I heard from someone that it takes four appointments to successfully expatriate in the Buenos Aires Embassy. (He found it expedient to go to another country to expatriate).
The normal expatriation procedure at the moment is a two-meeting process.
The first appointment at the Embassy is designed to install a guilt-bomb in your brain, and the delay between the first and second appointment is supposed to give enough time for you to regret your decision and remain an American.
The second appointment is where the fun happens and you cease to be a U.S. citizen.
When I first started doing these expatriations under the new rules we had a one-appointment process. Do the paperwork, show up. If the paperwork was wrong, they’d fix it on the spot. Then the Embassy official would generate the other documents. Sign, date, swear out, and you’re done.
Then the two-appointment process started to appear. For a while some locations were one-appointment and others were two-appointment places. And even within that we would see variations. We would see “yes we have two appointment but we’ll informally just finish it all in one appointment” expediency in some situations.
But now “four appointments”? Wow.
The State Department’s uniform procedures are not, it appears, equally applied across the planet. 🙂
Anyway, I’m curious about trends. What have you seen in Argentina, or elsewhere for that matter, that deviates from the “two appointments to expatriate” procedure?
Quite apart from the bone-headed bureaucracy of it all, requiring multiple appointments can put a real travel strain on a person who wants to expatriate. Someone living far from the Embassy will have to drive, fly, etc. a long way to scratch the State Department’s itch if two appointments–carefully spread out–are required. I can’t imagine more than that.
Phil Hodgen
Philip D. W. Hodgen is the principal attorney of HodgenLaw PC, an international tax law firm based in Pasadena, California. He earned his undergraduate degree from Claremont McKenna College and his law degree from the School of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He then went on to earn a Master of Laws degree with a specialty in taxation from the University of San Diego School of Law. Admitted to the California bar in 1982, Phil spent nine years in law firms and with a large U.S. bank before starting his own firm in 1991.
Phil is a past chair of the International Tax Committee of the State Bar of California's Tax Section and was a member of the Executive Committee of the State Bar of California's Tax Section for 2004-2007. Phil frequently speaks on a variety of international tax, trust and estate topics to attorneys, accountants, and real estate professionals.
“Expatriate” to the U.S. tax authorities means someone who: relinquishes his/her U.S. citizenship; or cancels his/her U.S. permanent residency (AKA “green card”) status, where U.S. residency has continued for at least 8 years. We help people expatriate — we handle their wranglings with the State Department and the Internal Revenue Service. So I watch for…
We’re working on a rash of cases in which people are giving up their permanent resident visas or U.S. citizenship — expatriation cases. Expect a few blog posts along the way. Key resource for you Here’s a link to the IRS website and Notice 2009-85. This notice was published in October, 2009 and is the…
Yeah I’m internet famous. Or something. I was interviewed for an article that was published in TIME Magazine, Why More U.S. Expatriates Are Turning in Their Passports. Thanks, Helena for this. Our experience is that we are getting a lot of people who are looking to bail out of the United States. By far the majority…
There is an interesting article in the latest edition of Tax Notes International: “U.S. Expats and the Offshore Crackdown,” 58 Tax Notes Int’l 619 (May 24, 2010). I would link to it and give the author (David D. Stewart) a bit of public glory but it is behind the paywall at Lexis. And I can’t…
We do nothing but international tax stuff. On the outbound side (U.S. humans and companies doing business outside the USA) we have a steady flow of questions about the foreign earned income exclusion. The Federal government has just done a review of tax returns claiming the foreign earned income exclusion and has found (shocking, I…
People who give up their U.S. citizenship or their green card visas are subjected to the exit tax. This is imposed under Section 877A of the Internal Revenue Code. The exit tax treats you as having sold all of your assets on the day before you gave up your citizenship or your green card. If…
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Those Canadian accounts may be exempt from FATCA reporting but, unless there is more to it, that won’t make an difference to the obligation on the individual to report and pay taxes on them.
If that isn’t the case, it is not that much better than the exemptions for retirement schemes in the final FATCA regs, which you don’t need an IGA to benefit from.
Thanks for the comment. Yes I will need to post this as a blog. Astonishing that the Canadian diplomats were able to beat some particles of sanity into their U.S. counterparts, really. 🙂
I renounced in Auckland last month. A phone call and one visit. In and out in less than 20 minutes. I got the impression this is business as usual for them these days.
