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Comment by marstall | Hacker News Reader

ELI5 why she renounced her citizenship? Not getting it from that post, a 3 minute wander on her site and the FATCA Wikipedia page.

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If you’re a US citizen living in another country you’ll find many banks and financial institutions decline to have you as a client because dealing with FATCA makes it far more trouble than it’s worth. No other developed country makes similar demands.

But like wouldn’t you be fine once you found one?

No, even if you can open a bank account as a US citizen, most services will be restricted. If you want to get a life insurance, they won't have anything for you, if you want to open an investment account, same issue, etc...

So, first it's difficult to find banks that'll even accept US citizens and then once you do, it can still be very restrictive.

that does sound like a hassle.

Is dual citizenship any help with this issue?

Say you're a dual US / German citizen. Will that help a German bank more easily bank with you? Do you even have to disclose to the bank that you're a dual citizen, or can you simply present yourself as a German citizen?

In my experience, US tax residency (as a solely German citizen) is enough for German and Swiss banks to cancel services. So dual citizenship likely won't help.

You may misrepresent your tax status towards the bank, but I'd assume that takes you on risky grounds, legally.

Doesn’t matter, all that counts is if you are a “US Person”:

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/clas...

Whether the bank finds out or not is maybe another thing, but in principle what matters is if you count as a US Person.

It depends.

Some countries won’t let banks refuse to open an account.

I’m sure some people lie to their bank (or continue to hold accounts from before they would ask these questions). But it’s more complicated if your place of birth is USA. But that could be bypassable too if you have the right documents.

I haven't run into much trouble, though maybe I just got lucky with Nordea.

oh ha. somehow thought it was much more sinister

And yet the pandora papers aren't getting much coverage in the US because there aren't that many Americans named in them. Gotta wonder if the two are connected.

Actually the US has many ways to hide your assets (just looks at the South Dakota trust system). Look at the pandora papers and you'll see a lot of people hiding their assets in the uSA.

Filling out tax forms and FBAR requirements were a pain.

Americans living in other countries don't want to pay taxes anymore. Apparently the only option is to stop being an American, which she has decided to do.

>I pay almost $1000 per year to an accountant to fill out the forms—more and lengthier than they’d be if I lived in the US—only to prove I owe nothing, since I pay taxes here in the Netherlands.

Apparently she wasn't paying taxes (to the US) anyways.

Then I'm even less clear on what her issues were. Somehow this is reminding me of that girl that took $350,000 in debt to get a Theater Management degree from Duke University and then blogged about how criminal the American higher education system is and how she was running off to Russia with her husband to escape the crippling debt.

It's like, you took almost half a mil in debt to go to a PRIVATE SCHOOL to get a degree that you would have no hope of ever using to pay back your _crippling debt_. Student load debt is a real problem in USA..but that's not it.

The understanding I came away with from skimming was it had to do with an ideological railing against the FATCA reporting requirements. And shame; lots of shame.

> Then I'm even less clear on what her issues were

I think the issues are pretty simple; if you are a US citizen but living and working in another country permanently with no US local income, she found the impact of FACTA and tax reporting obligations to be too expensive and or pain-in-the-butt to make it worth keeping her US citizenship.

There are very real impacts and constraints on ex-pats in this situation; whether or not they are worth it to you is a personal evaluation I suppose.

This is nothing like the schoold debt issue you describe.

Ah OK. So now it makes sense why this woman renounced her USA citizenship

She wanted to still be an American, but didn't want to do the yearly paperwork to keep her citizenship.

Got it.

It's not just your paperwork. In many countries you'll be denied seemingly basic financial services by institutions because FACTA would make their paperwork too much hassle.

OK then she should just keep being an American. Right?

Renouncing citizenship makes that all go away. Her call.

I'm wondering why you're being so judgmental of this woman. What offends you so much about her legitimate decision to do this? You might not agree with her reasons, but are you really in a place to decide that her feelings, frustrations and her decision are invalid and inconsequential? It's not like she's antivaxx. This doesn't hurt anybody. How about seeking to understand instead being so argumentative over nothing?

Paying $1,000 a year to file a form that says you don't owe taxes doesn't seem like a problem to you?

It is not about paying taxes as its likely she was not paying any to the US. This is what the unique tax treaties cover. You still however have to prove this every year.

One of the worst parts about this situation is the difficulty in investing from abroad. Can't buy US ETFs/Mutual funds because they don't report properly abroad and can't buy foreign ETFs/Mutual funds because they don't want to report to US. This is a totally unnecessary financial burden on US Expats.

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