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  1. U.S. citizens can vote, and can petition for a longer list of foreign national family members to join them in the U.S. than permanent residents can – for example, unlike green card holders, they can petition for their parents, their married children, and their brothers and sisters.

  2. Don,

    Center of economic interests (and other stuff) come before citizenship, you are unlikely to get down to citizenship in tie breaking rules.
    Also, many Mutual Collection Assistance Requests have exceptions for people with citizenship of the other country (either when tax arose or when request was made depending on the country)

  3. Hi Phil

    With the tie breaking rules is citizenship of your own country higher in the pegging order? Is that why this works?

    Also at least this person can avoid the FATCA trap by not telling his overseas bank that he holds a green card.

    What do you think of the IBS / ADCS campaign in Canada and Jim Bopp’s upcoming lawsuit in the States?

    One last thing – do you think resident dual US / other country citizens will get a ‘carve out’ on some sort of discrimination grounds?

    I know it doesn’t relieve them of the IRS, but at least it stops the data and would force the IRS to use time and resource on a ‘manual’ information exchange request using MLAT.

    Also with MCARs (I know it’s only 5/6 countries at the moment), but do these essentially allow the IRS to plug into a country’s collection procedures?

    And where do you see this whole FATCA scenario going?

    Thanks

    Don

  4. This is probably not the thread for it, but I have a quick -somewhat related- question:
    Here is the situation:
    A green card holder marries a US citizen, and has children in the US.
    The person plans to live most of his working life in the US, but does not rule out retiring in his country of origin or going back at some point for an extended period of time to take care of elderly parents.
    Would you recommend applying for US Citizenship or keeping the green card status?
    After a lot of thinking, I think taking US citizenship is better (no risk of deportation for some stupid reason, allowing to live outside the US for work or family reason for extended periods of time, and being able to vote). What’s your take on it?

  5. “Will making the election to be a nonresident for income tax purposes create any immigration risks that could trigger revocation of the green card by the U.S. government?”

    It seems to me that regardless of the tax election, the green card status is in jeopardy if the holder has not filed special paperwork to maintain his status while living outside of the US for more than a year.

    Upon reentry, someone I know had to sign paperwork to officially abandon his card, after living abroad for an extended period of time. I don’t know if ICE has immediate access to someone’s IRS filing status, but they definitely keep track of how long you stay out of the country and that’s enough to invalidate your card, regardless of your filing status. They will not let you in, if you’ve lived outside the US for more than a year, and don’t come back with a reentry permit.

  6. Hi Phil,

    I got my green card in 2007 and left US shortly. I would like to abandon my green card. Can I use tax treaty to make myself non-resident for year 2014 and be under “8 out of 15 year” rules.

    Regards,
    Nate

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