Don’s Story

A man without a country, I am sure I have heard that before? But that’s how I am feeling right now. My family and I came to Australia 32 years ago and I have been a Australian citizen for 25 years. I have paid my taxes to Australia and set my family up with a retirement superannuation or what the U.S. Would call social security. I have been contacted by my bank about FATCA a few weeks ago, because my accounts had more then $50,000 dollars in them. So of course you start researching FATCA and the more you read the scary it gets, the IRS have the power to ruin your life by a country that you haven’t lived in for 32 years. Thanks to the US blackmailing the Australian government and banks to give banking details about US citizens living in Australia. Or threat of a 30% tax on any business that a Australian Bank might do in the US, well when push comes to shove the Australian government and banks rolled over and threw the American expats under the bus? (Look at FATCA in 4 minutes on YouTube) I had a meeting the other day with a attorney about my superannuation as the US want to tax it. He assured me that he could get my superannuation through the IRS with out any US tax, I can’t tell you how relieved I was, until he mentioned his fee of $30,000 plus. See why I feel like a man with out a country? A country that I was very proud to say I was from and then a country that I have lived in for the last 32 years and a citizen for 25 years and then the accountants and lawyers hovering over there prey like a rabbit on the run. The Australian public wouldn’t know about this as most Americans would be embarrassed to say their home country is hunting them down like a criminal hiding money from them ( sure? teachers, farmers,tradesmen,average Australian people living in Australia) and then being sold out by Australian government and the big banks because of the 30% big stick the US is holding over them. I think maybe the Australian public don’t realise that every dollar the IRS sucks out of economy here in Australia is their money, money that would be taxed here or spent into the economy, and the sad thing is that it’s happening all over the world, there is close to 8 million American expats in the world.

— Don

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