FATCA & Americans Abroad

If you don't know what FATCA means, then this message is of little use to you.

For those who live abroad, please consider responding to a petition regarding FATCA that has been put up by the web-site "MoveOn". The petition is from that site and is linked separately below.

The above is quoted from the MoveOn website (click here) where you can actually sign-and-send the petition.

Think carefully. In France, for instance, banks are refusing Americans new-accounts because of FATCA. Which is a present consequence not in its original purpose ...

 

Someone is not aware that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

 

Then give up your US citizenship if you don't pay your taxes.

 

FATCA is not the law in France where I reside. It is a rule imposed by the European Union. (Why the hell the EU ever permitted a non-EU taxation be applied to EU residents is beyond belief.)

The US is is the only developed country on earth that extends its laws to citizens living permanently abroad.

Where's the fairness in that ... ?

PS: What ignorance of the law? Go look in a mirror! Laws are NOT extra-territorial. The US and a handful of minor states are the only countries that apply extraterritoriality to taxation. So, yes. Many of us would like to see this matter go up to an International Court!

 

We dont actually recognize the ICJ. But we do recognize that Citizens do have an obligation to support their country even when they do not live there. You have access to embassies, consulates, and legal protections from the United States. Our armed forces will protect you when able as well. Thus taxes can and should be levied upon citizens not residing in the country.

 

Citizens living in their country support the country.

Why in hell should Americans working in France have to pay double-taxation for government services in the US that they will never use? Taxation is purely geographical in nature and limited to the country of permanent residence.

Period!

 

Can you go to the American Embassy or Consulate at any point for advise or protection? Can you use your passport to come back to the USA when ever you like? In extreme situations can the US military be sent in to extricate you and other USA citizens in emergencies? Taxation is to support the institutions that you can call upon as a citizen. It is not about geography but about support.

 

You can but it would be useless.

If you think that the DoD has a mission of protecting Americans who live in a foreign country, then you are very, very wrong.

The passport is an international convention. Get it? "International" - look up the word. Then find the meaning of the word "convention".

Taxation is to support the government run institutions and services that respond to the needs of homeland citizens. There are no such government-institutions providing services to American citizens in Europe.

I suggest you lose your passport abroad and go to the nearest American embassy and see for yourself what happens. Goodness, are you ever naive ...

 

You are like those people that dont want to pay for the police because they have never needed to call them. Man you are perfectly fine accepting any benefits US citizenship provide but woe's me, if you have to pay for it. In the end you want to be a American you have to pay taxes like all of us law abiding citizens do. EVEN when we do not get to benefit from all the money we put in but only a portion. I dont get any benefit from HUD so that means I should not pay any taxes for it! I am sure I can just mark that on my tax filing and the IRS will get right on it.

 

Bollocks. I pay my taxes in France, and when I call the French police they come to assistance in a way that would make your eyes twirl.

Nobody but nobody complains about how well personal assistance (especially to those in distress) is spot-on and quick in France.

In the end I want to be left alone by FATCA, dammit! I've been living here a donkey's age and my retirement is almost totally European in nature.

FATCA was intended to find AMERIKUNS ABROAD WHO WERE HIDING INCOME FROM US TAXATION. That means 99 out of a thousand of us were not targeted!

What happened, however, is that the European banks flipped when they realized that if they could not find these Filthy-rich Yanks who were cheating, they might have their own banks seized by the American authorities in the US! Yes, that too was a part of FATCA!

They went ape-shat and started refusing Americans arriving in Europe bank accounts here. For those of us that had already accounts we found suddenly that the banks were not particularly keen to give us assistance in terms of Financial Services (buying bonds, stocks, loans, etc.)

And there's not one American-run Bank in all of France. Go into American Express Bank in Paris, and you'd better speak French to get any money-management service.

I had a bi-lingual French/English friend who was looking after the accounts of a very-large American industrial company. When FATCA occured, he lost his job. The American company closed accounts and sent the money for management in Singapore!

It is a well-known fact here that rich-Americans living full or most of their time here in Europe pulled their money out and have it now managed in the Caribbean! (Where they also own residential property and visit often. But they still live mostly in Paris.)

So, what has happened to their banking? Absolutely nothing. Their credit-cards from a bank in the Caribbean work whether they are purchasing a good dinner in Le Bernadin in NYC or Arpege in Paris. That's all that matters to them.

