The Law That Makes U.S. Expats Toxic

I'm living through this, and have been for some years now. The only alternative is to renounce citizenship, but with this I fear I will not be able to visit my family again. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it is going to change anytime soon - regardless of the regime change.

FATCA is a true hassle for expats and the foreign banks that want to provide their services.

I've know of someone who is living through the complexity of this law. It's so complicated and cumbersome.

Being quite frank, as a European, I can't hide a smirk. As a fellow expat, I do of course feel with you as individuals for your pain. But for the US, it's a smirk, because the rest of the world fighting back successfully, when America throws its weight around is what we've all been waiting for. Trying to extract taxes from their expats and forcing the whole world to police their silly rules at the expense of taxpayers in the countries these expats use day to day services is hideous and deserves punishment. I recently spent 15 min on the phone to open a EUR account with a UK bank in the UK as a German citizen and half of that time were questions imposed by US authorities (do I have investments in xyz taxable under the abc regulation of Pensylvenia and the likes - didn't understand a word) and I thought "bloody hell, if every cointry in the world would do this, opening a bank account would take 40 hours!". So, I'm sorry for you guys, but I guess it's "smirk" from a few billion people - even though most of them don't fail to acknowledge America's positive contributions- and hope that someone in Washington will re-think this bullying/meddling aproach. I really feel ashamed about my Schadenfreude. If you are in Lindon, drop me a line and I'll get you a pint in compensation!

Seems hilarious that this John Kerry is promoting this as Global Diaspora Week. My comment to that is: If you define "diaspora" as Americans who live only a year or two outside the US, then perhaps the US is doing as well as other nations, but for those of us who live permanently abroad it's quite a different picture. The US's tax system and asset reporting obligations as such make it impossible to thrive as a resident of another country in the long term. Here is where citizens of other countries have a huge advantage over Americans when it comes to employment, investment and relationship opportunities, as no other nations expats are required to continue paying taxes as though they are still resident in their native country. One of the biggest shocks to Americans who've moved abroad is the realization that the country that they've grown up believing is the biggest champion of freedom in the world has the least free diaspora on the planet when it comes to global mobility. The US needs to enter the modern world and tax based on residency not citizenship - as virtually every other nation does, allowing its diaspora to integrate fully with the rest of the world without having to renounce their citizenship.