citizens who are neither rich nor hiding assets, but simply hold local bank accounts with no nefarious intent. If it weren’t for CBT, these people would not fall under the definitions of reportable individuals since they would have no tax obligations to the US.

In effect, FATCA has exacerbated the difficulties of CBT, shedding light on what was previously a provision unknown by many.

Have any disinterested third parties weighed in on the issue of CBT?

Yes, see:

Are there any arguments in favor of CBT?

Here are some arguments to support CBT, from “The Case against Taxing Citizens” by Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, linked above. (They are refuted in that same document).

  1. The benefits argument: US citizenship by itself confers benefits that justify taxation.
  2. The ability to pay argument: US citizens are part of a community and should contribute their fair share to the pool of income that is redistributed across the community.
  3. The administrability argument: Citizenship is an administrable proxy for domicile, and domicile is a justified basis for taxation.

Additional arguments are provided in “Revisiting the Tax Treatment of Citizens Abroad: Reconciling Principle and Practice“, Michael S. Kirsch, Notre Dame Law School, October 28, 2013, 16 Florida Tax Review 117 (2014), Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper No. 1457 and summarized on the Franco-American Flophouse blog, as follows. They are also excellently refuted there.

  1. Membership: American citizens abroad retain ties to the United States and are still considered part of the nation.
  2. Future emigration: A switch from citizenship-based to residency-based taxation would provide incentives for many more Americans to leave the U.S.

What is the current political attitude towards CBT?

  • The Republicans have adopted a resolution that concludes as follows:

“RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee urges Congress to repeal Citizenship-Based Taxation and its supporting legislation such as FATCA and FBAR; and be it further

“RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee urges Congress to permit restoration of citizenship for those who were compelled to renounce their citizenship because of the crushing burdens of FATCA and FBAR;

“and, be it finally RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee urges Congress to align U.S. law with the laws of other industrialized countries of the world by limiting taxation to Residence Based Taxation on American Citizens living overseas which will encourage increased employment of Americans and increased export of American goods and services.”

“The United States needs to rethink its taxing rules for nonresident U.S. citizens.”

and refers the reader to a proposal developed by American Citizens Abroad: Residence Based Taxation: A Necessary and Urgent Tax Reform (March 2013)

  • The Democrats have not directly addressed the issue of CBT, however Democrats Abroad, “*the official Democratic Party arm for the millions of Americans living outside the United States*” has the following in its platform:

“We FAVOR restoring residence-based taxation, thereby placing American citizens residing abroad in the same position as citizens of all other industrialized countries, which do not tax their nationals residing abroad.”

Is CBT called by any other names?

For those interested in further researching the subject, citizenship-based taxation is also referred to by these names:

  • Passport tax
  • Citizenship tax
  • Birthplace tax
  • Diaspora tax

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**I’ve written a post but don’t know how to become an IBS author. Can someone post this for me as a post, not a comment? Thanks.

It’s not the roads! A plea for stronger arguments against Citizenship-Based Taxation.

Posted by Pink Jelly.

Time and again, when i have read arguments against Citizenship-Based Taxation (CBT). I have seen the point made that US expats “don’t use the roads.” This is a very lame argument that is unlikely to sway homelanders to see our point of view.

Roads are not something most people think about as a benefit of citizenship. Also (I think) they are often funded by the states, by highway tolls, by property taxes and not by the federal government.

The real benefits of US citizenship for most homelanders are Welfare, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, Obamacare and myriad other programs that put money in their pockets, food on the table and, for many people, provide free or very cheap health care. Programs that we expats pay for but are not eligible for.

If you’re, say, an expat teacher and you lose your job, the US govt does absolutely nothing to help you cope with your ordeal.

Other real benefits of US citizenship, such as the ability to get a 10 year India visa, are explicitly prohibited to US expats. You have to be a resident of the US as well as a citizen to get one. (Did the US state department deliberately pressure India to make this condition, as a way to screw expats out of another benefit? Somebody please investigate.)

So what benefits of citizenship do we have?

Is the right to pay $50 to the US consulate to notarize a document –something that usually costs $3 to $5 in the US — a benefit? Or is it just a ripoff? The same question must be asked about the right to pay $2,350 for the benefit of renouncing our precious citizenship.

