I’ve been a US expat in Canada for 21 years, and I can say the time and stress of US citizen based tax law is extreme. But every year I do it, send tons of info to the IRS, because I knew the laws, but I would love this burden being removed. I am not super wealthy, my net worth is ~$3 million which is from
decades of a high savings/investment rate into primary retirement accounts and equity in my principal residence.
On a side note, another draconian US expat tax law, the US will tax US citizens on capital gains over the US limit on the sale of your foreign principal residence. Crazy right. Don’t live the US, maybe never have, but if you have US citizenship, accidentally or not, or a green card, they can tax you on the sale of a principle residence located outside US jurisdiction.
The US/Canada tax treaty is good in the sense I rarely pay double tax, except for some special circumstances (stock options), but it is a ton of paperwork, information, and stress that I didn’t mess something up. I worked in Germany for a couple of years, and when I wasn’t a Canadian tax resident (I am also a Canadian citizen) the Canadian Revenue Agency didn’t care about my German income and I didn’t have to file any information for it. It was bliss. But of course the US IRS cared. This tax filing years were nightmares.
> I am not super wealthy, my net worth is ~$3 million
It's worth noting that this is the 96th percentile for net worth in the United States. Maybe by "super wealthy" we only mean the 97th, 98th, and 99th percentiles?
The traditional solution of the US government to prevent this was to make you pay thousands of dollars to do it. So much that Germany, which normally doesn't allow dual citizenship, would make an exception on the basis that it was financially impossible for low earners.
They've now come up with an even better solution, which is to force you to go to an in person appointment, but also to ban you from doing so due to covid. Problem solved!
Yeah this is an option. There is a fee and and exit tax audit. But I travel to the US frequently for visiting family and business and I worry renouncing would lead to border crossing troubles. Im not living outside the US because Im anti US. It’s just where my career took me and then I met my spouse, bought a house, had kids, etc. I don’t want to give up the citizenship of my birth country. So I will complain about the draconian US tax laws but I will probably just endure them for the rest of my life.
what do you mean by "On contract". I will certainly not be an employee as company don't have registered office in Germany. but do i need to do any special registration at Finanzamt?
If there are 190k Russian troops amassed at the border of Ukraine, wouldn’t this be an opportune time to take them all out? Trade offs being ethics and retaliatory considerations. I mean what is the end game here? Back to the status quo? Russian history has proven over and over again they will never likely be an open and forthcoming ally of the “west” for very long.
Russian history has proven over and over again they will never likely be an open and forthcoming ally of the “west” for very long.
If you restrict 'The West' to being 'Europe Only' rather than the 'US plus Europe' as has been the case since 1945, you'll find that Russia has been an ally of countries in Europe more often than not.
Like the British, Russia has also tended to act as the Balance of Power over the years, working with France/Britain against Germany in WW1 and WW2, and with Britain and Prussia against the French during the Napoleonic Wars.
Hmm. I had never thought of the 'Balance of Power' bit before regarding the period since 1945, but that seems to be the case since then also, in balancing the current hegemon (the US) as it did before against previous hegemons, Germany and France.
That indeed suggests itself as an obvious solution, except that they have nukes. Anyone who wishes to exterminate that number of troops would have to do it in such a way, that NATO couldn't be implicated at all. Otherwise we're risking a civilization-ending MAD scenario.
The bypass stent is interesting. Was that relatively recent? I heard of ALT and SLT, both laser therapies as I understand it, for iop conditions. I’m wondering about the effectiveness of laser therapy versus a stent.
I actually have IOP problems and have discussed these treatments with my dr. The answer is really it depends. In my case, the problem is that the little channels which drain the fluid are too small and get clogged by debris from my flaky retina (so it's two problems coming together to make one big problem). I could get a laser treatment to burn and widen those channels, but it generally lasts for a year or two and then you have to do it again. The high powered laser additionally can burn your retina as it diffuses through the vitreous. A stent doesn't have those problems, but it does come with some chance of complications. For now I'm managing just fine with eyedrops. It's annoying to have to put them in every day, but they definitely work. One side effect is that my iris might turn brown after some more months, sadly.
Several years ago. Germany is extremely strong in ophthalmologic surgery - I've heard something like 3 of the top 10 eye clinics in the world are here in Berlin, though I doubt such broad measurements are really meaningful - and I think several MIGS devices were approved here a few years before elsewhere in the world.
I think laser therapies were avoided in this case because the patient was young.
If the two cups of coffee are for one person, I don’t think you want them at the same time, one might get cold.
I think you can start to heat again sometime during the drip phase. Start to enjoy your first cup while the 2nd cup is heating. Then the time between 2 cups being ready is shorter than option 1 and not at the same time as in option 2.
For ultimately path-dependent reasons. In my storage unit, I have a Chemex, burr grinder, and thermos, so when I want drip I tend to make a 'pot'.
I was nomadic for a couple of years, and brought along a hand grinder and a Hario V60 O1. Despite being "sedentary" for almost a year and a half, this is still how I make coffee: I've been reluctant to duplicate my entire kitchen, and never got around to shipping everything I own across the ocean.
Which turns out to be a good thing, since I'm heading back to the mainland. But yeah, definitely make individual cups of drip!
On a side note, another draconian US expat tax law, the US will tax US citizens on capital gains over the US limit on the sale of your foreign principal residence. Crazy right. Don’t live the US, maybe never have, but if you have US citizenship, accidentally or not, or a green card, they can tax you on the sale of a principle residence located outside US jurisdiction.
The US/Canada tax treaty is good in the sense I rarely pay double tax, except for some special circumstances (stock options), but it is a ton of paperwork, information, and stress that I didn’t mess something up. I worked in Germany for a couple of years, and when I wasn’t a Canadian tax resident (I am also a Canadian citizen) the Canadian Revenue Agency didn’t care about my German income and I didn’t have to file any information for it. It was bliss. But of course the US IRS cared. This tax filing years were nightmares.