Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship: Discussion thread (Ask your questions) Part Two
Ask your questions about Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship and Certificates of Loss of Nationality.
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NB: This discussion is a continuation of an older discussion that became too large for our software to handle well. See Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship: Discussion thread (Ask your questions) Part One
@japanT
No my id theft was NOT cleared up easily or cheaply.
Many here have spent many hours of their support to you and suggested ways to ameliorate your situation, we have never made light of it or anyone elses. We only seek to make you worry less otherwise stress will overtake your life. Medically I know all about it. Yet you always seem to take offense and rally against those who are your friends who only try to help. I will not enter into any discussion or suggestion with you anymore.
PS JapanT
I have never considered the situation to be static, thats why I am here, 6yrs after renouncing to stay abreast of the situation and to help others if I can.
Thats why I suggested you renew your passport now, rather than wait until the State dept and the irs link computers. Yet you take offense at nearly anything anyone says or suggests.
Enough is enough
@Heidi
“@japanT
No my id theft was NOT cleared up easily or cheaply.”
Is your ability to continue living with your family at risk because of it?
“Many here have spent many hours of their support to you and suggested ways to ameliorate your situation, we have never made light of it or anyone elses. We only seek to make you worry less otherwise stress will overtake your life. Medically I know all about it. Yet you always seem to take offense and rally against those who are your friends who only try to help. I will not enter into any discussion or suggestion with you anymore.”
For crying out loud, calling one Chicken Little for their concerns can not be thought of as anything as a severe lack of empathy. If you went to a doctor and he/she made such comments to you, I’d bet you’d right pissed off and rightly so.
@JapanT
we have all given you empathy and advice in bucketloads, I really feel for your situation but all that is received back from you is criticism. Chicken licken was meant to try to see that worrying is totally counter productive. Its a tale told to children for a purpose. Please don’t be so paranoid.
Most of us here try to stay ahead of what’s happening and give advice where we can and also try also lighten the atmosphere at times.
@JapanT
We all have our crosses to bear.
I have not come out of this lightly.
My ability to see or even talk to my US children has been affected by my renunciation of in their words ‘the best citizenship in the world’. You are not the only one who suffers.
Last year I streamlined and renounced.
For one of the years I was above FEIE because of exchange rates so I computed some income taxes to pay, and paid them with late interest to the IRS. They sent me a refund : I had ill-completed the form for the itemized deductions, not using the pro-rata. I couldn’t cash the check anyway so I sent it back explaining them my computation. They had also added a penalty for “failure to pay estimated tax penalty” (whatever that means) of 124$. Now they are asking for 87$ of additional late interests. I called the IRS, on was told I had to use file 834 (no other solution). The amount I computed and paid initially was actually correct. So apparently I should have not said anything when I received the check. Because now I am either trapped in paying more than I should, or entering into a more lengthy procedure, while I wanted also to send the last returns and expatriation form (8…) for 2017 before 15 June. any thoughts on the best way forward (I was looking for a clean way out)?
Perfect. ! This is how petty bureaucrats work, They’ll argue forever about 87$. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of whales pay bugger all.
How much is your time and energy worth.? 87$? I say pay it, then buy a very nice bottle of wine to celebrate.
She can’t just pay the US$87. She will send a payment, but it will reach the IRS after the deadline for payment, so they’ll add more interest, and it will never end.
Besides, I think US$87 is the interest on US$124.
Maybe file two Forms 843. One to ask for “first time” abatement of penalty because she hadn’t been penalized earlier for failing to pay estimated taxes, and one to ask for abatement of interest because at least part of the interest is the IRS’s fault (the IRS sent a refund cheque that they shouldn’t have sent).
I went my entire 6 year enlistment and 5 years of college without a credit card (CC). Did not want to have my credit rating destroyed due to irregular mails and/or income. Thus I was in my late 20s and my last year of college before I first applied for a credit card. Having secured a summer job with the National Park Service (NPS) and a full time job in Japan starting in the Fall, I used my brand new CC to buy unifirms needed for the NPS and suits etc. needed for the upcoming job in Japan.
Our first NPS paycheck was 6 weeks late. My boss and his boss and their boss did everything in their power to fix the problem, but fix it they could not. They found other sources of funding to loan us a little until we finally did get paid including from their own pockets. Once we were finally in the system, we were told that we would have no more pay problems. This reasured me as I needed the deposits I made for the phone, water and sewer bill, rent etc back to cover the cost of the plane ticket to Japan. When we were paid that first paycheck, it was only a small fraction of what we were due. Next payday, no paycheck, nor the next, nor the next. At one point, our ashed faced bosses told us that the excuse they were given was that the person who handles pay at the national office was on maternity leave and we would have to wait till she returned to get our pay.
