It’s not bad as in “you owe a lot of money to the IRS (in addition to what you owe the country in which you live)” – tax treaties essentially mean that you shouldn’t have to pay taxes twice.
It’s bad in that it becomes MUCH harder to file, so that you need an accountant. I have to pay over $1000 to get an accountant to file my taxes, which would not be at all necessary were it not for the US filing requirements. And I happen to live in a place where it is not especially difficult to find an account versed in US filing. That is not true in many places outside the US.
It looks like I might fit this. I am paid a base salary more than 25$ hourly (ironically, one of the things that will make it difficult to find work where I already live because my position was properly paid, and was even due a raise next month)
I would fucking love to move to New Zealand.
Only problem is the borders are closed right now because they actually believe in science and followed it so they have no cases of COVID.
On this note, it’s worth pointing out that it’s MUCH easier to immigrate to Australia (and many other countries) if you’re willing to live in a relatively rural area for the first X years (where I think X = 5 currently). Basically they have a list of jobs they want to admit people for in different areas, and the list is longer (and the bar lower) for areas that are more rural. Once you get permanent residency (~ 4 years) and the citizenship (~ 1 year after perm res), you can move wherever you want.
We’ve lived in a combination of Australia, Japan, and Germany for the last decade, and our US taxes take about an hour to file using TaxAct. Basically we just declare our foreign income and then claim the foreign earned income exclusion and we don’t owe anything. I think it’s good up to about a quarter mil per person, which is a level of money we will never make. Then there’s a bit of extra paperwork because we don’t have US health insurance, but that’s just another form that takes maybe two minutes to fill out. Costs us like $30 per year.
This is not an ad for TaxAct, by the way; they suck but they already have all of our information so we use them out of laziness. Just saying that filing US taxes as an expat isn’t necessarily that hard for everybody, although there may be special circumstances for your situation.
I lived in Japan for three years, 2005-2006, 2007-2009.
For those here who have never lived abroad you may not know but this is actually a thing.
The United States has tax agreements with certain nations that means you basically don’t have to pay tax on anything you earn in a foreign country up to a specific amount.
It makes taxes a little more difficult and I think I was audited three times while I lived abroad and family handled it for me so it definitely flags you for tax issues, but I don’t remember paying anything on what I earned in Japan.
At the time the agreement with Japan was 2 years I think.
I was able to get my birth certificate online from NYC for some time. I was born in Brooklyn in the early 70’s. I can imagine it is more difficult for those born generations earlier.
I’ve also overstayed a valid working Visa in Japan trying to ascertain an employer for a specific number of hours to revalidify my visa, all the while wondering when the immigration enforcement agency was going to knock on my door and carry me away.
I lived off of rice and canned goods from friends, with no heat in the middle of winter in Sapporo wondering when I would be arrested and dragged away.
Fun times.
Actually, no.
So yeah I am willing to do a little more than a normal person to live somewhere. I’ve already lived in fear of authorities once and I already do here everyday even though I’m a legal citizen of the United States
They wouldn’t give me mine - online or any other way - because it was still in my birth name. And it took six months to get my mothers death certificate.
'Twas early in the springtime I decided to go
For to work up in the woods of north On-tar-eye-oh,
For the unemployment office said they’d send me through
To the Little Abitibi with the survey crew,
And the blackflies,
The little blackflies,
Always the blackflies, no matter where you go!
I’ll die with the blackfly picking my bones,
In north On-tar-eye-oh, eye-oh!
In north On-tar-eye-oh!
I have had the experience of being in a US bar with a bunch of drunk Canadian expats (some of whom were colleagues) singing the “Log Drivers’ Waltz” loudly and off key. I thought that was the one you needed to know!
And I’ve swatted Dog-knows how many blackflies. They don’t respect the Canadian border. The Adirondacks are full of them.
While we’re on Canadian folk music, don’t forget the Rogers brothers! Stan Rogers was a genius. “Northwest Passage.” “Mary Ellen Carter.” “Barrett’s Privateers.” “White Collar Holler.” “Final Trawl” (ok, that one’s Garnet’s) still makes me cry.
No, but age is. Hardly any country will take people over 50 or 55 unless they are CEO’s planning to plow at least a few million into the local economy.
