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 美国新闻：【华尔街日报】这些人为何会放弃美国国籍？（转帖） |
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好转贴，谢谢楼主。请问怎样找到英文原文？我在这边，只能打开WSJ的Asian Edition，似乎找不到。 -- 酱油族 - (0 Byte) 2011-3-24 周四, 20:49 (585 reads) |
not_a_CTA
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作者：not_a_CTA 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
Red, White–and Through
March 10, 2011, 10:42 PM HKT.
By Ellen Sheng
A growing number of Americans living overseas are renouncing U.S. citizenship. The reason? Mounting tax and reporting obligations, lawyers say.
With the U.S. government struggling with huge budget deficits, government bodies such as the Internal Revenue Service and Securities and Exchange Commission have been cracking down on tax evasion and implementing new reporting requirements. In February, the IRS introduced a second offshore voluntary disclosure program aimed at noncompliant American taxpayers with unreported offshore bank accounts and assets.
The program promises Americans won’t face charges if they step forward voluntarily — they are given a deadline of Aug. 31 to do so — but they will still have to pay taxes and penalties. Those who don’t step forward voluntarily could face stiffer penalties or even jail time.
The U.S. is the only industrialized country that requires citizens to pay income tax on offshore earnings, and many are finding the complications and cost of maintaining U.S. citizenship abroad to be increasingly burdensome.
“Once they find out what the tax and reporting obligations are, it’s a bit onerous,” said Jay Krause, partner at Withers in Hong Kong, a law firm that specializes in tax law, trusts, estate planning and family law. He says Withers has seen an “exponential increase” in American clients giving up citizenship and green card holders renouncing their status.
Now expatriates in Asia, in particular, are coming under scrutiny by the U.S. government. Last month, Doug Shulman, commissioner of the IRS, said the bureau is targeting Asian bank accounts and that taxpayers should expect new criminal investigations and prosecutions.
“We definitely have been tracking migration of assets out of Europe and into Asia,” Mr. Shulman told reporters when introducing the disclosure program in February. He said the IRS is looking for offenders in places “you might not expect.”
Adds Joe Field, Asia senior partner at Withers: “Many Hong Kong companies were set up for purposes of evading U.S. tax, so now the IRS is going after those. They say they’re doing this, but don’t say what they are doing or to whom.”
Indeed, the IRS opened an office in Beijing in late 2008 to improve compliance for overseas tax payers. It also has an office in Hong Kong that handles criminal investigations.
Asia is historically home to a large number of “incidental” and “accidental” Americans — people who took on U.S. citizenship as insurance against political instability, or who have one parent who is a U.S. citizen but perhaps have never stepped foot in the U.S. For decades, many Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan got U.S. passports or green cards as protection against mainland Chinese takeover in the two regions. With these loose ties to American nationality, giving up citizenship can be seen as an attractive option.
“Many people who looked to America as the protector now see America is bent on coming after them,” said Mr. Field. “We’re getting a whole new class of client who is someone who says, ‘I want to go into the disclosure program and as soon as I complete it, expatriate.’ ”
The hassle of maintaining American citizenship overseas goes beyond taxes. New laws have made it difficult for Americans to handle finances while living overseas. American Citizens Abroad, a Geneva-ba<x>sed advocacy group for American expats, says that some Americans have had accounts closed or have been turned away by banks and other financial institutions because of the increasingly complicated and expensive reporting requirements involved in serving U.S. clients.
Some provisions in the 2001 Patriot Act — which among other things aims to curb financing of terrorism — have inadvertently made it more difficult for some overseas Americans to keep U.S. bank accounts because of difficulties proving a U.S. address. Meanwhile, the Hire Act, which will take effect in 2013 and requires foreign banks to report to the IRS account information of U.S. citizens with more than $50,000 in savings, is expected to make it harder for Americans to open investment or bank accounts overseas.
According to the Federal Register, a government publication that publishes a list of Americans that have given up their citizenship, more than 1,500 expatriates gave up their U.S. citizenship last year, or an average of almost 400 each quarter. Compare that with all of 2008 when a total of about 230 Americans renounced their citizenship. The Federal Register does not indicate where the renunciations take place.
One Hong Kong-ba<x>sed banker, who gave up his citizenship in 2009, said he came to his decision after living and working in China for a number of years.
Under what’s known as the Reed Amendment provision of immigration reform, enacted in 1996, former citizens who expatriate primarily for tax avoidance purposes are barred from re-entry to the U.S. Lawyers say this rule has never been implemented or enforced but it keeps many mum on their reasons for expatriation.
“The hardest part was emotional,” said the banker, who was born and raised in the U.S. by immigrant Chinese parents. “My parents worked so hard to raise us in the U.S. and give us a better life. They weren’t sure about [me] giving up citizenship.”
But after living and working in Hong Kong, financial reality overshadowed emotional attachment.
“For what you pay in U.S. taxes, you can pay for your kids’ schooling,” he said.
To be sure, the 1,500 who renounced citizenship last year make up only a small portion of the overall number of Americans living abroad. An estimated 60,000 U.S. citizens live in Hong Kong alone, according to the consulate general’s office. And a far greater number apply to become U.S. citizens every year. Matthew Dolbow, spokesman for the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau, noted that in 2010, approximately 2,700 Hong Kong and Macau residents successfully applied to immigrate to the U.S.
