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Comment by clacker-o-matic | Hacker News Reader

that was fascinating; I didn’t realize border requirements were that complicated.

Working at a company in Norway hiring lots of internationals, I've heard so many stories. I'm myself born here, but to foreign (EU) parents. Getting a citizenship for me was quite "easy" (in the sense that I didn't have to do anything or be at someone's mercy, just had to apply), but still lots of bureaucracy. For instance, I had to order a transcript from the police saying that I hadn't committed certain crimes. This document I would have to bring to my appointment for citizenship at the police station. But the document had a short expiration date, and didn't know how long it would take to obtain or not when my appointment would be. So it's a gamble if you hit the timing, shrugs. I think however they now just pull up the records themselves instead of doing this weird dance.

One coworker had lived her for many years on a string of temporary working visas. He was then eligible for a permanent one, and applied. However, while that was processing, he kinda was in limbo. Still legal to live and work here, but somehow wasn't guaranteed entry if he were to leave for a vacation / visit his home country/family. I don't know the exact details, but so weird how he suddenly was stuck here for months, with many delays. In the end he needed to travel for work, and our company sent a letter and his application got fast tracked.

My country just had a minister appointed who's sole mission is to spearhead a system that no government agency can demand from you a document that belongs to any other government agency, so long as you authorize both agencies to talk to each other for the purpose.

Now try international taxation rules (particularly if you come from one of the handful of countries with world-wide taxation, like the USA!)

It grows exponentially the more countries are involved. I am a citizen of country A but live and work in country B, and I have to satisfy country B's visa requirements, which involves quite a bit of paperwork. I also have to pay taxes to country A, which involves more paperwork. It gets complicated.

But I'm only dealing with the requirements of two countries. The author mentioned five or six countries; I'm glad I'm only dealing with two.

I’ve never worked in 2 countries but there are many countries that have DTA (https://www.iras.gov.sg/taxes/international-tax/internationa...) so theoretically you only pay taxes to one country at a time, wouldn’t it be simpler?

If you are a US citizen, US taxes you on your worldwide income, so you have to file regardless of where you live. And filing in the US is the actual burden, not the taxes themselves — inscrutable tax law and byzantine forms mean that you can't file yourself (you pay tax-filing companies to do that for you) and your tax returns easily reach hundreds of pages.

US screws its expats in a big way.

The club of countries that do this includes: United States, Eritrea and Myanmar.

The thing is, only the US can realistically know your worldwide income. And only due to its banking cronies it intimidates into submission worldwide.

I still have to submit the paperwork that says which country my income was earned in, which is basically the standard tax paperwork from country A plus an extra form or two. (And in years when I went to country A on business trips, it's non-trivial. Simple enough, but not as trivial as years when I was in country B the whole time). It's not extremely burdensome, but it's still one more piece of paperwork to keep track of than the tax paperwork that people who have never left country A have to deal with.

This typically means they agree you don't get double charged (so you can claim taxes paid in one back in the other) but they both still want you to complete the paperwork regardless. Saves money, not time.

Don't get double-taxed on income, specifically. You may still get double-taxed on investments, property, wealth, etc depending on which pair of countries

When I moved from country A to country B, I shipped quite a lot of stuff (books, board games, etc) that was too heavy to take on the airplane and which I could live without for a month or two. Country B did not charge me customs duties on my books, but did charge me customs duties on my board games; I think they must have looked at how many I had and thought "There's no way this is personal possessions, he's bringing this into the country to sell them." I decided not to argue with them about it, so I got double-taxed on some of my property (sales tax on it in country A when I bought those games, then customs duties in country B years later).

P.S. My collection of board games is not particularly impressive for a board gamer: it's in the double digits, but not in the triple digits. I know some board gamers with far more games than I have.

> I am a citizen of country A but live and work in country B [...] I also have to pay taxes to country A, which involves more paperwork.

Isn't that the case only when country A is the USA? AFAIK, nearly all countries in the world tax only residents, not citizens, so in most cases you'd only have to fill tax paperwork (and pay taxes) for country B.

Only if you're only talking about income from work. If you own property in country A which you rent out while you live & work in country B, then you probably still owe tax on that rental income in country A. (but it will depend on the exact wording of the relevant DTA if one exists)

And since you are now filling in two tax returns for different countries, with different tax allowances across rental income and work income which interact in decidedly non-linear fashion, you probably need to make sure both country A and B have no confusion about where your work income was earned.

Having spent the last 8 years obsessively counting days across the UK and Finland (and every other country I have visited) exactly to account for this scenario, I am very sympathetic to attempts to solve this problem space!

> If you own property in country A [...]

But then, that's because you own property in country A, not because you're a citizen of country A! The same would happen if you were a citizen of country B, lived and worked in country B, but bought a house to rent out in country A.

The more you travel (or immigrate) the more you realise the government probably needs less money than it gets, just better spent.

Which government?

every government.

Waste is inevitable.

Look, I actually like that my municipality pays a salary to city ecoligist that makes sure, the sparrows living in a bushes dont get disrupted too much when new train tracks are laid down

Yeah I mean this is why regulations are hard. Someone's "this is an important environmental concern" is another person's "anti-growth NIMBYism"

You have a point -- if nimbysts had their way, the whole place would not even exist, as the referendum rejected it. On the other hand, when there is such a person making sure that environmental concerns are addressed, it turns nimbysm from a roadblock to a stakeholder.

In the end the sparrows got their bushes and we got our train and the bridge has a place for bats to nest and all that.

Then you agree that whatever replaces it will be wasteful too

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