The latest Tweede Kamer hearing in the Netherlands, on the fraught subject of the U.S. tax evasion-prevention law known as FATCA, revealed that progress for those dual U.S./Dutch citizens affected by it continues to elude Dutch lawmakers, according to a number of "accidental Americans" and others who viewed the two-hour-long session online.
It's hard to believe now, given how events have unfolded over the subsequent 24 years. But back in the months and years leading up to 1997, as preparations were underway for the British colony of Hong Kong to be "handed" back to China, there were genuine concerns that Hong Kong would lose its place as one of Asia’s most important and booming cities.
In those days, China wasn’t open to the outside world the way it soon began to be, and there was a sense that Hong Kong would become like the rest of that country was then – rather than the booming British outpost, and gateway to China, that it was considered to be...
As news broke on Tuesday that four members of the U.S. House of Representatives had co-signed a letter to House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, in which they asked that a simplified, "short form" tax return be provided to American citizens who file their U.S. taxes from abroad, some expat campaigners and advocacy organizations insisted that such a simplification would not be enough.
Sometime around 2016, the U.S. State Department increased its published estimate of the number of Americans resident outside of the U.S. to 9 million from 8.7 million, and it has yet to announce any reduction in that estimate...
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the U.S. Treasury Department bureau that's best known to many American expats for its role in receiving Foreign Bank Account Reports from them every year, is seeking comments from the public on a package of new regulations it is proposing to introduce to the antiquities trade.
Uncle Sam – in the rather more official (and less colorful) form of the Internal Revenue Service – is reminding U.S. expats that as it is now October, this means they only have two weeks left to get their U.S. tax returns in, if they opted to take advantage of the extension that lets such taxpayers have until Oct. 15 to file their 2020 returns.
A group of American expatriates, many of whom live in Thailand, have put together a YouTube video that they're hoping will help make the case for U.S. lawmakers to, as they put it, fulfil the U.S. government's pledge to vaccinate all Americans, by "vaccinating Americans abroad" with FDA-authorized Covid-19 vaccines in their countries of residence, as needed.
The world – including its banks, cross-border financial services institutions and even many governments – has come a long way since the Richard Murphy and others founded the Tax Justice Network in around 2003...
Oct-08-2021
