[skywhopper]

It sounds like she didn't pay US income tax, she just had to file a tax return, which seems reasonable.

The idea that the US government doesn't track US citizens bank accounts if they live in the US is laughable. Of course they do. Banks have to report all kinds of details of large transactions and balances. We don't have to fill out forms because the government can go directly to the banks to get the information.

The way voting works I think is entirely reasonable. How else should it work? Is she suggesting there be senators and representatives just for expats? I would honestly expect the states would not want expats voting in their local elections, so the expats have more rights than I would expect there. For the Presidential election, yeah our voting system is screwed up there, but it is screwed up for everyone.

So it sounds like she left to avoid paperwork that felt intrusive. Meh. Welcome to life.

[dalke]

> "she just had to file a tax return"

... and FBAR, which is not a tax return, and figure out if a retirement savings in the local country is taxable or non-taxable under US law, and take the risk of a rather large fine for getting it wrong. One of the comments goes into details, at https://medium.com/@john_12842/tony-antonetti-de63e9971d02#.... .

I pay about $600/year for an accountant in the US to figure things out.

On a purely financial sense, if I were to plan to never return to the US, it's cost-effective to renounce citizenship. I don't like how my country encourages me to make a cost analysis for being an American.

How much more would you pay in taxes each year in order to stay an American?

> "We don't have to fill out forms because the government can go directly to the banks to get the information."

Sure. Ditto for the Dutch government to her Dutch bank.

But that's not the real issue. Imagine that you live in the US, married and with a joint account to an American citizen whose is also a citizen of Canada and the UK.

What do you think your bank would do if the Canadian and UK governments demanded that your US bank send them the details of your account? Change all their accounting systems to meet the reporting demands? Or kick you out as a client?

[graeme]

The IRS is a nightmare to deal with abroad. I'm Canadian, do not owe any US tax returns. Once, they thought I did because a payee filed the wrong form.

Took three years to resolve. I had to physically visit an IRS office while on a trip to confirm it, because email, mail, and phone communications all resulted in form replies.

In fact, the IRS office couldn't even confirm it. All they could confirm is that there no longer were asking for a return.

Wait times of over an hour by phone. And incredibly complicated forms to figure out.

There's a reason people are paying $3000 to avoiding it. Not even getting into the banking difficulties for Americans abroad.

[serge2k]

> It sounds like she didn't pay US income tax, she just had to file a tax return, which seems reasonable.

It's really not. That part about banks not wanting to serve american's is true. (Almost) no other countries do this type of thing.

[british_india]

Nonsense. FATCA was started by the US but now the OECD and many, many other countries around the world are copying it--as they should.

Earlier, banks were more than willing to support the tax evasions of Americans. But in case you were living in a cave, the last few years have seen those tax-evasion-enabling international banks fall one by one, admitting they enabled tax evasion and paying massive fines. So, the banks don't want Americans because they know so frequently those Americans are practicing tax evasion. They were burned and never again want to enable tax evasion. Rightly so.