Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

An interesting article was posted today in Chinese: http://big5.soundofhope.org/node/320710.

Here is the Google translation:

The richest man in China to avoid heavy taxes acute rejection of U.S. citizenship

2013-03-17 02:28:58

The green card has always been a symbol of the “American Dream”, but in early 2013, the United States resorted to FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) locking overseas income tax inspection, commonly known as “fat cats Act set off a celebrity and rich to abandon green card and U.S. citizenship The wave of the mainland’s richest man, Wahaha Group Chairman Zong recently renounced U.S. citizenship.

These high-income “tax refugee” nationality have moved back to the country, or transferred to countries with lower tax rates; renounce U.S. citizenship, however, still liquidate the property to pay the exit tax, and many of the National People’s Congress of the American dream from the “dream” change ” nightmare. “

The disposable green card predominantly Chinese

French composer in the movie “Green Card”, which, in order to live and work in the United States, at great pains sham marriages in an attempt to fool the immigration officer, only to get a green card. However, with the United States FATCA bill on the road, there are many rich must deliberately with a green card, “said Bai Bai”, which is a continent rich.

“World News” reported that, in the case of “taxing” the wealthy Americans to give up the green card or citizenship case continued to increase, which Chinese majority. IRS statistics show that, to give up the American’s more than 1,500 people annually from 2008 to 2011, according to the quarterly published abandon nationals who found, a very high proportion of Chinese surnames.

Under U.S. law, U.S. citizens and permanent resident green card holder, whether living in the world where to be for overseas income tax. In March 2010, the United States to strengthen tax collection, enacted FATCA aims to crack down on overseas tax evasion, and the rules officially launched in early 2013.

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Friday 15 March 2013 – ‘Where is the evidence my son was a terrorist?’

Mohamed Sakr was stripped of his British citizenship for alleged Islamist activity and killed in a drone strike. His parents tell Chris Woods they have yet to be shown any proof of his guilt.

The Independent

You get extradited back to the US. Or you get killed abroad in a drone strike. Being stripped of your citizenship was merely a way of absolving your government of your murder. As a man or woman without a country, you don’t exist in the eyes of nation-states, and thus you can be murdered by any government and no other government will raise an eyebrow.

Market Oracle

For drone assassinations lacking a fair trial, America doesn’t even need to silently strip the citizenship of the so-called “tax cheats”, “snot pukes”, “traitors”, “unpatriotic”, “pieces of crap” people who want to live normal lives outside of US jurisdiction.  These are all titles rewarded to individuals who choose not to be American citizens for whatever reason.  Most of these, I collected from just one single article talking about Saverin.  Did I remember to include the “terrorist” label?  Notice that in all three articles, none of the accusations are supported with any evidence to justify their careless usage.

It appears that no proof of guilt is needed to justify the assassination of anyone given such a fancy title.  They are, after all, “snot pukes”!

If it says anything at all, your once-government lies and says that you were a high profile terrorist.

You are now a confirmed kill.

Switzerland’s largest political party, SVP, voted against FATCA.  The no vote was then followed by the Greens.  Together with the Social Democrats (SP), the three parties make up the political majority.  The SP, wanting reciprocity through model I, is selling its vote at a high cost, pushing the federal council to make compromises which lead to reciprocity.

Die SP treibt wieder das alte Spielchen

…Die SP versucht, ihre Zustimmung möglichst teuer zu verkaufen, in diesem Fall möglichst viele Zugeständnisse zu erreichen und den Bundesrat auf eine Linie zu zwingen, die zu einem automatischen Informationsaustausch führt. Dies kann sie tun, weil die SVP und die Grünen das Fatca-Abkommen kategorisch ablehnen. Denn die Fraktionen von SVP, SP und den Grünen kommen im Nationalrat zusammen auf 117 Stimmen, was eine komfortable Mehrheit ist…

Source

Sound crazy?  Not in America.

On Wednesday, the Tax Court held that a flight attendant who was a resident of Hong Kong and a U.S. citizen could not claim 100% of her wages were excludable under the Sec. 911 foreign earned income exclusion (Rogers, T.C. Memo. 2013-77)…

The Tax Court held, therefore, that only her wages earned while in or flying over foreign countries qualify as foreign earned income, and wages earned while in international airspace or over the United States do not qualify.

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In other words, a Chinese dual citizen living in Hong Kong, working for a Chinese employer and earning less than $10K per year, may be double-taxed on the same income by America simply because they work above the ground outside of America.

I’m failing to comprehend how one can determine when one worked in international airspace, or even US airspace, and for how long.  Will one also be fined $10’000 for not knowing that one flew over a section of American Samoa, thinking that it was Samoa?  Flight attendances have to carefully analyze the hours worked over the  jurisdictions covered by each flight path throughout the entire year to ensure that their meager incomes will be taxed twice, if they wish to avoid massive fines.  How much greater can tax insanity be more hell than that?

By DOUGLAS GOLDSTEIN 03/14/2013 23:19 – Jpost.com

The US government should also waive FATCA’s reporting requirements for foreign financial institutions.

With the enactment of the 2010 HIRE Act, Congress aimed to increase employment and increase its revenues by going after foreign accounts owned by Americans.

Unfortunately, the legislation doesn’t draw a distinction between honest Americans living and working abroad, and those citizens who are indeed hiding tax revenues from the American government. The legislation, Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), requires that individuals report their accounts held overseas and that foreign financial institutions report to the IRS about their American clients.

FATCA burdens American individuals and businesses overseas, as well as the foreign banks that wish to service them.

The billion dollar question is whether the burden of FATCA will outweigh its benefits.

The potential for losses are great on both the individual and institutional side.

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and US citizenship based taxation. This is NOT over. Not by a longshot.

http://samenaanhetwerk.be/media/uploads/john/facta.pdf

Can any of you who speak Dutch tell me more about who this guy is. He seems pretty left wing even for European standards.

FATCA Hits The Buffers In Russia

von iExpats von Lisa Smith – March 14, 2013

…Now Russia has stepped up to say implementing FATCA is illegal in the country as the rules are contrary to Russian and international laws.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has also declared that the country’s financial institutions would break local laws if they enter into any agreement with the IRS.

The Bank of Russia has backed up the Foreign Ministry’s stance and said that FATCA undermines the principle of equality among sovereign states…

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