They made a mountain of money of YOUR backs and now they live-around-the-world wherever their whimsy takes them.

Smoke all that info in your pipe, sucker ... !

 

Dont worry we are coming for their money to. No one gets out alive when the IRS gets involved.

 

What effing benefit does American citizenship provide me in Europe? Nada, zip, niente, nicts, rien, tipota! (My kids go to university at only $1.5K dollars per year because we all pay French taxes!)

Pssst! The filthy-rich Yanks who are conning the US government taxwise have put all their money in Singapore ... !

 

The IRS will not be allowed into France to pursue tax-payers. The French government wont allow them to be extradited either.

There's not court in France that would allow it. And a nation cannot destitute a citizen of their identity-card for the purpose of non-payment of taxes not-owed.

What planet do you live on ... ?

 

MoveOn is a George Soros organization.

No more needs to be said except this hyphen-American Nazi sympathizer should be stripped of both his Hungarian and naturalized U.S. citizenship's.

 

Like the man said, renounce your American citizenship if you are permanently in France.

 

Who are you to tell me what I should do?

The estimated population of Yanks living outside the US is close to nine-million! (See here.) Any European living in the US has the right to vote back in their home country. That makes it the 10th largest "state" by population of the US, and one that has no representation in Congress.

The democratic right-to-vote is not determined by residency but first by birth.

Duhhhhhhhhhh ...

 

Perhaps if he was a Nazi sympathizer...Why do you people fall for that bull doodoo?

 

My biggest problem with FACTA is that it is so intrusive that banks won't open accounts for Americans. That is one heck of a penalty for doing nothing wrong.

 

The pain is fairly universal, but particularly so here in France. Americans are being refused account-openings, except in some rare cases where they prove they have a French job and thus revenue from a French company.

Those Americans with long-standing accounts are likely seeing their investments being curtailed. I had an investment account and it was blocked by my French bank.

Some banks are more open than others. I would suggest any non-French bank (but with a French clientele) might be worth trying. Opening an account, whilst resident in France, in another EU-country - I think - is not on. I know some who tried to do that in Holland and were refused.

Then, of course, there is the same alternative as always. There are plenty of banks waiting for your money on the Internet. But, there, one must be VERY careful to find one established quite a long time and English-speaking*. A credit-card can be employed anywhere in Europe to obtain both cash and pay bills. But checks from a foreign bank can and might be refused outside of one's country of permanent residence.

It is really surprising that Trump has not got rid of FATCA - after all, he hates everything that Obama has done ...

*There are only one or two English-speaking banks in all of France and they are located specifically to a geography. (Normandy and the Cote d'Azur.)

 

This statement is outright calumny. He was not a NazI sympathizer as investigated and reported here.

Soros, a Hungarian jew by birth, was NEVER a Nazi-sympathizer. He just narrowly avoided the concentration-camp deaths and made it to the UK.

I am no fan of his, but the truth must be said and lies-over-the-internet must be reported.

Which I am doing in this case ...

PS: Such statements are actually the work of people with serious mental problems called "psychic disorders" and particularly as regards the Jewish population. (Of which I am not a member.)

 

Then quit whining about paying income tax here. Duhhhhhhhhh.

 

The IRS is the most powerful debt collection agency on Earth and is mandated all proper taxes from American Citizens here or living outside the nation be collected and if you're so stupid you don't know being born on American soil makes you an American Citizen you need to brush up on the 14th Amendment you're a citizen therefore owe income taxes. If you're living abroad you need to know the law and obligations to pay your taxes also and do so. If you don't wish to you need to renounce your US Citizenship and nationalize solely in the nation you now live in. The law won't be changed for only nine million people unless you actually vote and even then its about income taxes why should an American living abroad get off while hard working people here must pay their taxes?

 

I found this interesting in regards to americans working in france.

 

I admit I was in the dark about this until you brought it up and I happened onto it. If Americans don't want to pay taxes to America, then they should give up their citizenship here and quit trying to have it both ways. Also, I have doubts whether people have permanently moved to a foreign country without knowing what is expected of them (ignorance of the law). Seems like that would be the height of stupidity.

 

I'm not whining about paying income taxes HERE in France.

I'm whining about paying being obliged to pay income-taxes in the US AND France.

Learn how to read English ...