CBT is indeed a human rights violation. The US, which is so quick to accuse other nations (the ones that don’t follow US orders) of human rights abuses is in fact one of the world’s premier human rights abusers and we are its victims.

So I make this request: sharpen your arguments against CBT. It’s not that we don’t use the roads. It’s that we are tired of being used and abused when we get nothing in return.

19 thoughts on “ACA CBT Proposal Book and CBT FAQ2 @ penflip.com (related: *A plea for stronger arguments against CBT*)”

  1. I’m afraid that hoping against hope that congress will somehow abolish CBT in favour of RBT is quixotic at best. They won’t act unless forced to by the supreme court. That is also most unlikely. I hope I’m wrong (there’s that word again) but look at the Republicans record. they refuse to raise the gas tax which funds repair of bridges and highways. They attempt to repeal universal healthcare. ‘No new taxes’ they shout. Fat chance they will abolish CBT. We need to concentrate on the repeal of Canada’s IGA . ADCS is our best chance.

  2. @DukeOfDevon, “We need to concentrate on the repeal of Canada’s IGA .”

    Reality, we are not all on the same tea. We are just not. Canadians ” need to concentrate on the repeal of Canada’s IGA “, but Americans in Canada have bigger fish to fry.

  4. “Fat chance they will abolish CBT. We need to concentrate on the repeal of Canada’s IGA . ADCS is our best chance.”

    Yes.

    ‘Reality, we are not all on the same tea[m]. We are just not. Canadians ” need to concentrate on the repeal of Canada’s IGA “, but Americans in Canada have bigger fish to fry.’

    There is a fat chance that the bigger fish, which non-resident Americans EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD need to fry, will get fried. Dream on. No matter how badly the bigger smellier more predatorial fish needs frying, it’s not going to get fried.

    We need to repeal every IGA that every country signed with the US, and ADCS is our best chance.

  5. Well-written, great observations. After living abroad for 50 years, I’m afraid I’m on my way to renouncing. One question: if CBT is repealed (or perhaps even restored citizenship) will I still have to comply with this ridiculous implementation of the US’s capital gains/inheritance tax laws? Not applicable in the UK, but onerous when I sell/die.

  6. A small change in vocabulary may be helpful. In point of fact, the US primarily practices RBT. More than 99.9% of tax returns are filed on by US residents. Within the US, the US tax net applies to RESIDENTS, both citizens and aliens and without distinction. It is meaningless to talk of taxing resident citizens based on citizenship when non-citizens are taxed on precisely the same basis. It is like saying we only tax people with blue eyes, but all people with eyes must pay the same tax. Within the US, it is meaningless to talk of CBT, since citizens and non-citizen residents are taxed on exactly the same basis.

    The ONLY instance where the US practices CBT is in respect of NON-residents. That is a tiny fraction – fewer than a million filed returns from “compliant” non-resident citizens. With 7.6 million citizens outside the US and fewer than a million filed returns, one can only conclude that FATCA + CBT of non-residents has created is a situation of MILLIONS of US citizens hiding from the US government (7.6 million expats or duals can’t ALL be earning less than $2,500 per year…). The queue of renunciants is of course only the tip of the iceberg since almost all non-resident citizens are unquestionably non-compliant and simply live off the (US) grid and have ever done so.

    Viewed in that light, the case for finding CBT to be discriminatory would seem to be a whole lot more evident since it ONLY applies to non-residents. A theoretical US resident who somehow renounced US citizenship would still be liable for precisely the same tax the next day as the day before. Citizenship is only a meaningful criterion for eligibility for taxation OUTSIDE the US; it is completely irrelevant within it. I’m sure someone who knows this better than I can check, but I’d be surprised if the domestic US tax return even asked if you are a citizen: why should they care?

  7. Is CBT called by any other names?
    For those interested in further researching the subject, citizenship-based taxation is also referred to by these names:

    Passport tax
    Citizenship tax
    Birthplace tax
    Diaspora tax
    A modern form of Slavery

  10. Although US residents seem to find their tax forms to be complex (and indeed the instructions are impenetrable),the ones that apply only to money earned or held outside the US are 10 times worse. Differences between tax rules between our country of residence and the US means foreign tax credits may not apply. While expats can exclude a good chunk of wages or salary, retired expats do not get to exclude retirement income in the same way. And for people who have Lived their lives and made their plans based on the laws of their country of residence only to discover an entirely other set of rules being applied retroactively the whole experience can be devastating bUt when we think of how hard and how long we each had to work and how OMG moments we encountered along the way is it any wonder when homelanders just don’t get it.

