Money quote(s):
"Many Americans both Conservative and Liberal are upset with how their Government is functioning at the moment. I know I am not happy with the idiocy that is going on and the lies being put forward that somehow, we would be able to continue spending the outrageous amounts of money that the Government is currently spending, IF ONLY rich Americans paid a little more. Even Americans living overseas cannot escape the long arm of the US Government, which has decided to extend the arm of the Internal Revenue Service, the dreaded IRS, into the pockets of Americans overseas, even those who have no link to the country other than to have been born in the US or born by US parents. Apparently, there are lots of them."
Quite a few folks are born abroad to one (or more) U.S. citizen parents; many of them (no idea of the percentage....) eventually go "home" to the U.S. to live, study, marry, work, what-have-you.
U.S. nationality laws are written so that the U.S. citizen parent(s) have to have at least some U.S. "presence" prior to the birth of their U.S. citizen children; this is intended to prevent an unending series of generations of overseas "Americans" who have only a paper connection with the United States.
Many U.S. citizens abroad do not bother to file income tax returns with the IRS; and in many cases (see Fred's account below) they are not required to do so. There's a threshold income amount below which filings are not required.
That being said, Fred learned one of the reasons why it's a good idea to comply with those IRS rules.
"I lived in Finland for three years while doing my MBA. Two of those years I filed a tax return. The third year I didn't because I didn't meet the minimum reporting threshold. It turns out that it was good that I did because a short while later I moved back to the US and applied for a GreenCard for my soon to be Finnish wife. One of the requirements was providing copies of my previous three years Income Tax Returns, or an explanation of why I didn't file."
Consular officers working the immigrant visa (IV) portfolio will doubtless have encountered this situation numerous times: the U.S. citizen expatriat whio has married a foreign national and now want to get his or her a "green card."
Well, DHS issues the "green card" once a legal immigrant has been lawfully admitted to the U.S. What was once "the U.S. Consular Service" has to issue him or her an immigrant visa first.
There are a number of administrative and legal hurdles to that, and the overcoming the presumption that an immigrant will become a "public charge" once admitted to the U.S. is overcome by a sponsor (usually the petioner spouse him- or herself) providing proof of sufficient income to support the immigrant. Thus the requirement for providing copies of the federal income tax filings.
"It is odd however, to see the amount of effort that the IRS is extending to track down money overseas the US thinks it can extort from Citizens, however unfair, while at the same time they do little to nothing to hunt down illegal aliens living within the US who are working without the legal authorization to do so, are conspiring with their employers to not pay/evade taxes (in some cases also committing identity theft) and are simply getting a free pass."
Good point!
9/26
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