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To be entirely fair, I think its insane that the US would charge income tax on citizens who live abroad in the first place.
Well, yeah, but again it's only for the wealthy
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion
Those parts are never mentioned when people complain about this stuff. Because the only ones paying it are the wealthy ones, and they always bitch about taxes.
They pay, because at any moment they can come back as a citizen. If the wealthy do t want to pay for that option, then they can renounce citizenship and pay a one time tax to remove their wealth.
I'm aware there's no real way to say anything here without sounding like a pretentious snob, but those income limits aren't exactly spectacularly high.
I work in tech in NYC and my income is around those limits. My boyfriend is from Switzerland and there's a non-trivial chance that we'll wind up there long-term. If I was from literally any other country in the world beyond Eritrea, I would file Swiss taxes and that would be that. Instead, I'll have a direct financial incentive to give up my native citizenship because I'm from one of two countries that makes a claim to any income earned anywhere in the world, even if I don't step foot in the country that year. This is particularly rough in Switzerland because average salaries there are quite high, and thus so are costs of living, and so surpassing those limits isn't a particularly uncommon thing. (Edit: About one in four Swiss residents make more than $120,000 annually).
I know this won't garner any sympathy at all, but a bad policy only affecting the relatively wealthy doesn't change the fact that it's a bad policy. It could even backfire from a financial perspective, since having renounced American citizenship, I'd be less inclined to spend time in the US and contribute to taxes while visiting, and I'd never move back long-term, cutting off a chance of the government getting full income taxes from me ever again, whereas a change of circumstances might have otherwise prompted me to eventually return to the US.
Making $120k a year is by no means on the wealthy scale.
It would put you in the top 15% of households. And that's individual income.
It's still not wealthy. It's squarely middle class.
No it wouldn't. Upper middle class is the 60th to 80th percentile.
I pay no tax to the US, but I bitch about it. I've lived abroad since I was 3y.o and realized when I turned 18 that I have to declare to the IRS every year. Let me tell you, it is an absolute pain in the ass when you have to do it yourself, without a US bank account or phone number. Takes me a full working day to declare 0 tax to the IRS when they already know that I owe zero tax because they force any bank I have accounts at to report to them. Half the banks in Sweden simply refuse to have me as a customer because of this, in addition to certain types of income technically being subject to double taxation because of US law.
I can't even get rid of my US citizenship without paying an absurd exit tax
If that's true in your case, it means you have over 2 million in assets or made more than 170k averaged over the last five years...
If you're below both this, you don't have to pay the exit tax
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expatriation-tax
So either you don't know the basics of what you're complaining about, or you're pretending you don't make an obscene amount of money
...or I don't have a 5yr record of reporting taxes to the IRS. There's also the 2'500USD "Administration fee"
It’s not just about money. It’s a labor burden and a privacy intrusion. And even if iceblade02 could renounce for free, they then must carry the renounciation cert for the rest of their life and show it to every bank they deal with and hope that no data entry errors trigger data oversharing anyway.
They must renounce to get their human rights back. Because without renouncing, they lose their human right to non-discriminatory treatment on the basis of national origin (article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
But back to money, that annual tax filing accidental Americans must file costs them $300+/year -- accountants do not work for free. It’s effectively a tax on the poor.
$120k is "wealthy" now? 120k isn't even enough to buy a fucking house in most cities in the US. Actual wealthy people aren't affected by this law because they don't have regular income.
120K lands you at 86th percentile [1]. So... relatively, you are sorta well off.
Sure, you can't buy a house with that income in a big city. But that merely shows how fucked up the real estate bubble is. Just think, the top 86th percentile earning person is no where near enough to even buy a home. Houses are about 1m in my neighborhood. So you need to earn about 250k/yr to realistically afford a home. That lands you at 97th percentile. So just top 3% of the people can actually afford a home on a single person's salary. That's how fucked we are.
The median income for a non-family household (i.e. single) is 45k, and family household is 95k (possibly dual income) according to 2023 census [2]. So, you're doing relatively quite well in comparison.
Who is "wealthy" is a subjective term. So a median person might see someone making 120k as wealthy. But the person earning 120k might see themselves as poor since they can't even own a home. Historically, the single income middle class could afford homes.
I've seen this on Reddit before: Six figures means you're rich, because that was true in the 80s, right? Obviously people don't have a clue that 40 years of inflation has made that middle class.
Also: income is not wealth, and the willful lack of understanding on that point blows my mind. A person who is wealthy can live an upper middle class lifestyle or better without ever having to work again. A person who has respectable income may have minimal wealth, or even mountains of debt (student loans, mortgage, etc). A person who makes 100k could be a few months unemployment away from losing their house or lease, while a person with "wealth" may not have to work at all.
People don't become filthy rich working full time for six figures. The wealthy (~$20-50m net worth and up IMO) are people who made their money with something other than labor - through investments and things that the government doesn't really classify as normal income.
Edit: It's like the saying goes: nobody makes a billion dollars. They take a billion dollars. If you tax the wealthy on income, you collect very little tax, because it's not classified as income. Meanwhile you're going to tax an engineer or physician who probably have hefty student loans and work their asses off full time, at the highest marginal rates because we don't or can't tax wealth.
Edit2: we've got minimum wage internet trolls who think an employee software engineer is basically a cigar chomping capitalist because they make over the median wage. The middle class has shrunk and maybe you're not in it. Get a clue, dumbasses.
No, this was not any more true in the 80s than it is now.
I certainly agree based on my previous statement that income is not wealth, but I was trying to make two points and mixed the messages.