Not sure where best to post this, since it relates to RRSPs which seems to be a locked thread. (feel free to move my post)
News today posted on the Canadian Revenue Agency website (http://www.fin.gc.ca/n14/14-018-eng.asp) regarding a new USA-Canada tax agreement exempting RRSPs from certain reporting requirements. Since I’m far from an expert, I’ll leave it to Phil (the expert) to (hopefully) comment on significance.
“… Significant exemptions and relief have been obtained. For instance, certain accounts are exempt from FATCA and will not be reportable. These include Registered Retirement Savings Plans, Registered Retirement Income Funds, Registered Disability Savings Plans, Tax-Free Savings Accounts, and others …”
I experienced a one visit relinquishment, at a Canadian consulate, but the consular official seemed determined to be unnecessarily combative/abrasive about it right from the start. Was asked about my REASONS, and ‘why now?’. I was there to formally notify the State department – as required, that I had performed an expatriating act with full and informed intent to relinquish. The act with intent had already taken place – and I had the requisite documents to prove it. There is no legal requirement that I must satisfy US consular officials by offering up my reasons or motivations in order that they might judge them to be acceptable or not. I was there to exercise my right to expatriate – and to meet the burden imposed by the US that I notify the consulate only in the manner prescribed. I was warned by the consular official that my application could be rejected if I had made any mistakes on the paperwork – but he didn’t go over it with me – putting the onus on me alone to know whether my answers were sufficient and forms complete and satisfactory. I left with the distinct feeling his manner was motivated by more than just professional rigour.
For me, that experience was a very convincing final confirmation of the wisdom in formally severing any even vestigial relationship from ‘abroad’ with a US government who imposes needlessly harsh and punitive extraterritorial tax laws and confiscatory financial reporting burdens on all those who permanently live and may have been born “abroad “…based on the convenient rationale that [the US] “government by its very nature benefits the citizen and his property wherever found….”; see Cook vs. Tait 265 U.S. 47 (44 S.Ct. 444, 68 L.Ed. 895)
COOK v. TAIT, Collector of Internal Revenue.
No. 220. Argued: April 15, 1924. Decided: May 5, 1924.
I would have liked to remind the US consular official that:
…”Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..”.
The London embassy in the UK is one visit. They apparently used to require two. Then they replaced the first visit with a phone interview. Now they get you to fill out a form which acknowledges that you have read all of the things they sent you and that you understand the consequences.
I do think they have a mandatory waiting or “cool down” period. In my case, I sent the embassy all the docs they needed by email and they didn’t respond for three weeks and, then, only after I prodded them. Every other email correspondence with the embassy after that was a matter of hours.
I wonder what the Embassy looks like in Eritrea? 🙂
I am going to put this on my “interesting ideas to tackle” list. Which is pretty long and constantly gets slapped down by all the other things that happen in life.
I wonder what the waiting list is like at the US Embassy in Eritrea?
Foreign pension plans are not US qualified plans and therefore any income or gains in the plan during the tax year are included in taxable income.
There is an option to treat the pension similar to a US qualified pension under many of the US income tax treaties and therefore enjoy the deferral of tax until distribution (form 8833)
Phil with regards to your great post from 2010 https://hodgen.com/ira-distribution-to-u-s-citizen-living-in-switzerland-which-country-taxes-it/
could you please provide us an update for tax year 2013 with regards to Obamacare since the income from a pension will be considered NII (net investment income) , it will be subject to the surcharge from 2013 if you fall above the threshold. The looming question is whether the treaty will provide protection from this treatment. As with the issue of foreign tax credits, some commentators are arguing that there may be relief under the various income tax treaties currently in force. Whether this is ultimately the case, we will have to wait and see how the IRS will respond but what is your take on this for an USP living and working in Switzerland and his employers pension contribution.
“the early bird gets the worm..”
for SwissTechie that was CH, but I heard last week that in Bern the waiting time is close to 1 year now !
Where did you go to get such fabulous service from the U.S. government?
I was one of the lucky ones to get it done in one appointment after waiting 4 days. At the going rate of things, soon there will be no appointments, kind of like how it is done with Eritrea where citizenship cannot be discarded.
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Tax laws change over time, and the information in this post above may be less accurate today than it was at the time of the last revision. This post is not tax advice for your specific situation. Please contact an international tax professional to get personalized advice for your situation.
Those Canadian accounts may be exempt from FATCA reporting but, unless there is more to it, that won’t make an difference to the obligation on the individual to report and pay taxes on them.
If that isn’t the case, it is not that much better than the exemptions for retirement schemes in the final FATCA regs, which you don’t need an IGA to benefit from.
