You’ve said that twice now. I was under the impression that if your US tax liability is $X but you already paid >$X in foreign taxes, you file a form saying so and your US tax liability drops to $0. Is my understanding incorrect?

That may be the case today. But when I left a quarter century ago, it wasn’t like that. I don’t remember the specifics, but I would have ended up paying some thousands of dollars every year.

That’s an excellent argument for not living within US jurisdiction, but how is it an argument for not keeping US citizenship as an ex-pat?

A country that’s gone rogue can’t strongarm another to deport their enemy citizens living there back home if they’re not citizens no more.

I fully expect the Trump regime - or whichever new Trumpesque dictator replaces the orange buffoon when he kicks the bucket - to come after expats it deems treacherous or enemies of the state or something. I’d rather the US can’t legally demand my repatriation.

The fewer ties you have to the US, the better. It was true before, and it’s especially true now.

The other reason is, a lot of foreigners - like, a LOT - don’t particularly like Americans, even the friendliest ones. It’s easier not to be an American than having to prove you’re one of the nice ones all the time.

problematic to open foreign bank accounts as a US citizen…?

I never had any problem. But remember, it was a long time ago. Things were still pretty chill in the early 2000’s. You could literally walk into a bank and open an account in 10 minutes with any ID that looked legit 🙂 There was no KYC or anything like that, and banks mostly cared about whether you had money to deposit. I mean not quite 80’s like, but nothing like the stringent dystopia of today.

Also, I had citizenship from a EU country, so that helped.

Renounciation costs (or at least used to cost) a few thousand dollars. That’s money you quickly recoup by not paying any US taxes.

Besides, I don’t see why I should pay Uncle Sam anything of what I earn abroard, living abroad and working in a foreign company, not using any American services or infrastructure. The only rational Uncle Sam has to offer for extracting taxes from US citizens residing abroad is essentially “Pay up or else…” That’s a racket, pure and simple: even if it wasn’t financially sound, I don’t pay racketeers.

What other pros/cons are there?

Not being an American is a big pro. Your conscience is less dirty.

And as of Apr 14, 2025, the safety of not living in a dictatorship where the rule of law doesn’t apply anymore is also a big plus.

And while not directly linked to citizenship proper, living abroad offers many advantages: working healthcare, a decent education for your children, publc services that work… Yes, you pay a lot of taxes in Europe, but you know what you get out of it. The quality of life in Europe is much higher than in the US. And - I know it sounds weird but it’s true - you don’t need the constant background paranoia you need to live in the US. You don’t realize the paranoia is there until you leave and then it lifts from you. It’s a real thing.

But of course you can experience all that while still being an American. Not being American is mostly a matter of refusing to be associated with - and finance - an amoral society.

You can but your life becomes one giant hell.

If you don’t have dual citizenship like I had, your best bet is to move somewhere you like, stay there for a while as a resident, then apply for citizenship there. Then depending on your destination country, that either makes you dual-citizen and you have to renounced your US citizenship explicitely, or you have dual-citizenship for that country but not for the US or vice-versa, or your US citizenship instantly becomes invalid. In all cases, if you want to stop being American, Uncle Sam will make you cough up a bunch of money. Because the US is a country of racketeers.

It was easy for me: I had dual citizenship. I simply renounced the wrong one - which cost me a pretty penny: it’s a real racket run by the US, this. But it paid for itself many times over in that I never had to pay US taxes for income I generated outside the US, which is also another US racket.

When I left, I went to Canada. Then the UK - which was in Europe back then. Then I lived in a bunch of countries in Europe. Then Australia. Then back to Europe. That’s where I am now.

I left the US and renounced my citizenship 24 years ago, after Dubya shat out the USA Patriot Act and I knew the US would turn into a full-blown Nazi state some day.

Best thing I ever did.

She is a career humanitarian and environmentalist

You just repeated exactly what I said.

Greta Thunberg - how to milk one viral moment you had as a kid and make a career out of it.

It’s high time open source projects and anything to do with software freedom and privacy relocated outside of the US. It wasn’t great before that a lot of them are hosted in the US, but now it’s urgent. It’s not even a matter of principle anymore.

Calculating the number of hours I had left on Earth, and realizing that every hour I spent fretting about shit that doesn’t matter is an hour I won’t spend having the best possible time on this dirtball with my family and my friends before I kick the bucket.

Once I “let go” and decided nothing really mattered, it felt like my whole body finally deeply relaxed for good.

Yeah, like playing a country record in reverse: your wife comes back, you house unburns and your dog undies.

He did say he would lower prices on day one, and prices on day one of his presidency were definitely lower. So he delivered, you just have to think backward in time.

The flippant comment is my way to use cynicism to express how utterly appalled I am by what’s going on in the US.

This guy is so crass and so gormless he doesn’t hesitate for one second to spit in the face of 1.5bn Catholics in the world.

Having said that, I wouldn’t mind a picture of Trump as a dead Pope…

Someone just won a long holiday in El Salvador.

It means actual jail sentences for corporate board members and executives

I’ve been advocating exactly this for many years. One very effective way to give psychopathic corporate “persons” a sense of decency and propriety really quickly is to threaten the real persons running it with real hard time.

No, it’s the smell at the pump. Nothing to do with how the engine feeds itself. Yeah, leaded gasoline smelled different. “Sweeter” or something. Maybe it wasn’t the lead, and maybe whatever replaced the lead inside modern gasoline is what smells different, but it definitely isn’t the same.

It’s not like gasoline smelled better, it’s just that I remember smelling that smell when the entire family went on summer holidays and we kids were allowed to stretch our legs while our dad gassed up the car. Good times and good memories!

I wish US fascists restricted themselves to spreading fascism only in the US.

It’s strange how all dictatorships have the same control freak obsessions with the same things around the world, across eras:

• Obsession with squelching science and education
• Obsession with denying basic reality and facts
• Obsession with religions and cults of various kinds
• Obsession with the population’s natality
• Obsession with people’s sex habits and the contents of their pants

Trump’s regime, being a run-of-the-mill fascist dictatorship, is no different and ticks all the boxes.

USA: Thanks!
Rest of the world: And what did we do?

Fuck Trump and fuck the USA.