> If you pay taxes abroad the US will still haunt you to show that you paid - and if it's lower than you would have paid back home claim the difference.
That's only if you're lucky, and move to a country with a no-double-taxation treaty. There's only a few of them. No tax treaty, you pay the full amount due to both governments (after excluding your US foreign earned income allowance ~$90K).
Worse, if you live in a foreign country and start a business you now own what the US considers a "foreign controlled corporation" and your new nightmare begins. Not to mention many banks won't do business with you abroad because of FATCA and you have to report your balances annually to FinCEN or risk forfeiture of 50% of the balance in the account. And you can't open a brokerage account in a foreign country because you can't have an account not overseen by the SEC.
Then if your child is born abroad with no other connection to America they'll suffer the same fate for the rest of their lives unless they renounce, which itself comes with substantial costs.
I think the number of renunciations is fairly low because most dont make >90K in foreign countries, and FATCA is new-ish.
which states that, worldwide, just over 5,000 Americans renounced citizenship in 2017. There are also about 9 million Americans living abroad and ~1 million living in Europe. So, no, I don't think that even if all 5,000 were in Europe that 0.5% renounced their citizenship would count as "many".
I'm curious, where are you heading with this counter argument? That perhaps, something like 900k Americans living in Europe are in the US Armed Forces, leaving 100k regular US citizens. So then, if all 5k of the US citizen renouncers worldwide are in Europe, then 5% of the remaining 100k _does_ count as "many"?
Look mate, I know a lot of American expats and in my circle not a single one has relinquished citizenship. The few that are aware of our dumb tax laws just see it as another cost of being american. Except for the extremely rich, the cost to return the passport is much higher than simply keeping and renewing it.
Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants ?
" Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad.
Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’. "
In terms of finding things to be angry about this one is the particularly pathetic. Thai people call outsiders Farang. The Japanese are hostile to foreigners of any other nationality. Take up your cause with them first before you start accusing an entire continent with a rich modern history of tolerance of thinking they are superior.
Many American expats in Europe that have acquired the right for local nationality give up their nationality for that reason.