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Comment by chanandler_bong | Hacker News Reader

As a US citizen living abroad, I have no representatives. This, as I am getting ready to file my US income taxes for which I receive no benefits or representation.

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I have a part of my family that lived in pretty unstable foreign countries, and they were more than happy of being french when problems occurred because your country will make sure you're safe, so it's a little benefit (plus having one of the best passport in the world).

But I find it strange that you don't have a "citizen abroad" representative, I don't know how many of US citizen live abroad but since, as you say it, you pay taxes you should have some representation. Here in France we have 11 representative for expatriates and I always thought it would be the same anywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_constituency#Current

Sadly, it's pretty rare.

The last number I heard was eight million Americans living abroad.

The taxes you owe take this into account, don't they? You have benefits of being a US citizen regardless of where you live. Some may value this more than others. Weighing your options, you may want to consider changing your citizenship.

You're taxed like a resident by the US. A friend had their tax-free (in the UK) PhD stipend taxed by the US government. Other people can find themselves owing significant taxes on property sales in the UK, despite the transaction having absolutely nothing to do with the US government [1].

There are exemptions which are pretty low and clearly don't cover the above examples. Plus you still have to do the overly onerous reporting of all your bank accounts. Ultimately the winners are the accountants.

It's not justified at all by services that the US does for overseas citizens, many countries do that without needing a draconian tax system for non-resident citizens.

I think it sort of comes down to Americans believing that you must be up to something dodgy if you want to live in another country :)

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/bor...

You're taxed like a resident by the US.

Not really. You get to offset foreign taxes and exempt more income than most US residents earn.

The filing requirements are sort of onerous, the taxation isn't.

I can see where it is sort of punitive to pay taxes on a large capital gain that has nothing to do with the US, but when you are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of such income you are talking about outliers.

The US is one of very few countries who collect income tax from their overseas citizens.

There are only two; the US and Eritrea.

yep (with few minor exemptions related to income from tax heavens)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Individ...

As a side note, the biggest difference seems to be how countries treat foreign income.

Almost every country that has Income Taxes will tax any local income.

But there's a lot of variance on what they do for foreign income.

If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing for the ACA individual mandate?

I moved abroad in the middle of this year and cancelled my US health insurance when I became eligible for NHS care. I'm realising now that there isn't a way to get a 1095-B from a government-run healthcare system that isn't in the US. Should I just pay the penalty for not having health insurance in the UK?

Forgive my ignorance but why is there a penalty and who is it due to?

There is a penalty for not having a minimum standard of health coverage and it is due to the IRS.

Ah OK thanks. Seems there's a bunch of exceptions for this including https://www.healthcare.gov/exemptions-tool/#/results/2016/de...

there is a penalty because the system is supposed to reduce costs by enrolling everybody (even the healthiest who may feel like they don't need it) WHILE the health insurance sector still is a for-profit competitive market (so there's no "auto-enrolment").

If you consider citizenship to be "no benefit" (you can still vote, collect Social Security, etc. overseas), you could always renounce your citizenship.

The US still charges taxes for 10 years after you renounce your citizenship if you spend more than 30 days in the country and they charge an exit tax.

Being stateless is a pretty terrible option.

Social Security is not a "benefit". It is getting money back that I have paid in to the system.

And as for voting, why? I have no representative to vote for.

If you're registered to vote in the US, you have representatives to vote for.

https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal-m...

If you honestly see no benefit of your US citizenship, or the costs outweigh the benefits, it sounds like you should change your citizenship status, perhaps to the country you're a resident in, or maybe move back to the US.

Yes Social Security is a "benefit", you more than likely will get back everything you paid in plus interest plus continue drawing a Social Security check beyond that. Last time I crunched the numbers a retiree would on average get back everything they paid in plus interest in just under 9 years. And that is a generous estimate since I averaged payments into the system over a typical working life instead of weighing them towards later in life (people tend to make more as they gain experience and their career advances).

Social Security is not a savings plan no matter how much you would like to think it is.

Bullshit. How about maintaining the security of your assets held in US banks?

Maybe has has no assets in US banks? Just like I don't.

I don't have any US bank accounts or other financial assets, so that is a non-issue.

As if US banks have any assests.

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