[eloisant]

If I'm correct you only have to do a federal tax return (not state) and you have a tax credit equal to what you paid in your residence country.

So yes, I understand filling a tax return is a chore, but you'll only pay taxes if the amount you paid in your residence country is lower that what you would have paid in federal taxes alone.

Considering how low US income tax is, in most countries you won't have to pay anything.

[cr1895]

It's a bit more than a simple tax return...there's also FBAR and ACA exemption. The penalties for screwing up FBAR are rather ridiculous, especially since the limit mandating reporting is so relatively insignificant.

[beagle3]

The fbar/fatca/fincen filings are insane (assume you have 3 bank accounts, a couple of pension /health spending accounts, a saving account you opened for your kid, etc; and that the total tops $50,000 - you're going to have to file 10-20 pages of details with stiff penalties.

Not to mentions that banks and brokers refuse to take you as a customer if you are a US taxpayer.

[pc86]

> how low US income tax is

Compared to what? The maximum federal rate is nearly 40%. Yes, there are many many countries with maximum rates in the 50-60% range. But 40%, even marginal, is not low.

[etherael]

It's extremely high.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

Sort by max individual rate, it's 8th from the top in a list 221 countries long.

[pc86]

Only if you include state rates, which is.. disingenuous at best. It's at least as wrong as saying the US has very low tax rates. If you're talking about expatriation, the IRS, etc, you're only talking about Federal rates. Short of outlawing income tax the Federal government has very little power over dictating state tax rates.

At the Federal level personal taxation is not terrible but it's not low, either. The US has the second higher corporate income tax in the world according to that same chart, and the highest depending on your state of incorporation/operation (if you include state/local).

[etherael]

I disagree. The context of the original quote was;

> Considering how low US income tax is

Now I do understand what you mean when you make the distinction that for expatriate taxation based on citizenship, only the federal taxes are considered, but that is not what the original language actually said in the context of the statement regarding how low US income tax is, and weasel language to push a political agenda is annoying at the best of times.

To be scrupulously fair and expose my biases though, frankly even federal taxes alone are high as far as I'm concerned. Any amount is high when you're forced by threats of violence to pay it. The appropriate amount gathered by that method ought to be zero percent.

[doktrin]

From what I understand, that's mostly true. However, describing it as a simple 'tax return' is probably understating the complexity. Like someone else pointed out further down in the thread, a small business owner "is in for a world of pain, stress and audit". Likewise, income from investments can be massively annoying to file for correctly.