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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

That is only applies to so-called earned income, you still owe taxes on all of your other income. And many people earn considerably more than $108k.

Furthermore, even under tax treaties, it is not uncommon for some part of your income to be double taxed due to differences in recognition and classification of income and foreign taxes paid. Americans often have to pay more taxes than if they only had to pay taxes in either country separately.

And this is on top of the onerous reporting overhead and other difficulties.

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Many people earn a lot more than that. I agree. Where I disagree is that I don't see what's unjust about asking them to pay tax for a system they benefit from.

Faulty assumption; Americans who live abroad do not benefit from the US system: social security/disability/retirement, health programs, military, public infrastructure etc. pp. is provided by the country where they live.

Does the country where they live run the embassy too and I just never knew about it?

They should not pay taxes in full to get 1% of the benefits.

Why not? I could just as well say that someone making $50k in Arkansas shouldn't have to subsidize consular services for someone making a quarter million a year abroad. They're not really paying "full price" either given the large exemption.

Most people use their country's embassy approximately never.

Where they do need to use it (such as registering a birth) it's usually replacing use of a different government office, had they not lived abroad.

The US has an interest in maintaining embassies and consulates independent of its expat population. And we often pay for whatever services we get there, so you aren’t subsidizing us.

Additionally a government should think about practicality and fairness before it implements policy. It is impractical and excessively burdensome to try and tax residents of countries that aren’t the US. Despite your stated beliefs elsewhere, it does not take very much income or bizarre situations to wander into dicey tax situations that are frightening for the expat. A small business (which is taxable in the US if you net more than about $430) can mean difficult filing in the US. I don’t earn all that much, and I’ve spent a lot of this summer working on my US taxes for no purpose other than to have them piled up somewhere, unless some IRS agent decides to make my life much more difficult.

What's the embassy doing for me as an American citizen living abroad who uses none of their services (except passport renewal but that's only because of the other ridiculous rule that US citizens must travel there on a US passport). Why am I paying for it?

What's the fire department doing for me, a citizen of my town who has not experienced any fires? Why am I paying for it?

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear, I don't ever use the services they provide and I won't because they are provided by the other country I am a national of. I have no links to the US. Zero.

I guess to fit in your analogy I live underwater?

What if you live in another town and are paying for that fire department? Just kidding. But really if you live in a country which has a tax treaties with the US, you also can offset your taxes with taxes paid to a foreign country anyway, so even for high-earners nothing goes to the embassy. If you do use the embassy, you generally do pay them fees of course.

The embassy is for maintaining relations with foreign countries, not just passports and birth certificates (and pricey notary services). That seems like a sideshow. When it comes to services for the public, they appear to spend most of their time dealing with visa applicants, based on the crowds and lines I've seen. They also do offer assistance for missing persons abroad; if you have a relative that goes missing abroad the embassy will investigate. That seems nice of them. I assume other developed countries' embassies are basically the same though.

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