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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

I've filed my FBAR's (my wife calls them f(u)bars, I can't argue). Unfortunately, the rules for money abroad fill books. If you're an American with money abroad, you're probably unknowingly violating a list of federal laws as long as your arm.

Many contires have reciprocal tax agreements with the US so that income taxed by your host nation isn't taxed again by the IRS. It may just be a matter of paperwork for the authors of this blog to demonstrate that they've been paying Canadian taxes.

It is very difficult to stop being an American and getting harder all the time. Its like a giant invisible curtain... (like its made of iron or something, heh) Not to keep you from leaving, but to make sure your money can't.

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It's Iron Curtain 2.0: you're allowed to leave, but your money isn't. They fixed the bug where you had to shoot people who were trying to physically leave, but they still get the economic benefits.

> It is very difficult to stop being an American and getting harder all the time.

We could make it like Denmark does: Danish citizens born abroad have 4 years, between the age of 18 and 22, to elect to keep the Danish citizenship, which requires renouncing any other citizenships they might possess at that time (no dual citizenship). If they don't wish to be a Danish citizen, they simply don't make such an election, and it automatically expires at age 22.

That'd be reasonable to me--- let U.S. citizenship to those born abroad expire automatically at age 22 unless they actively elect to keep it, so people who've never lived in the U.S. and don't wish to have the citizenship aren't saddled with it.

But imo it should have a deadline like that, so people actually decide if they want to be a U.S. citizen or not, with the rights and responsibilities that entails, not try to play both sides until it's financially advantageous to pick one.

You can renounce US citizenship at anytime if you have another citizenship, just don't expect to ever be allowed in the United States.

edit: Canada requires another citizenship, the US does not allowing one to be stateless.

http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html

Danish citizens born abroad have 4 years, between the age of 18 and 22, to elect to keep the Danish citizenship, which requires renouncing any other citizenships they might possess at that time (no dual citizenship). If they don't wish to be a Danish citizen, they simply don't make such an election, and it automatically expires at age 22.

Is that true even if they don't have dual citizenship (i.e. are they still required in that case to explicitly elect to keep their Danish citizenship between the ages of 18 and 22)?

It appears not; one of the exceptions to the loss of citizenship at 22 is "If loss of Danish nationality will make the child stateless".

If I read it correctly, that's required under the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Convention_on_the_Reductio...), which Denmark's signed, and which commits a state to "grant its nationality to a person, not born in its territory, if either parent had that State's nationality and the person would be otherwise stateless". But in any case it's also part of Danish domestic law.

"Unfortunately, the rules for money fill books. If you're an American, you're probably unknowingly violating a list of federal laws as long as your arm."

fixed that for you.

(To be fair, I believe this is true in most if not all industrialized nations; I enjoy being a US citizen and while I do have problems with some of the laws, the overall package is such that I'd rather continue being a US citizen than the alternatives. Still, if you have income from anything other than a regular job, you need an accountant.)

The problem is simply that without the curtain, it becomes possible to use this as part of an evasion strategy. When "Americans abroad" consisted almost entirely of the military and the millonares, the complexity of the system mattered much less.

According to you, exactly who owns the money? Does the US gov't own a person's income or does the person who earning it?

Your US citizenship binds you the US Citizenship licensing agreement, that includes prior claims on your income. Next you'll be telling me Apple is stealing from all those developers....

you seem to be incapable of grasping the concept of questioning whether laws are just or unjust.

and yeah, every fetus about to be born in the us signs a licensing agreement around the third trimester. it's entirely comparable to being a licensed apple developer.

Considering that many people were "born into" that 'licensing agreement', and considering the penalties for leaving that 'agreement', I would say the contract is practically the definition of unconscionable.

Does this question have anything to do with overseas-account tax evasion specifically, or is it just a general anti-tax jab? If you're against all taxation, then of course you wouldn't be against tax evasion either. But if you believe taxation is legitimate, then a concern for tax evasion also follows. (Whether this is a good way of dealing with tax evasion, where the pros outweigh the cons, is another question, but separate from the simplistic anti-tax slogan framing it as whether "the US gov't own[s] a person's income".)

If you want to dig deeper in my personal beliefs then I would tell you that I believe that the initiation of the use of force is wrong. And that this principle is universally applicable. You may or may not agree but if you do then you cannot also logically find that taxation is legitimate.

Also, I think it is a valuable mental exercise to ask someone who in fact owns the fruits of their labor. If you spend some time thinking about the implications you may find that the possible answers are not so "simple" as you may at first think.

On the other hand, some find that the question produces a fair amount of anxiety and so they may resort to verbal devices designed to diminish the value of the question, rather than trying to answer it.

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