Asklemmy

43866 readers

1823 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

127

What passport to use traveling to USA with two citizenships? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 8 months ago by Grogon to c/[email protected]

74 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Can I use my german passport to travel to USA or do I use my US passport?

And if I lived and worked in germany my whole life and never in the USA and never filed taxes can I enter USA without problems?

I just found out I am us citizen a few years ago don't ask why but I'm 34 and recently traveled to US with my german passport and they were all like "wtf where is your passport" and I'm like: "Here.." and they "Yeah your american passport?!" and I'm "I'm german" and he is like: "Dude you are born on american ground you are american!"

Well they let me travel in to the states without american passport but told me to go to the embassy as soon as I arrive back in germany or else I won't be able to enter USA again.

That being said, I done that. Now I have my american passport. But do I show both passports or only US passport? And after doing my research I found out americans file taxes every year. I haven't done it the last 18 years of working. Should I just not file? I will never work in the USA and I will never live in the USA. Or will I get problems at the airport? Can they see I don't file?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (1 children)

OP read this, they're absolutely right - lawyer up!

Cause in the U. S. if you want to renounce your U. S. citizenship, you must settle your debts - which includes filing your U. S. Taxes.

... and yes, as a U. S. Citizen you need to file U. S. Taxes *even if you've never set foot in the U. S. *.

Note: there are double taxation laws between the U. S. and Germany, which prevent you from needing to pay taxes in U. S. (up to 100k / year or so), but you still must file them.

Also, as a U. S. Citizen, you'll need to file annually a FBAR with the IRS. This is basically a disclosure to the IRS that you have non-u.s. bank accounts (that exceed, in total, 20k usd / year).

The point being is that, in theory, there could be fines for not doing this, which (in theory) you would have to pay before being allowed to renounce your citizenship.

In practice, the IRS is pretty approachable - so you probably won't have an issue, but you'll definitely want decide if you want to keep the U. S. Citizenship (and the work associated with it: annual taxes and fbar) or renounce it.

The (only) upshot of filing U. S. taxes abroad if you have kids is that you qualify for a Child Tax Credit. Which amounts to 1000 usd / kid / year (I don't know if the kids need to have U. S. Citizenship or not)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Afaik your kids (under 18) are US citizens if you yourself are a citizen.