The tax bill is an absolute clusterfuck. It raises taxes on the poor to give to the rich, hamstrings the ACA, and fucks grad students, among a myriad other things. If you haven’t already thought about leaving the US, maybe you will if this shit passes.
But did you know? If you’re an American citizen or have a green card, you’re not really free to leave.
You, by virtue of your citizenship, are required to file and pay taxes to the US regardless of where you live.
Everywhere else in the world, people are taxed based on their country of residence. Only one other country, Eritrea, taxes based on citizenship, and they aren’t a global superpower who forces every other country’s banks to stream its expat citizens’ financial data back to the IRS so it can catch “““financial crimes”““ in progress. Yes, that is real, and it is called FATCA.
Pretty fucked up, right? Guess what, the only way to avoid being double-taxed and tracked like this is to renounce your US citizenship, starting at the low price of $2350 and an exit tax on all your assets.
The wildest thing is that repealing FATCA is in the Republican party’s platform. AND YET, it’s not in this dumpster fire of a tax bill. Why is that? Well, given where this authoritarian trainwreck is headed, I got a bad feeling about this Scoob.
Anyway, call your representatives and tell them to repeal citizenship-based taxation and the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act. Nobody’s talking about it because it only affects expats. If you want to leave, it will affect you too.