  11. If we are to compare CBT to slavery, would it benefit us to draw similarities from the many arguments that support slavery – some of which we’ve heard to support CBT?

    It’s important to note that every country on the planet that’s had CBT sometime in its history has abolished it when moving to improve its tax system. Not the US. It’s still rooted in the Civil War.

    “A number of arguments have been put forward to try and justify slavery. None of them would find much favour today, but at various times in history many people found some of these arguments entirely reasonable.”:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/ethics/justifications.shtml

  12. “In point of fact, the US primarily practices RBT.”

    Correct. The US practices SBT + RBT + CBT + extra filing requirements, and the problems are CBT + extra filing requirements. SBT and RBT are non-discriminatory.

    SBT + RBT is fair and is practiced by most countries.

    (A few countries practice something less than SBT + RBT, in a manner which actually discriminates against their own residents, but that is not our fight.)

    “I’d be surprised if the domestic US tax return even asked if you are a citizen: why should they care?”

    As far as I can tell, that is true now. Form 1116 (needed by people such as multinational corporations, immigrants to the US, anyone who inherited a bank account or property from ancestors, Mitt Romney, etc., as well as the diaspora) used to ask for citizenship. When the 5th amendment and Supreme Court rulings in US v. Sullivan and Garner v. US used to be good law, that question should not be answered. Some years ago that question was removed from Form 1116. However, other forms still cause problems for the diaspora and their families, which is why circuit courts overturned those two Supreme Court rulings.

  14. @Anne Frank, “More than 99.9% of tax returns are filed on by US residents.”
    Almost. According to IRS statistics, 146.5 million US tax returns were filed in 2012, and of these, 1.1 million had a foreign address. So it’s 99.2%.

    “Within the US, the US tax net applies to RESIDENTS, both citizens and aliens and without distinction.”
    “I’m sure someone who knows this better than I can check, but I’d be surprised if the domestic US tax return even asked if you are a citizen: why should they care?”
    There are a few very minor instances where US residents are taxed differently depending on citizenship:

    1. The unlimited marital exemption on the estate tax is only available automatically if the receiving spouse is a US citizen. Spouses who are not US citizens must set up a specific trust to use the exemption. This restriction was created in 1988, and I still haven’t found a reason for it. I suspect that it was an oversight and it should have been “citizen or resident”, like the rest of the tax code, instead of just “citizen”. However, since the current general exemption on the estate tax is very high ($5.43 million), I suppose that this restriction is extremely rare in practice.

    2. There is an obscure filing requirement, called the “sailing permit”, which only applies to resident aliens, and to nonresident aliens with taxable income in the US. In theory, they have to file a sort of simplified part-year US tax return whenever they leave the US, even for temporary trips. In practice, almost no one files or has even heard of it, it’s not enforced and there is no penalty for not filing the form. This requirement was created in 1921, and even the name sounds archaic. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) proposed eliminating this requirement in 1995 in his exit tax bill. Congress finally passed the exit tax in 2008, mostly based on his earlier proposal, but apparently forgot to eliminate the “sailing permit”.

    3. The tax code contains a few repetitive provisions that allow the president to retaliate against other countries, which impose “burdensome” or “discriminatory” taxes on US citizens or don’t allow them a foreign tax credit, by similarly imposing higher tax rates on their citizens or denying them a foreign tax credit. These provisions would apply to citizens of those countries, even if they reside in the US. These provisions were created in 1934 and 1966, but as far as I know, they have never been used.

    I also proposed eliminating these sections as part of my RBT proposal that I sent to Congress. Anyway, these are very minor cases and it’s correct to say that the US taxes its residents in the same way regardless of citizenship.

    By the way, for the estate tax, CBT is still rare but it’s not only the US. I found that at least the Philippines and Turkey tax the estate of their citizens regardless of where they live. The Netherlands also taxes the estate of its citizens who have resided there in the previous 10 years.

  15. @Shadow Raider,

    The unlimited marital exemption on the estate tax is only available automatically if the receiving spouse is a US citizen. Spouses who are not US citizens must set up a specific trust to use the exemption. This restriction was created in 1988, and I still haven’t found a reason for it. I suspect that it was an oversight and it should have been “citizen or resident”, like the rest of the tax code, instead of just “citizen”.