I lost those deposits and had to make a last minute emergency sale of the remaining part of my mutual fund to pay for the airfare to my job in Japan arriving with just $300. on which to live until my first payday two months later, we are paid only once a month in Japan and a month after the pay periods end. My employer was required by contract to privide two days of food for each newly arrived hire which they bypassed by taking two weeks to provide the refridgerator in which to put said food. Short rations yet again.
My employer in Japan also violated Japnese law by witholding most our first month of pay as security against leaving before the end of our contract. My paycheck was around $300. . $600. to live on for 2 months in what was as that time the most expensive city in the world for expats, despite what I thought to be carefull planning based upon correct information. Still not being able to pay my CC bill, it was cancelled. Less than a year out of college, I am eating a single bowl of white rice a day in an apartment with a futon, and empty fridge, no TV nor radio nor pillow nor chair and have $33,000 of school loan debt and already destroyed my credit rating.
Each of these experiences share several features which include: incompetent, misinformed or lying bureaucrats, employers or school officials and computers for them to blame their failings upon.
Just because you can’t think of what could possibly go wrong and have not heard of such things, does not mean they do not happen everyday. If reported upon, they are not front page news items and are usually published in obscure publications such as trade journals. I can not say with certainty why others who have gone through these things with my are not as vocal about them as I am but the fact that in addition to the those mentioned innthe preceding paragraph, there are also the armies of Heidis and nononymouses telling us who childish are concerns are each time we try to warn others.
I have for over 30 years been experiencing that which does not or can not happen. ‘Oh come on, that can’t happen! There are safeguards, multiple layers of security, rules, regulations…laws to prevent it. Here, take this tinfoil hat, the black helicopters on their way.” I have observed that many of those safeguards are the cause of much misery, either by failing, misuse or abuse.
Much of these bad experiences could have been avoided if only I was able to learn from other’s experiences. I seek to help others avoid these. Hard to do so when my lone voice is drowned out by belittling comments. I choose to focus on these comments as they tend to cover everything else, but I could very easily write a book on “technological revenge” the numerous ways various uses of modern tech, have either worsened the problems they were intended to solve or created other problems at least as bad as those they solved from my own experiences and those I know who work in various fields of modern tech, and then apply these to our situation. Damned hard to do so when such things are “poo pooed” at every turn.
@ND
“”Living overseas has in no small way spared me the most of the hell victims of ID theft are reported to go through. Now, thanks to FATCA, these problems are turning up here in Japan.”
Japan has had identity theft for centuries.
When the US enacted the Privacy Act of 1974, I wondered why. When I moved to Japan, I learned why the US needed its Privacy Act.
One can only wonder if the US government and courts will ever understand why the US enacted its Privacy Act of 1974.
Though even if they learn, that wouldn’t stop identity theft by embezzlers working in the US government. Living outside the US doesn’t spare victims from most of the hell.”
All true. My point was that I thought I would be spared from this particular instance of ID theft and able to get a fresh start. Now, I get to deal with ID theft in both countries. Yippee!
@ND
“There are newspaper articles at least once a year. The occasions when people get caught not paying are usually when they have a hospital bill, but there are other occasions too.”
Yep. But back when I first arrived as an employee, the articles were on whether or not we non Japanese were required to enroll or not. Now we have articles telling of the horrors of those, Japanese and non Japanese who are caught and forced to pay back payments and pay from then on.
The friend/coworker/neighbor had no idea how he got caught. The family friend got caught when his child was born. The child was listed as his dependant. Learning from his experience, we changed our legal family structure before our first child was born. My children are my wife’s dependants, not mine.
“I don’t know if a law requires a city hall to notify a resident before seizing money, but if there is such a law it has no teeth, like US law that requires the IRS to credit you for withholding and notify you if they aren’t crediting the amount you claimed and issue you a Notice of Deficiency before stealing your money. If such a law exists, courts will never uphold it.
‘I asked first my employer and then at city hall. Both told me that as long as I had private health insurance, as a foreignor I was not required to enroll and pay into the national heath care system.’
Employers don’t count; they’re famous for lying. But city hall, yes the law says they can tell you whatever lies they want just like the IRS does, and by law you get penalized if you believe them.”
Yep, a lesson I learned through this episode about 20 years ago. A lesson I apply to every situation and try to share with others. Funny though, so many try to drown out these attempts.
@GoneSoon
“In which case you can try for a laissez passer from the country where you have residence rights. I’ve seen it work for political asylees, not child support or tax debtor passport cancellation cases.”
Thanks for that. Will look into it. At present, as far as I ans my wife can determine, once a passport is revoked, the passport holder is immediately in violation of Japanese immigration law and will go to jail. Japan has a 100% (in theory and at last close 100% in practice) incarceration for all breaches of immigration law.
