[noodlesUK]

It’s not just FATCA either, if you’re an ordinary US citizen living abroad, and you want to start even a trivially small business in a foreign country, the IRS will fuck you. You have reams and reams of compliance paperwork to do, 5471s etc, aimed at multimillion dollar multinationals, even if your annual turnover is less than $1000. It’s hugely chilling to Americans living abroad

[nvarsj]

As an expat myself with a business, this is true 100%. It has been a complete nightmare for me. GILTI / transition tax was another mess - with exemptions that were lobbied for US based businesses with foreign holdings, while the expat community got screwed over. And the main purpose of this law, apparently, was to go after mega corporations with lots of overseas wealth. But why didn't they exempt small businesses? It is a complete clusterf*ck for Americans abroad.

The problem I think is it is a really easy sell. Legislators can say "we taxed the wealthy", and everyone thinks it's great, yes the wealthy must pay and those damn corporations. Meanwhile the reality is the wealthy can lobby Washington to lessen the pain, and expats are an easy target with virtually no influence.

The icing on the cake is Obama raising the expatriation fee to $2350, and all expatriations closed for the last year. Surely it should be a basic human right to give up your citizenship?