One is that amounts of money that were once considered an unbelievable amount for income or wealth - say $100k and $1m - have now been eroded by inflation to fairly modest money. In the 70s or 80s, having a million meant never working again. Earning 100k a year when a house cost $50k was huge money, and might lead to wealth quickly, if one bought several houses with it.
Another point I'd like to sneak in is that there's almost no modern equivalent to that kind of employed income. On paper, inflation puts it at 400k - so maybe today's equivalent of a surgeon - but the 50k house now costs $500k-1m. Notional inflation being 4x, while the critically important things have gone up 10-20x means that something harder to quantify is broken, and upward mobility isn't working the way we expect. The same opportunities don't exist. We are less likely to turn income into wealth over time than at points in the past, and so the tendency of people to erroneously think high income = wealth may have a reasonable basis in history that has never been less true today.
Edit: and it's not just houses, it's the stock market. The advent of the internet and e-commerce resulting in tech stock growth 1995-today is a phenomenon not likely to be replicated in any other area. We may be running out of growth to be had. The ability to get 10-20x your money over 30-40 years of investments is probably gone, and with it the prospect of comfortable retirement for even relatively high earners.
But that's true of pretty much every other country in the world as well. So it still doesn't explain why the US is the only one that charges tax on foreign-earned income.
On the wealthy...
You keep omitting that point, and it's starting to get old.
But the reason is idealistic.
America was supposed to be the land of immigrants where anyone can immigrate, work hard, and earn wealth.
That system doesn't work if once you amass your wealth, you fuck off somewhere else and take it all with you. The reasoning is you were able to amass that wealth through America's social ladder.
If the wealthy (the only ones that pay foreign income tax or exit taxes) don't want to pay that, they know that being honest will never result in change.
If how I'm saying it doesn't make sense, use the IRS website I've provided numerous times.
You keep calling these people "wealthy" but the income levels you shared don't even come close to matching that. Also lol at the idea of America being an idealistic place so that's why people should pay this tax. My fucking ass. America is and always has been rigged for rich people, which should immediately tell you why this law still exists.
How about we actually tax real wealthy people, like millionaires loaning money to themselves, instead of forcing the middle class to pick up the slack yet again?
You cannot expect people to use the irs.gov website. That’s not open to the public. It’s exclusive. Try going there over tor - you will get a 403. Indeed it’s shitty that access to legal information is restricted. It should be open to all.
Because you're American and should pay taxes no matter if you're in Antarctica or not. If you're in a different country and not participating in America's system, then why are you claiming to still be an American citizen? The answer is to renounce at that point. The right winger "taxes against rich are bad" are starting to come out in this thread lol.
Why is America the only country that has this perspective (Eritrea excepted)? Is literally every single other country besides an African dictatorship simply delusional, and only America and Eritrea found the divine wisdom that all global income should be taxed?
The United States is one of the few countries that has a system of taxing its citizens and residents on their worldwide income, including income earned abroad. This practice is known as "citizenship-based taxation." There are a few reasons why the U.S. follows this approach:
2. Desire to Prevent Tax Evasion: Citizenship-based taxation is intended to prevent U.S. citizens and residents from avoiding taxes by moving their assets or income abroad. Without it, individuals might seek tax havens to reduce their tax liability.
Complex Tax Code: The U.S. tax code is complex, and changing to a different system, such as residence-based taxation (taxing only income earned within the country), would require a significant overhaul of tax laws.
Revenue Generation: Taxing foreign income allows the U.S. government to generate revenue from its citizens and residents, regardless of where they earn their income.
It's worth noting that while the U.S. taxes its citizens and residents on foreign income, there are mechanisms in place, such as the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and foreign tax credits, to mitigate double taxation and reduce the tax burden on income earned in other countries. However, compliance with U.S. tax laws related to foreign income can be complex and may require professional assistance for those living abroad.
That's not a reason on why we shouldn't have a wealth tax... You're just blindly insulting America without reason, which this site is already a xenophobic circlejerk.
Why are you talking about wealth taxes when they have nothing to do with the question I asked?
Again, why is America the only major country that has this policy? Either answer this, or don't respond.
Because this is a form of wealth tax. That's not even a question you're asking. Fuck out of here with that aggressive debate lord shit.
The topic was on taxing foreign income. To quote the relevant bit from above:
Though I agree that if you aren't capable of even following the topic at hand, it's best that I just save my breath here.
If you think it's that easy to renounce American citizenship, you have no idea what you're talking about.
I fully support taxing the rich. I am very explicitly NOT rich. And I cannot come close to being able to afford to renounce my American citizenship.
You seem unaware of the population of accidental Americans. When a Dutch couple gives birth on US soil before returning to Europe, that child automatically a birthright citizen of the US. They can grow up having never set foot in the US (apart from birth), and for the rest of their life they have a legal obligation to file US tax and declare to the US all their Dutch income & bank accounts even if they are below that $120,000 line. They also get targeted for discrimination along with all other Americans by banks who don’t accept Americans (even if they are also Dutch). They have to pay a US accountant upwards of $300/year for the rest of their life just to file that zero.
It’s also worth noting that an income of $120k goes much further in the US than it does in Europe (where they might be living).
So obviously a lot of accidental Americans have become motivated to renounce. But if they already own a home, you can see the problem. I would not say owning a home makes someone “rich”. They still need to work to eat and to maintain the home.
This is the absolute least important problem with American taxes, there's a thousand other things we're trying to fix.
Stop pretending like the bottom of "the top 10% wealthiest Americans" need help. We've got fucking children starving and not even getting a free school lunch. Excuse us for not having sympathy for everyone making between 120k and 120 million a year.
I'm just blocking all of you at this point, so do t expect another reply
Correct. It's only the US and Eritrea (the North Korea of Africa) who do this. It's insane.