[antonvs]

> Then, if you do not plan to ever go to the US you can just forger about your US nationality and do not file any documents there, including taxes (which you pay in the country you are in, and hush away your US citizen obligations).

This is illegal from a US perspective. US personal income tax is on worldwide income, regardless of where a citizen happens to be living. Some countries have mutual agreements with the US that mitigate that, but that’s the fundamental legal position.

> in Europe, though, where anything financial has a question about you being a US national

What I just described is precisely and entirely why those questions exist.

[guerrilla]

> Some countries have mutual agreements with the US that mitigate that, but that’s the fundamental legal position.

What mitigation are you talking about? Does it apply to Sweden?

[antonvs]

According to a simple search, yes:

https://www.state.gov/06-831

[BrandoElFollito]

> This is illegal from a US perspective

Yes. It also need to be enforceable.

Take GDPR. If say a US website serving pages to the EU does not follow it at all, or even does everything the other way (collection, ...) the only thing the EU can do is wave their finger. Except if the site has options in the EU.

If you cannot enforce a law it is either dead, or you resort to bully actions like the US does (an example was Trump going account Iran the first time agent an agreement was signed, and telling the EU companies that if they continue to do business with Iran, their US subsidiaries will be fined)

> What I just described is precisely and entirely why those questions exist.

This is simply because we are chickens. Hopefully we will get rid of that someday.

No other country has such advantages like the US with the question about citizenship in financial documents. This is a disgrace.

[antonvs]

> or you resort to bully actions like the US does

Yes, so your point is? You seem confused.

[BrandoElFollito]

My point is that the US law is limited to the US, whatever "illegal" is for the US is contained to its land.

The exception being bully tactics they still can afford (less and less, thank you Mr Trump), or the fear countries have to annoy the US and who agree to extraterritoriality, as it is the case with the tax law.

Not sure where you seem to be confused.

[antonvs]

You might want to look into the concept of international treaties.

The US has thousands of treaties with other countries, covering everything from human rights to nuclear weapons to tax. The European Union is entirely based on such agreements, as is the United Nations. If such treaties didn't exist, neither would the world as we know it today.

More than 60 of the treaties the US is party to are tax treaties, which are mutual treaties that both countries benefit from. Those other countries enforce those treaties within their borders. That should help you understand what's happening here.

> Not sure where you seem to be confused.

You wrote that laws "need to be enforceable" and then complained about "[resorting] to bully actions". Guess what, that's a big part of how laws are enforced, everywhere in the world. It's why police forces and armies exist. You seem to be looking at individual pieces of the picture without understanding how they connect.

[BrandoElFollito]

> The US has thousands of treaties with other countries, covering everything from human rights to nuclear weapons to tax. The European Union is entirely based on such agreements, as is the United Nations. If such treaties didn't exist, neither would the world as we know it today.

Of course. Now: how many countries have a special arrangement with European banks to have their citizens prominently marked as "special cases", an arrangement that is beneficial to only one side? And a gigantic pain in the ass for people who are American citizens but have no links to the US, just the fact that they happened to be born there?

> You wrote that laws "need to be enforceable" and then complained about "[resorting] to bully actions". Guess what, that's a big part of how laws are enforced, everywhere in the world. It's why police forces and armies exist. You seem to be looking at individual pieces of the picture without understanding how they connect.

Thank you for pointing out the fact that I do not understand this.

If I am a US citizen outside of the US, whatever the US request from me, I can just let go. If I never step foot in the US. Additionally, if you are in Europe, this is hardly doable because of how we are vassals.

On the larger scale the US do force extraterritoriality via the use of economic threats.

I am fully aware that treaties work until they don't, and international law works until it doesn't and the UN works until it doe snot (for the latter it does not work in the first place for for the sake of the explanation let's say it does)

Have you ever opened an account in a bank in Europe?