The figure “illustrates the close ties between the United States and Hong Kong and Macau and the attractiveness of the United States as a destination,” he said.
Still, lawyers expect the new disclosure program to draw in many Americans in Hong Kong and Singapore seeking expatriation, especially wealthy ones who have to pay extensive taxes.
Americans who have a net worth of at least $2 million and seek expatriation are subject to hefty taxes, including a mark-to-market tax on assets world-wide, including unrealized gains. But a new estate tax law allows Americans to give up to $5 million tax-free until the end of 2012. That means a high-net individual could potentially give enough money to avoid the high net-worth expatriation tax.
The process of expatriating is fairly straightforward, but can be extensive because Americans must first provide documents showing they have been paying income tax for the past five years.
For those who have not paid taxes, the process has gotten more expensive. Five years ago, under an informal program, expatriates who hadn’t filed taxes could frequently reach an agreement with the IRS whereby they could pay three years of back taxes and interest. Now, under the new voluntary disclosure program, the fee is eight years of back taxes with interest, plus a penalty of 25% of the individual’s highest account balance during that period.
And renouncing citizenship is not a safeguard against paying U.S. taxes in the future. Expatriates who give up citizenship are still liable to pay income tax for 10 years after renouncing citizenship if they spend more than 30 days a year in the U.S.
https://expat-essentials.com/red-white-and-through/
还有一篇较早的
越来越多的美国人切断与美国关系由于国税局越发强硬
More Americans Sever U.S. Ties as IRS Gets Tougher
APRIL 5, 2010, 4:06 P.M. ET.
By MARTIN VAUGHAN
The number of American citizens and green-card holders severing their ties with the U.S. soared in the latter part of 2009, amid looming U.S. tax increases and a more aggressive posture by the Internal Revenue Service toward Americans living overseas.
According to public records, just over 500 people world-wide renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which data are available. That is more people than have cut ties with the U.S. during all of 2007, and more than double the total expatriations in 2008.
An Ohio-born entrepreneur, now ba<x>sed in Switzerland, told Dow Jones he is considering turning in his U.S. passport. Mounting U.S. tax and reporting requirements are making potential business partners hesitate to do business with him, he said.
"I still do dearly love the U.S., and renouncing my citizenship is not something I take lightly. But more and more it is seeming like being part of a dysfunctional family," said the businessman, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retribution.
"The tax itself is only a small part of the issue," the Swiss-ba<x>sed entrepreneur said. "It's the overall regulatory environment."
A minority of the recent expatriates are U.S. natives who have started a new life overseas. Most are people with family ties outside the U.S.: foreign professionals who acquired a green card while working in the U.S., or people who have received higher education in the U.S.
"Fifteen or 20 years ago there was a big rush to make sure your kids became U.S. citizens, for access to U.S. schools for example," said Timothy Burns, a tax lawyer at Withers law firm in Hong Kong. "Now we're seeing just the opposite."
Last month, the Treasury Department announced more rigorous requirements for Americans living abroad to report information on foreign bank accounts. The reporting requirement has been in place for years, but only in the most recent couple of years has the IRS gotten tough about enforcing penalties.
The information return must be filed by any U.S. citizen or resident whose balance in all foreign accounts combined exceeds $10,000 at any time during the year. Stiff penalties, up to 50% of the annual account balance, punish failure to file.
Others are giving up their U.S. nationality to avoid tax increases in the U.S., as the government struggles under huge budget deficits. The top marginal tax rate is set to rise to 39.6% from 35% at the end of this year. A proposal to tax fund manager pay at ordinary income rates, instead of the 15% capital gains rate, is gaining currency in Congress.
"Everybody sees the tax rates are going up. At a certain point, it gets beyond people's pain threshold," said Anthony Tong, a tax partner at accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong.
Unlike most jurisdictions, the U.S. taxes the income of citizens and green-card holders no matter where in the world it is earned.
In order to give up U.S. citizenship, a person must obtain or have citizenship in another country. The person surrenders their passport or green card during an interview with a consular officer in their new home country. He or she must also submit a form, including a list of assets, to the IRS to complete the process.
Chris Kavanagh of the American Institute in Taiwan, which represents U.S. interests in Taiwan, said 43 people gave up their U.S. citizenship in Taiwan in 2009, the highest that figure has been since 2003. He cautioned against drawing conclusions from that data, however.
The IRS says some of the swelling of numbers of expatriations toward the end of 2009 occurred because the agency made a push to notify people that had already surrendered their passport, but had not completed the process by submitting the IRS form. Until that form is received by the IRS, these people are still subject to U.S. tax. "There is some catch-up going on," said IRS spokesman Bruce Friedland.
The stock-market plunge of late 2008 and early 2009 may also have played a role in the spike in expatriations. Since 2008, Americans with net worth greater than $2 million have had to pay an exit tax assessed on their assets. With gains reduced or wiped out by the market collapse, those seeking to give up their U.S. citizenship had an opportunity to do so with less exit tax required.
—Andrea Wong contributed to this article.
Write to Martin Vaughan at [email protected]
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304017404575166211517964090.html
作者：not_a_CTA 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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