U.S. taxpayers may now claim a "reasonable cause" defense in the event they've been hit with a penalty in connection with a tax matter for which they had "reasonably and in good faith" relied on any IRS-published FAQs (frequently-asked-questions) that has to do with new tax legislation, the IRS has announced.
A Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee has introduced legislation that would block the Biden administration's controversial plan to require U.S. banks to report their customers' account information to the Internal Revenue Service annually, citing "strong concerns" about the proposed legislation's possible effects on taxpayers' "privacy, the IRS's ability to safeguard private bank account information, and undue burdens on families and small businesses."
The U.S., which "pressed the rest of the world" to crack down on the type of financial secrecy that enables tax evasion and cross-border illegality, is now "a hypocrite on international financial crime," Bloomberg, the major global media organization based in New York, has said, in an Editorial Board opinion piece it published on Friday.
The Democrats Abroad has announced that it has joined the Residence-Based Taxation Coalition, a lobbying organization launched in January with a single goal: persuading U.S. lawmakers to move the U.S. to a residence-based tax regime, like most of the rest of the world's countries have.
American expatriates who say they've been frustrated by the unwilllingness of either of the two major U.S. political parties to take their issues on board are pointing to the recent emergence of at least three new political parties in the U.S. as a reason to be hopeful that their voices might at last begin to be heard.
Proposed regulations that would require U.S. banks to report their customers' account information to the Internal Revenue Service on a regular basis have been widely criticized in the U.S., not just from the bankers who would be required to gather and forward the huge volumes of data that would be involved, but from consumers themselves, according to media reports.
Saving for one's retirement is never easy; life is expensive, and time flies.
But as a survey of more than 400 U.S. expats, carried out last October and November by the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) reveals, it's particularly difficult for Americans who are living outside of the U.S., who struggle with a range of issues, including retirement account providers suddenly deciding that they no longer wish to service American expatriate clients.
Like folks everywhere, Americans are often surprised to discover how different things can be when they live abroad. Sometimes the differences are small; sometimes they're hilarious. In recent years, as...
Nov-25-2021
