Americans Living Abroad

Are you a citizen of the United States who lives abroad? You probably know that the U.S.A. is one of only two countries that applies citizenship based taxation in order to tax its own citizens on their worldwide income, irrespective of where they live or work anywhere in the world. If you're thinking about becoming a digital nomad or expatriating to another country, do you know how to avoid having to pay tax on your income while abroad? There could be huge penalties or tax evasion charges if you don't file correctly. Fortunately, these important questions have answers. By combining the right strategies for citizenship, residency, banking, incorporation, and physical presence in other countries, most people who work overseas can legally lower their U.S. tax owing to $0. In U.S. Taxes for Worldly Americans, Certified Public Accountant, U.S. immigrant, expat, and perpetual traveler Olivier Wagner preaches the philosophy of being a worldly American. He uses his expertise to show you how to use 100% legal strategies (beyond traditionally maligned "tax havens") to keep your income and assets safe from the IRS. Olivier covers a wealth of international tax information, including: 1. Step-by-step instructions to fill out the Forms and Schedules you will use to file your offshore tax, no matter where you are. 2. How to qualify for special deductions, credits, and exemptions on international taxation. 3. Why opening bank accounts and corporations in foreign countries is easier than you think. 4. How residency or citizenship in another country can legally lower your taxes. 5. Practical advice for moving, living, and working with tax free income in other parts of the world. 6. What to consider before renouncing your American citizenship and saying goodbye to the IRS for good. As a non-resident American, there is no single easy answer to lower your taxes. If you don't understand every possibility, you could end up paying too much. Embrace a worldly lifestyle with confidence as you master the U.S. tax system for Americans living overseas.

A New York Post Best Book of 2016 Winner of the 2016 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award Winner of the 2016 Hay Festival Medal for Prose "Destined to become a classic." —Lisa Shea, Elle A masterpiece of war reportage, The Morning They Came for Us bears witness to one of the most brutal internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawing from years of experience covering Syria for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the front page of the New York Times, award-winning journalist Janine di Giovanni chronicles a nation on the brink of disintegration, all written through the perspective of ordinary people. With a new epilogue, what emerges is an unflinching picture of the horrific consequences of armed conflict, one that charts an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war zone. The result is an unforgettable testament to resilience in the face of nihilistic human debasement.

An American college student traveling around Europe on a bicycle with two friends arrived at a recent July 4th celebration in Moscow and remarked, "We've been traveling around Europe and Russia for almost a month now. I never thought I'd be saying this, but I never wanted to see and hear Americans so much in my life. That would be so corny back home. But here it just seems right" (Hartford Courant, July 5, 1989, p. A2). Apparently you can take an American out of America, but you cannot take America out of an American-and perhaps this notion applies to other migrants as well. This is a book that explores the experience of Americans abroad, specifi cally those who are living in other countries of the developed world with a lower standard of living than that of the United States. This study compares the travels and travails of emigrants to Australia and Israel and seeks to apply a social psychological perspective to address three questions: (1) What accounts for the motivation of migrants to move? (2) What are the sources of the adjustment problems the migrants experience? (3) What explains whether the migrants re main or return to the United States? Ideally, it would be best to devise one instrument to gather data on repre sentative samples of Americans living in a variety of countries abroad, but such an effort is beyond the resources of most researchers-including us.

Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Magazine and The Progressive "A deeply honest and brave portrait of of an individual sensibility reckoning with her country's violent role in the world." —Hisham Matar, The New York Times Book Review In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul. Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a mythical city perched between East and West, and with a naïve sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her many years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures and histories and politics. But the greatest, most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country—and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline. It would take leaving her home to discover what she came to think of as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world. She came to understand that anti-Americanism is not a violent pathology. It is, Hansen writes, “a broken heart . . . A one-hundred-year-old relationship.” Blending memoir, journalism, and history, and deeply attuned to the voices of those she met on her travels, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America’s place in the world. It is a powerful journey of self-discovery and revelation—a profound reckoning with what it means to be American in a moment of grave national and global turmoil.

Today more than ever, large numbers of Americans are leaving the United States. It is estimated that by the end of the decade, some 10 million of the brightest and most talented Americans, representing an estimated $136 billion in wages, will be living and working overseas. This emigration trend contradicts the internalized myth of America as the land of affluence, opportunity, and freedom. What is behind this trend? Wennersten argues that many people these days, from college students to retirees, are uncertain or ambivalent about what it means to be an American. For example, many are uncomfortable with that they believe America has come to represent to the rest of the world. At the same time, globalization and advances in technology have enabled the growth of a telecommuting work force whose members can live in one country and work in another, and this trend, among other factors, has encouraged a new generation of people to respond to the pull of global citizenship. Leaving America is an important reexamination of one of the most central stories in the history of American culture—the story of the immigrant coming to the Promised Land. While millions still come to America and millions more still wish to do so, there is an important counterflow of emigration from America to distant parts of the planet. This book focuses on modern American expatriates as a significant and heretofore largely ignored counterpoint phenomenon every bit as central to understanding modern America as is the image of a nation of immigrants. The greatest irony in America today may well be that while argument and discord prevail in the edifice of American democracy about diversity, economic justice, equality, and the Iraq War, many of the most thoughtful citizens have already left the building.

Overseas Americans is the essential handbook for U.S. citizens living or working abroad. It contains vital information and actual documents from all the government agencies that you as an expatriate will have to deal with, including the IRS, State Department, Customs, and Social Security Administration. Find answers to all your questions about living or working abroad before you go: must I pay U.S. taxes? What travel documents, visas or work permits will I need? Is my destination safe for Americans? What should I do if I'm arrested in a foreign country? Can I lose my U.S. citizenship by living overseas? Will my health insurance be good? Can I vote in U.S. elections while living abroad? In addition to answering these and other frequently asked questions, this invaluable guide provides an annotated list of the 100 most helpful Web sites for Americans abroad, as well as the password to a special Web site just for readers of Overseas Americans. Don't leave home without this book!