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Comment by tonfa | Hacker News Reader

I hope the kids won't mind having to declare/pay US taxes :)

What you get for your US tax money is absolutely not worth having that passport if you have another good passport. I would give that one up (and likely will once I get my second).

Plenty of expats have gotten more US stimulus cheques than they’ve paid in US taxes.

But it doesn’t make up for the dozens of hours of paperwork and careful tip-toeing on investments and other garbage.

Just an FYI: one hiccup I heard of giving up your US citizenship is that banks didn’t recognize you could be born in USA but not a US citizen.

> Just an FYI: one hiccup I heard of giving up your US citizenship is that banks didn’t recognize you could be born in USA but not a US citizen.

I had this issue just last month with a UK financial institution (Raisin). I tried to explain it but they obviously were not interested. I actually still have my citizenship (I'd love to renounce but that's currently impossible) but I felt it was worth pointing out their policy was unnecessarily discriminative.

Not to mention, that there are countries that ask you to renounce your other citizenships when taking theirs (Dutch citizenship comes to mind).

Their responsibilities under FINCEN/FATCA are not prove anything, but just have suspicion or some reason to think you might be a "US Person" (not just US citizen, but US resident, or various other special situations).

Of course, the US claims to extra-territorial jurisdiction, and bullying of global financial institutions to enforce their crazy inter-planetary tax system, are totally preposterous.

Elon - renounce before blast-off!

When opening accounts in the EU you are asked if you are a US citizen.

You then answer no and that's all, they do not check further.

There may be a check against the form element "place of birth" but I doubt so.

like anything in life, there are tradeoffs. the US passport is great because it allows easy employment access to US tech companies, who pay absurd amounts of money; if you live outside the US for at least 330 days, you aren't taxed federally on the first $105K or so. this allows one to, for example, work 20-30 hrs/week while paying zero federal income taxes to take home around $105K. compare that to NYC: you'd need about $160K to take home $105K (!!), plus your post tax costs aro going to be high as hell - rent, restaurants, and so forth. worse, you're probably pulling 45ish hrs a week for that. i imagine SF is similar or worse.

such a setup allows one to build wealth and live an extraordinary life. i'd highly recommend it if you can swing it.

> US passport is great because it allows easy employment access to US tech companies, who pay absurd amounts of money;

US companies don't pay absurd amounts of money, companies in other countries are the once that don't pay enough. Look at how much wealth tech industry has generated (and still is) for the US companies and the US economy, I think they should pay even more.

Can't comment on how the taxes are spent but having US citizenship can give you access to their job market, in tech this can be a valuable benefit. Op's kids will be able to renounce their citizenship should they wish.

And hopefully they won't ever need a European bank account, or any other kind of financial service. All I ever signed up for, besides asking for citizenship, also explicitly asked for having US citizenship. Presumably checking that box is the immediate end of the application process.

With a Swiss passport and the place of birth being Switzerland, nobody will ever ask them.

If they are asked if they have other citizenship, they can always say Germany - end of the inquiry.

That's the point. The question is specifically US citizenship because of the onerous reporting requirements it ensues that none of them want to deal with.

Banks ask everyone during application if applicant have a US citizenship, because of some anti-terror-funding law which non-American banks find onerous. Are you saying the kids should lie and deny being American?

>Are you saying the kids should lie and deny being American?

No, you just don't have to say it, you have a swiss passport and that's it.

It's not about anti terrorism measures. It about fatca

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-...

FATCA is a pain though

Thanks for the correction!

It's not. Checking it means however that the bank will report certain information to US authorities.

Perhaps we're just lucky, but our Swiss bank was okay with it. We only had to guarantee to have a licensed US tax advisor prepare our US tax returns, filing requirements, FATCA/FBAR etc.

While Swiss banks are a bit crazy about anything related to the US (three years ago or so they just stopped accepting US checks from one month to the next, even though they had previously charged a crazy amount of money for it to be cashed in), I heard that banks in neighboring countries such as Germany are less concerned as long as your bank advisor follows some general guidelines.

I personally would not have gotten the US citizenship due to the negative tax consequences (global taxation), but to each their own. Unless you own substantial assets they can still renounce it in the future if interested.

Switzerland has a tax treaty with the US which avoids double-taxation.

https://sigtax.com/en/switzerland-united-states-tax-treaty

Yes, most countries do so you're not double taxed. But you still need to declare, and esp. for Switzerland likely pay extra taxes to the US.

The UK has a tax treaty with the US but it didn't stop one Boris Johnson being hit with many thousands in US taxes when he sold his house in spite of having lived in the UK most of his life.

Was his house in the US or UK? If it was in the US the it doesn't matter, the local government is gonna get theirs.

In the UK. The UK has no cgt on your main residence when you sell but the US does.

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