    The justification I have heard for this is that in the case of a US citizen surviving spouse, the US will eventually get to tax the survivor’s estate. In the case of a non-citizen survivor, the survivor could then leave the country, and the inheritance never get taxed. So not an oversight, if true.

  16. @foo Tax advisor commentary on the 5.43 million (not unlimited) marital exemption on the estate tax is ‘to help the assets not leave the US to avoid the estate tax.’ Advisor commentary very much suggests the surviving spouse to get US citizenship yet cautions that the time required for this may be too long to meet the estate requirements. Thus one must plan ahead. Without the 5.43 million the exemption there is something like a 660,000 exemption with assets above this being taxed at 40%. One trick getting out of this is to put the assets in a QDOT trust with a US financial institution then a full 5.43 million would apply with estate tax applying on any principal withdrawals or upon death of the surviving spouse. Yet this all assumes that the surviving spouse is in the US as it is increasingly difficult to set up any financial account in the US with an overseas address.

    Estate is one aspect not covered here much at IBS. There are some very nasty implications such as no debt is considered on the application of the estate tax. In various times in life such as purchase of first home one is very much loaded up with debt – then it appears liquidation of the family home may be required to meet the estate tax. Then there is also nasties such as if say an asset or home is 50/50 owned, any assets above the exemption must be proved by the surviving spouse that they contributed half else the asset will be considered entirely owned by the deceased person and subject to the estate tax.

    Also not addressed here much at IBS, and particularly relevant if nonUS person spouse, there very much is a double taxation aspect of estate tax even if your country does not have an estate tax: By US estate tax rules the basis of all assets get reset including those in the exemption and those upon which 40% estate tax is paid. However, that tax will not be recognized by your country of residence. If you start liquidating assets to pay the US estate tax then capital gains tax may apply to assets sold, and your country will not recognize resetting of cost basis of assets. Thus double taxation without tax treaty relief: estate tax plus capital gains tax.

  17. Aren’t we more concerned with cases where the surviving spouse might not leave the country, because “the country” is likely to be the one where the surviving spouse was born, because the US citizen is part of the diaspora? There will always be games for the 1% to play to reduce their taxes, including legal games and others. Let’s worry about the 99% who aren’t tax evaders, who have less than 5.43 million (unless their house overflows that), who get lumped unfairly with the tax evading fraction of 1%.

    Though while we’re digressing…
    “it appears liquidation of the family home may be required to meet the estate tax.”
    That is very common in Japan. It is generally assumed that nothing at all will be left after three generations, but even at the end of the first generation the house often has to be sold to pay the tax. Ordinarily landlords can’t evict tenants who cooperate and pay the rent, but we got kicked out of our previous apartment when the new landlord couldn’t pay the inheritance tax, the building was torn down and the land was sold.

  18. @foo, I’ve heard that explanation too, but only from tax professionals, not the US government itself. Frankly, it doesn’t make sense. If the spouse is already willing to move out of the US, what prevents the spouse from naturalizing, receiving the unlimited exemption, and then moving abroad and renouncing US citizenship? Spouses can naturalize after just 3 years of US residence, and in 1988 there was no renunciation fee and no exit tax. And even today, the exit tax also applies to green card holders (for more than 8 years) the same way as to US citizens.

    Until I see this explanation from a US government source, I find it more likely that it was an oversight than that Congress thought that US citizenship was a stronger barrier than a green card. The only way that this would make some sense is if the other country didn’t allow dual citizenship, but many of such countries still allow former citizens to move there and regain citizenship, so I still don’t see it as barrier. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if Congress was just ignorant or stupid.

    @JC, You’re mixing things up. The marital exemption really is unlimited, if the receiving spouse is a US citizen. The $5.43 million exemption is available to any receiving person, spouse or not, US citizen or not. The QDOT is the trust that allows the unlimited exemption to a foreign spouse, but it only makes sense if the giving spouse’s estate was more than $5.43 million. The $660,000 exemption you mentioned is not for the estate tax, it’s for the expatriation tax, and it’s currently $690,000 (indexed for inflation).

    @Norman, I’ve heard horror stories about the inheritance tax in Japan. I only hope that the current trend of abolishing the estate tax around the world becomes more popular.

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