“She can’t just pay the US$87. She will send a payment, but it will reach the IRS after the deadline for payment, so they’ll add more interest, and it will never end.
Besides, I think US$87 is the interest on US$124.
Maybe file two Forms 843. One to ask for “first time” abatement of penalty because she hadn’t been penalized earlier for failing to pay estimated taxes, and one to ask for abatement of interest because at least part of the interest is the IRS’s fault (the IRS sent a refund cheque that they shouldn’t have sent).”
It is this reality that is one of many ingredients to my warnings posted here. My wife had to deal with this after a three month secondment to the States. While the tax treaty eliminated her need to pay federal income tax, the treaty did not eliminate the need to pay state income tax. Despite sending her tax payment “return receipt” and having documentation of its timely delivery, three years after returning she was still fighting the loop you describe. Just a monster under the bed though, so no worries…unless you are chicken little.
@Heidi,
Yes, I know that we all have our own difficulties and tragedies, so I am just accept my fate and say good bye to my children before their 9th bithdays just because your relationship with your children has also suffered?
We all will lose our parents, death takes each and every one of us. It can not be helped. But to lose parents while young to paperwork need not be. Nan wrote the stupid paperwork, we can unwrite it, burn it or whatever. These problems can be solved but will not be solved if we accept them. If we do not fret, or worry about them, they will destroy us be uase we will not change them.
So, I will fret about them. I will continue to do what I can to warn as many as I can of the dangers of accepting the progression of the issues discussed here. When I am eventually “caught” and lose my passport or ability to receive pay or all my pay, it will not be because I did not try to fix this injustice. The rest of you are free to watch on the sidelines…untill you too find yourself in the arena.
Where does he find the time?
Juliette – “Because now I am either trapped in paying more than I should, or entering into a more lengthy procedure, while I wanted also to send the last returns and expatriation form (8…) for 2017 before 15 June. any thoughts on the best way forward (I was looking for a clean way out)?”
Eyes on the prize. Pay them, send in the final returns / 8854, and then celebrate. Congratulations! 🙂
@ Gone Soon,
I don’t think Heidi was suggesting that I tried to use a cancelled “lost” passport. I think her point was that if I have a new passport issued now, that I would have ten years from the date of its issue rather than the less than five on my current passport to find a solution.
@Portland
“Where does he find the time?”
If you are asking in reference to me, hours each day are wasted on the train going hither and thither from one job to the next.
“I lost those deposits and had to make a last minute emergency sale of the remaining part of my mutual fund”
And your withholding wasn’t embezzled by an IRS data entry clerk stealing your identity? The IRS didn’t send a letter calling you frivolous, telling you to search the IRS’s web site for keyword “fraud”, refusing to tell you why, telling you to make a toll free call to a phone number where the IRS contracts with ATT to block your attempts to obey the IRS’s letters, telling you to write to IRS addresses where they destroy your letters, filing a lien against you, lying to Tax Court, altering records of your declaration of the embezzled withholding into a fraudulent claim of foreign tax credits which you didn’t actually declare, altering records of whether or not you filed your original tax return, refusing to communicate with the Department of Justice when the DOJ tells lies to other courts than Tax Court (the IRS represents itself only in Tax Court), the IRS didn’t tell you that it’s illegal to tell the truth on US tax returns, etc. etc. etc? Lucky you. If that didn’t happen to you, then [irony alert] [warning: heavy irony alert] maybe you really are Chicken Little because the sky didn’t really fall on you.
“Japan has a 100% (in theory and at last close 100% in practice) incarceration for all breaches of immigration law.”
Actually it’s only 100% when they choose to, though they choose to more often now than they used to. Under the old alien registration system, I saw alien registration cards that said “Status of residence: No permission to reside in Japan”. But when they choose to deport, they’re vicious. They put babies (illegal residents from the moment of birth) in separate jails from parents and don’t allow the babies to be visited by people they know. One baby was so distressed, she couldn’t urinate, and now she spends the rest of her life on dialysis.
@ND
No they have not but after reading many many of your posts, I know that many of those are indeed possible events in my furure and in the future of others. My argument is not with you or others who post their negative experiences that could be taken as a warning by others. My argument is against those who continually say that considering such possiblities is similar to being frightened of monsters under the bed or think the sky is falling and against those who urge acceptance of all this madness. Don’t think I have ever insinuated that your experiences and concerns were in any way frivolous.
I had hoped that my comment about changing my family’s structure so that I would not be caught in the way my friend was when his child was born would indicate that I learn not only from my own experiences but from the experiences of others and offer my experiences up for others to see if they might get some information that might help them avert potential problems.
