😂😂 are you actually thinking about dropping citizenship? It’s something I look into every few years but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
Discussion
Yes. I don't get any benefit from being a dual citizen, I just suffer the administrative headache of filing my taxes every year. The only thing holding me back is a fear that New Zealand will become unbearable and I'll wish I hadn't burnt the bridge. But the older I get, the less I care, the more I can bear, the less likely I would go back. It's been 18 years and I'm firmly rooted in this local community. Yes, NZ sucks in many ways but I'm good at living well in spite of it, being one who doesn't desire to amass more wealth than I need to sustain myself.
Yeah that’s basically how I feel. There are plenty of things wrong with Italy but I don’t see myself moving back to the states ever. My family living there is the only reason I haven’t pulled the plug already.
Taxation by citizenship is such a shitty system.
Do you end up actually owing anything? I never do, with the foreign earned income exclusion f2555 I don't get taxed on my income, and the standard deduction covers any interest gains (I don't have a lot of cash earning interest), and based on the unbearable compliance costs and complexities of reporting on share investments (stock market) I stopped holding any. So now it's just a lot of necessary paperwork. And I hate paperwork.
Yeah, I always do. Because of the way the Italian/US tax treaty is set up I pay self employment tax in the US and not italy. It’s not double taxation per se, unless you count the thousands I spend every year on accountants. 😖
The most egregious issue is the financial surveillance. All the security theater in the name of AML and terrorist financing. It’s complete bullshit.
Plenty of other citizenships to choose from. Choosing wisely can eradicate the need for visas almost completely when traveling.
I kept putting it off, but finally pulled the trigger last year and decided to drop mine. A year later I'm still working on it. So much paperwork, waiting, and a lot of money 😭
Yikes. What’s the cost? Exit tax or lawyers and accountants?
Exit tax is coming. Lawyers and accountants, AND you must have a foreign passport before they let you give up your US one, so either wait a few years in another country, or pay $100k or more to buy citizenship elsewhere (plus more lawyers for that one).
😭 shit. What a pain. Good luck with it all.
I have New Zealand citizenship with a New Zealand passport. Having lived here and worked here for 18 years it was a reasonable move and I more than qualified. I paid NZ$470.20 for the citizenship and NZ$199.00 for the passport.
I'm not going to give up my US citizenship because that triggers a process where they put me under the microscope and while I think I'm clean, I don't want to risk some over-zealous IRS agent deciding to extort me, or some other agent deciding I said something online that makes me a special target of some secret government program. So I will keep filing my FinCEN and my US tax returns every year, where basically I owe $0 each time. PITA though.