Americans in NL urged to back citizenship-based tax campaign
Americans living permanently in the Netherlands and those who are only American by birth are being urged to help fund a lobby campaign against citizenship-based taxation, which means they are required to file taxes in the US even if they no longer live there.
Last year a group of American expats living in several different countries began the groundwork for a legal challenge to the the application of US citizenship-based taxation on Americans who are living outside the country.
Now Fabien Lehagre of the Association of Accidental Americans in Paris has launched a campaign to raise funds to ‘unite expatriate and accidental Americans’ to fight citizenship based taxation and carry out lobbying activities in the US.
‘It we can mobilise a few hundred thousand of the nine million American expatriates in the world, we will be able to achieve a lot because we all have one and the same objective, to put an end to citizen-based taxation,’ Lehagre said.
Lehagre and the AAA have campaigned on behalf of people who find themselves with US citizenship against their will for the past seven years.
So far, the group has raised over €38,000 of a target of $100,000 to help fund a publicity and lobby campaign. ‘We hope as many expatriate Americans as possible will support our approach and convince others to join in,’ he said.
Americans living overseas are required to report their assets annually to the Internal Revenue Service – the US tax office. The law impacts both current citizens and those with residency status, some of whom aren’t even aware they’re technically Americans.
Americans, accidental or otherwise, are fighting against FACTA
One American national in the Netherlands, who only lived in the country until she was six months old, told Dutch News she is being forced to make a lot of costs to either resign her US citizenship or file taxes in the US because she is technically American.
‘I am Dutch and I do not feel American at all,’ she said. ‘I have never benefited from anything based on my US citizenship.’
Not told
Jet B, who was born in the US but moved backed to the Netherlands with her Dutch parents when she was seven, told Dutch News that that the US imposes citizenship based taxation without ever informing those who are involved.
‘How were we ever to know of this law if the IRS doesn’t inform you or your Dutch parents? We never knew,’ she said. ‘Had we known we would have renounced our US nationality as soon as we turned 18.’
‘Citizenship taxation and FATCA (which requires American nationals to report their assets to the IRS every year) are ruining our lives, personally and financially,’ she said. ‘I’m certainly not proud of my US citizenship any more. I wish I had renounced it ages ago, but now it is too expensive.’
Jet, who helped found the Accidental Americans’ group in the Netherlands says the US should join the rest of the world with residency-based taxation.
‘Those US citizens with lots of money, the millionaires and the billionaires hire attorneys and other consultants. They know exactly how to hide their money,’ she said. ‘Instead CBT and FACTA are harming a lot of innocent people abroad. They are not catching the big fish.’
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