What's Taxes Got To Do With It?

The IRS probably has a ton to do with it. Over the past few years, a lot of Americans living overseas -- and in Switzerland, in particular -- have been handing in their passport, because our backward ass government has made their lives hell. They passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act in 2009. It has made it really expensive, and intrusive, for American citizens to bank in Switzerland. There have been a ton of Americans renouncing their US citizenship in Switzerland (but other places, too), and the majority of them are long-time expats -- like Tina Turner -- who just want to live their lives without the U.S. making it more difficult for them to do something as simple as have a bank account where they live. On top of the fact that a lot of banks won't deal with them now, it makes filing your U.S. taxes (and the U.S. is the only country that taxes its citizens for income they earn elsewhere, while living out of the country, in the first place) harder -- you have to file a very intrusive form laying out not just your income, but all of your assets.

She probably didn't want to deal with the BS anymore, and I am not sure why anyone would blame her.

 

You really should step away. ...

She pays Swiss taxes. Really high taxes, actually.

In addition, she has been paying American taxes for the past 18 years -- probably several million a year. The U.S. is the only country that taxes its citizens for income earned while living outside the country. She has given a boatload of money over the years to the U.S. that she wouldn't have had to pay any other country if she was a citizen of it, because no other country taxes their citizens for money that wasn't earned there.

Her tax bill is going to go down now. But if this was primarily driven by that couple of million dollars of U.S. taxes she is paying each year, she would have done it years ago.

My educated guess is that the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act has more to do with this than anything. This has been an ongoing issue for Americans living abroad, and it's why more Americans have handed over their passports in the past 2 years than at any time.

When it was pay taxes to the U.S. and keep the U.S. passport, she might not have cared.

When it is, "Your local banks are telling you they can't afford to keep you as a customer anymore, because dealing with the U.S. has become too much of a hassle for them," and your accountant is bitching about the Form 8938 you have to file that makes your taxes a nightmare -- and you aren't even living in the country. ... it may have been the last straws, as it has been for a lot of Americans living abroad.

Look at our arcane tax code. .... or tell Tina Turner to fuck herself, because Ike beat her, because that makes perfect sense.