On September 6, 2019, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced a new procedure that allows certain non-compliant US citizens who relinquished their US citizenship to become US tax compliant. This procedure is geared towards ‘Accidental Americans’ who were unaware of their US tax obligations. Under this procedure, no US social security number is required. The […]

The Swiss employee pension plan (known as the 2nd pillar pension), is, from a US tax perspective, a funded non-qualified foreign pension plan.  As such, contributions employees make to the plan are non-deductible from a US perspective and the company contributions to employee plans are considered taxable wages. We include the growth in the plan as […]

So, you feel lucky that you are not an American citizen, with the tax headaches that a citizenship-based system bestows upon the not so lucky US expatriate. Not so fast. Even though you are not an American, you may not be safe from Uncle Sam’s long tax arms. Below are five instances where he could still […]

We have blogged in the past about the general expatriation rules and proposed regulations concerning covered expatriates. Today, we thought we would dig a little deeper and alert the reader to some specific issues that they should be aware of prior to giving up their US citizenship. First and foremost, one should take steps to […]

In 2015 Congress approved the Internal Revenue Service’s use of private collection agencies. The IRS is finally rolling this out, starting in April 2017.  To help prevent scams, the IRS has stated it will always notify taxpayers first that their debt is being transferred to one of the approved agencies. Below is a list of the approved […]

Please note: The details contained in this post have been reviewed and remain correct as at February 2020. While many US tax treaties have the same or similar language in them, one needs to pay attention, as the devil is in the detail. One such instance is how social security and pension distributions are treated in […]

The US tax system is complex to say the least, and individual variables for each person are what makes the preparation of each tax return unique. Hard as it is to believe in the current climate, there are still Americans living abroad who do not think they have to file tax returns to the IRS at all, […]