Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

This post is cross posted at renounceuscitizenship.

Trade, Deficits and Trade Deficits

Let’s begin with the basics.

Q. What is a “trade deficit”?

A. A “trade deficit” occurs when a country buys more of a country’s products than it sells to that country. What would be an example? The United States trades with China. The U.S. buys goods from China (check out Walmart). The U.S. also sells goods to China. It’s just that the U.S. spends more buying goods  from China than it receives for goods sold to China. Is this a problem? I don’t know, let’s figure it out. Continue reading →

I’m giving you all a heads up that if anyone has investment accounts in the US, you may find yourselves receiving a letter from your bank or financial institution as I did that you need to provide “acceptable proof” of a US legal and mailing address. If you can’t provide this proof, they will restrict your accounts to liquidating transactions only and they will be subject to closure. If they don’t hear from you by the specified date in the letter, they will liquidate your account and mail you a cheque for the proceeds to the address they have on file. They warn: “There may be tax consequences to you associated with a liquidation of investment assets in your account, so please plan accordingly.”

If you live in Canada your only option is obviously to liquidate the accounts.

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Ask your questions about FATCA.

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Ask your questions about Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship and Certificates of Loss of Nationality.

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I found this paper today as I was researching another topic for the Flophouse and the title alone, Sharing The Spoils: Taxing International Human Capital Flows, intrigued me. So I had a look (Petros has probably already read it), thought it had some interesting ideas and so I offer it up to you for your reading pleasure. After all, it is Friday (the 13th no less).

For our purposes I thought the section four on Alternative Worldwide Regimes for Individual Income Taxation starting on page 25 is worth a read:
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This post is cross posted from Renounceuscitizenship.

See also:  Roger Conklin writes about why he left Brazil in 1977 ; The US trade deficit: Was it caused by greedy companies or greedy government?

We are living in interesting times. During all the years of my tax consciousness I have lived with the assumption of U.S. citizenship-based taxation. When the IRS began its “reign of terror” on U.S. citizens living  outside the United  States and many people learned about their tax filing obligations, the discussion about citizenship-based taxation began. The U.S. is the only Western democracy and of one two countries (Eritrea being the other) which taxes on the basis of citizenship. The rest of the world taxes on the basis of residence  or what is commonly referred to as “territorial taxation”. In a global world where:

See also:

Stop Citizenship-Based Taxation – Repeal FATCA
Citizenship-based taxation, the U.S. trade deficit and the destruction of U.S. capital

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