No, the only thing the IRS communicated to me was the requirement to privide information I could not under the threat of fines I can never pay off. Not the atom bomb they hit you with but dead is dead whether by a .22 slug or a neutron bomb.
“Don’t think I have ever insinuated that your experiences and concerns were in any way frivolous.”
Of course not. That’s the job of the IRS, DOJ, and judges.
By the way, the sky fell.
@Japan T seems to have suffered a series of calamities, some by bad luck, some by bad information and some by poverty. There are different kinds of identity theft: some can be insured against, some go on forever and require a hard-to-get new Social Security number. An expat with a new identity in a new country might find his/her U.S. identity stolen and never know it. Some dead people whose death is unknown to SSA have returned to life as criminals that way. If in fact Japan T’s identity was cloned both in the USA and in Japan, separately, then it’s more than bad luck.
I gather that Japan T has a Japanese spouse and Japanese children who can/must renounce upon majority. The problem that I know about from friends is that biracial Japanese encounter no hostility or issues among the upper middle classes and higher, and in private schools. But in other venues — including the Japanese School in Los Angeles according to my informant, there can be bullying.
On the passport revocations: we don’t know how that is going to play out, but Nevis and Dominica are doing good business among the (upper) middle class and Malta and Cyprus among the moderately and seriously wealthy. Ancestry citizenship business has never been better.
I am writing this in the business lounge at GVA, and spoke yesterday to a Swiss who deals with guardianship (elderly with dementia, and orphans). We didn’t get to the issue of corruption in that area, something I know is rampant in the USA: look up on search engine ‘Mollie Orshansky’: the Washington Post covered the story of that wonderful SSA economist who was kidnapped and robbed by the DC courts until her NY family kidnapped her in turn from a DC hospital and brought her to her own retirement apartment that she’d bought next to their home in NYC. Ironically Orshansky invented the Poverty Index.
On banks: My family now has a further twist of the knife by the cantonal bank who write that according to their settlement agreement with the IRS they have to see a scan of our FBARs and 1040 Sched. B. And maybe more: I was so angry when I read the letter that I stopped reading and rushed down to the Post Office to put some more money in our new PostFinance account. I’m not even sure that my CLN will resolve the paranoia of the cantonal bank. And it’s hard to feel sorry for them when I know they solicited dark money pre-2010.
On health insurance: Some of the same issues exist in Switzerland and have been discussed on englishforum.ch — If one does not enrol voluntarily the commune will enrol you retroactively: in any event the policy dates from one’s registration as a resident. And foreign health insurance is almost never allowed as a substitute: even thought the law allows it for retired foreign diplomats in fact it may be rejected because such insurance rarely covers abortion or long-term nursing-home care that is a required cover. I read that at least one forum member evaded cover for a short period by moving from one commune to another.
@Gone Soon
Having been on the short side of the equation my whole life I am inclined to believe that while possibly not the worst possible outcome, what ever awaits is plenty bad enough unless stopped. It won’t be stopped unless action is taken.
Bullying is a problem that any single student in the Japanese school system can experience. “Hafu” are in no way spared. Boys may suffer bullying more than girls. Though my wife, Japanese of bushi stock experienced a full year of bullying in school. Not a single student talked to her the whole school year.
I know that at least two of my banks are and have been reporting my accounts to the IRS for as long as four years despite the balances being far below the $50,000 FATCA requires. Discovered this fact a little over a year ago after being told repeatedly by several here at IBS that as I had far below the reportable requirement that I had nothing to worry about. Another reason I do not believe that in whatever protections via legislative or enforcement limits will be of any worth and doubt those who say they will be.
Insurance. I do and always have had locally procured insurance and have used it from time to time, though it is becoming harder to do so. Again, this situation could have easily been averted if only I could have had the correct information and fretted about it a bit more.
“The problem that I know about from friends is that biracial Japanese encounter no hostility or issues among the upper middle classes and higher, and in private schools.”
You have weird friends. There is less discrimination against “halfs” than there used to be, but there’s still a lot and it has nothing to do with class. People are still discriminated against by ancestry and appearance even if they’ve taken Japanese citizenship. The attackers of Renho (former party leader of what was then called the Democratic Party of Japan) weren’t all middle classes and lower.
“But in other venues — including the Japanese School in Los Angeles according to my informant, there can be bullying.”
There is bullying everywhere, for all kinds of reasons which sometimes can be due to ancestry or appearance but which can be for any kind of reason.
“Nevis and Dominica are doing good business among the (upper) middle class”
This might actually work for Japan T. If his wife can lend him enough money to invest in Nevis or Dominica, and if the investment gets him a passport without requiring him to live there, it might work.