[shiroiushi]

>If you wanna see some real double-tax bullshit, wait until you hear about how Americans have to pay both American and Japanese income tax if they live and work in Tokyo...

Sorry, no. I live in Tokyo, but I only pay tax in Japan. I still have to file my taxes in the US, which is a real PITA, but Americans living and working abroad get to exclude most/all of their income (unless they earn a really huge amount), and/or get a tax credit for any foreign taxes paid. Generally, an American living abroad won't pay any US taxes unless they 1) make a ton of money and 2) live in a country where the tax rate is lower than in the US.

What truly sucks about the system is just the filing requirement. Doing your taxes in a better-run country is really easy for a normal wage-earner company employee. Here in Japan, the employer generally does your taxes for you. If you have some adjustment to make, you can do that pretty easily before the filing deadline, but otherwise you don't have to do squat. In the US, everyone has to go to a lot of trouble to file their own taxes, even though the IRS usually already has all their information, basically because Intuit has bribed Congress to make it illegal for the IRS to be run as efficiently and conveniently as the tax collection agencies in Japan or Europe. A lot of Americans end up renouncing their citizenship simply because the tax-filing requirement is such a PITA.