It occurs to me that there are two big obstacles for U.S. citizens living abroad who wish to comply with tax and reporting requirements.
The first obstacle is the cost. IRS tax and reporting requirements are too expensive for most people to manage.
The second obstacle is the confusing information and lack of clear guidelines from the IRS.
Your thoughts?
From Just Me:
I have emailed the reporters at the Weekly Standard (using their internal email box) thanking them for this article, and have tweeted this..and sent to a couple reporters this morning, but out of time. Have to run to town.
Just Me
Obama Burdens the Banks and you did not know! @weeklystandardbit.ly/ztzA5p MUST READ about #DATCA the domestic version of #FATCA
I found this yesterday and thought it was interesting and worth sharing.
The Société Générale has an entire section of their Securities Services website devoted to FATCA. They are calling it the “défi américain” (the American challenge) and this seems to be an attempt to explain a few things to their clients who are clearly curious about what this all means. I think the site is well done and I hope my bank here does something similar.
Hey folks, I want to let you know that the isaacbrockforum.com is now open. This forum is password protected to keep web crawlers out. Search engines will not be able to access discussions in the forum. Nor will anyone be able to walk off the street straight into the discussion. They first have to ring the door bell–i.e., they must go to the how to join page to find out the password.
UPDATE: Comments will no longer be nested. Please use the @ sign to reply to someone. If you want to quote a part of what they say, please use the the following html code <blockquote> to begin the quote, </blockquote> to end it (if you can remember).
but there is no mention of this in the article. Perhaps it would be worth a comment or two. Most of the comments/posts on isaacbrocksociety.com are focusing on the restrictions put on U.S. citizens who try to exercise “economic mobility” by living outside the United States. This McKenna article does not mention these and neither do the comments.
I thought I would take a few moments and talk about how all these issues impact U.S. spouses of foreign nationals living outside the U.S. I’ve seen this addressed in other places but from the comments I see it’s usually about how the foreign spouse will suffer because he/she married an American. Believe me, it isn’t fun for the Americans (very often women) either.
Petros provides a recap of the progress of isaacbrocksociety.com at 30,000 views. Warning: While last week’s status report felt like a high school prep talk, this one reads like a business meeting.
I have been in the US on holidays for a month now. We purchased a little getaway place in Florida last spring in hopes that we could already be set up to go as snowbirds in 3 to 5 years. No real estate agent ever mentioned any new laws that state that foreigners might have to file tax returns on their worldly income if they stay longer than 120+ days in the US or that the IRS gets inheritance tax benefits in case any of us should parish. Many of our Canadian neighbors are upset about the prospect and I need to send them proof of this law that took effect at the first of 2011. There was once a link to an article about it on the expat site but I am not able to find it. Does anybody have information about this or a link that I could forward to my neighbors? Continue reading
Here is a comment from a cross border tax specialist
Petros, $250-$300 for a cross border US tax return an accountant that does not understand cross border tax. A good tax accountant would not even prepare a Canadian return for that fee. Check what H&R Block is charging for Canadian tax returns and remember they are essentially uneducated form fillers.
