The Global Citizen Squashed And Effectively Yanked Home By The Obama Administration
At a time when it is easier than ever to live and work in another country -- or work in America from another country, via Skype -- the Obama administration has made it impossible for many citizens to keep money in a bank in the country they're living in.
At reason, Shikha Dalmia writes about "The Oppressive Logic of Obama's Plan to Chase Down Foreign Earnings":
But to really see how far the administration could go to bring recalcitrant companies to heel, consider how it has treated American expatriates settled abroad. In order to snag a handful of mega-millionaires with unreported income stashed abroad, it passed something called FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) four years ago. This act requires Americans with more than $10,000 in foreign accounts to file disclosure forms or risk $100,000 in fines and jail time. Worse, it demands that foreign financial institutions report the accounts of their American customers, much as domestic banks are required to do.Rather than face the red tape, many foreign banks have simply shut their doors to American customers, leaving about 8 million expats living abroad few options besides their mattresses to store their cash.
Predictably, expats scrambled to renounce their U.S. citizenship after this rule went into effect, offending the administration further. It hiked the citizenship renunciation fee on these deserters by 422 percent. And it tried to pass the ExPatriot Act to impose additional exit taxes, but failed.
Oopsy...seems instead of coming home, some of these expats shut off all possibility to get any tax dollars from them at all.
Oh, yes, FATCA makes it nearly impossible to live abroad as an expat, at least here in Switzerland. Moreover, the disclosures it requires violate the local laws where your are living, if you have joint accounts with a non-American (a spouse, or perhaps a business partner.
Heck, I suspect that they violate American law. For example, one of the forms the US requires your bank to have you sign makes you, the taxpayer, fully liable for any and all data breaches by the government, the banks, or unnamed third parties. Surely illegal, would never hold up in court, but who has the money to fight the US government in court?
So, what a surprise that FATCA has driven so many of us to hand in our passports. Not really out of choice, but because we have lives where we are living, and FATCA would make those lives essentially impossible.
How many expatriate? The government doesn't release those numbers. Names of new expatriates are published every quarter, but that list covers only one specific category, formal renunciations. Given the waiting times at the embassies when I expatriated, and the fact that nearly everyone in the waiting room was there for the same reason, namely, to get rid of their American passports, the real numbers must be many times higher than the names on those lists would indicate.
But having so many people expatriate is embarrassing, don't you know? So the USA just recently increased the fee to hand in your passport by a factor of five, to $2350, which is around twenty times the fee charged by other Western countries.
bradley13 at February 12, 2015 12:48 AM
So, slavery was not really abolished at all. You work for the government, and you cannot leave.
MarkD at February 12, 2015 4:12 AM
@Bradley13: How many expatriate? The government doesn't release those numbers. Names of new expatriates are published every quarter, but that list covers only one specific category, formal renunciations.
Yesterday's Instapundit contained a link to this TaxProf Blog post on that very subject. Apparently, at 3,415, the total number of renunciations for 2014 is 14% higher than for the previous year.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at February 12, 2015 6:06 AM
What is rightfully yours belongs to Obama's regime simply because he said so.
How dare anyone disobey the supreme leader.
charles at February 12, 2015 12:32 PM
They also make it hard on foreigners living in America that still have assets over seas. I.e. H1B visa candidates.
Ben at February 12, 2015 6:54 PM
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