Thanks for the comment. Yes I will need to post this as a blog. Astonishing that the Canadian diplomats were able to beat some particles of sanity into their U.S. counterparts, really. 🙂
I renounced in Auckland last month. A phone call and one visit. In and out in less than 20 minutes. I got the impression this is business as usual for them these days.
Not sure where best to post this, since it relates to RRSPs which seems to be a locked thread. (feel free to move my post)
News today posted on the Canadian Revenue Agency website (http://www.fin.gc.ca/n14/14-018-eng.asp) regarding a new USA-Canada tax agreement exempting RRSPs from certain reporting requirements. Since I’m far from an expert, I’ll leave it to Phil (the expert) to (hopefully) comment on significance.
“… Significant exemptions and relief have been obtained. For instance, certain accounts are exempt from FATCA and will not be reportable. These include Registered Retirement Savings Plans, Registered Retirement Income Funds, Registered Disability Savings Plans, Tax-Free Savings Accounts, and others …”
I experienced a one visit relinquishment, at a Canadian consulate, but the consular official seemed determined to be unnecessarily combative/abrasive about it right from the start. Was asked about my REASONS, and ‘why now?’. I was there to formally notify the State department – as required, that I had performed an expatriating act with full and informed intent to relinquish. The act with intent had already taken place – and I had the requisite documents to prove it. There is no legal requirement that I must satisfy US consular officials by offering up my reasons or motivations in order that they might judge them to be acceptable or not. I was there to exercise my right to expatriate – and to meet the burden imposed by the US that I notify the consulate only in the manner prescribed. I was warned by the consular official that my application could be rejected if I had made any mistakes on the paperwork – but he didn’t go over it with me – putting the onus on me alone to know whether my answers were sufficient and forms complete and satisfactory. I left with the distinct feeling his manner was motivated by more than just professional rigour.
For me, that experience was a very convincing final confirmation of the wisdom in formally severing any even vestigial relationship from ‘abroad’ with a US government who imposes needlessly harsh and punitive extraterritorial tax laws and confiscatory financial reporting burdens on all those who permanently live and may have been born “abroad “…based on the convenient rationale that [the US] “government by its very nature benefits the citizen and his property wherever found….”; see Cook vs. Tait 265 U.S. 47 (44 S.Ct. 444, 68 L.Ed. 895)
COOK v. TAIT, Collector of Internal Revenue.
No. 220. Argued: April 15, 1924. Decided: May 5, 1924.
I would have liked to remind the US consular official that:
…”Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..”.
from ‘The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies’
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
The London embassy in the UK is one visit. They apparently used to require two. Then they replaced the first visit with a phone interview. Now they get you to fill out a form which acknowledges that you have read all of the things they sent you and that you understand the consequences.
I do think they have a mandatory waiting or “cool down” period. In my case, I sent the embassy all the docs they needed by email and they didn’t respond for three weeks and, then, only after I prodded them. Every other email correspondence with the embassy after that was a matter of hours.
I wonder what the Embassy looks like in Eritrea? 🙂
I am going to put this on my “interesting ideas to tackle” list. Which is pretty long and constantly gets slapped down by all the other things that happen in life.
I wonder what the waiting list is like at the US Embassy in Eritrea?
Foreign pension plans are not US qualified plans and therefore any income or gains in the plan during the tax year are included in taxable income.
There is an option to treat the pension similar to a US qualified pension under many of the US income tax treaties and therefore enjoy the deferral of tax until distribution (form 8833)
Phil with regards to your great post from 2010
https://hodgen.com/ira-distribution-to-u-s-citizen-living-in-switzerland-which-country-taxes-it/
could you please provide us an update for tax year 2013 with regards to Obamacare since the income from a pension will be considered NII (net investment income) , it will be subject to the surcharge from 2013 if you fall above the threshold. The looming question is whether the treaty will provide protection from this treatment. As with the issue of foreign tax credits, some commentators are arguing that there may be relief under the various income tax treaties currently in force. Whether this is ultimately the case, we will have to wait and see how the IRS will respond but what is your take on this for an USP living and working in Switzerland and his employers pension contribution.
“the early bird gets the worm..”
for SwissTechie that was CH, but I heard last week that in Bern the waiting time is close to 1 year now !
Where did you go to get such fabulous service from the U.S. government?
I was one of the lucky ones to get it done in one appointment after waiting 4 days. At the going rate of things, soon there will be no appointments, kind of like how it is done with Eritrea where citizenship cannot be discarded.