| > "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? |