Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well basically we are discussing IRS reporting. Let me get into this. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Retiring abroad in an uncertain world: What Frank's story in Pattaya teaches us about global policy and local risk. Under the subcategory: The Legal Blind Spots. Quoting directly: "Frank's story highlights three common oversights: Underestimating U.S. obligations: Many assume moving abroad frees them from reporting to the IRS. It doesn't."

I've talked about this article in other videos including in our long-form videos that are on Integrity News Service which is our paid news service where I get into most of these videos thus far - this is rather a new thing, we are still kind of working through it - most of these videos are coming out to be well over 40 minutes long where I get in in-depth analysis on this stuff. But we have talked about this sort of at length; it's also in a prior video we made regarding tax and issues for retirees. But Americans have a number of obligations associated with them personally. It primarily stems from frankly you could argue the 14th Amendment, but it goes to an even more fundamental level, but under the 14th Amendment, regardless of where they are at, where they are born. American citizenship it's not necessarily tied to place of birth and your citizenship - your privileges, and immunities if you will - follow you wherever you go. So as a result, you could end up with tax liability wherever you go. It also gets to the nature of our sovereignty where we the people of the United States are the sovereigns and our Congress goes into national debt, so we are all jointly in severely liable for that debt and then the Internal Revenue Service’s job is to go ahead and collect taxes in order to pay back that debt. That's kind of a deeper analysis; I've gotten into that on the paid videos. 

But long story short, what we are talking about here is yeah, there are a lot of folks that think, "oh I don't live in the US anymore; I don't have to file a tax return; or I don't have to file documentation associated with banking." Banking documentation is I would argue the more if you will “pernicious” issue for a lot of expats I think moving forward. Most folks sort of know that yeah, I need at least to file a return if for no other reason than just say I don't make anything. I don't love it either. Let me be clear, I'm not like a fan of any of this. It just is what it is. But yeah look, if you live abroad for more than 335 days you may be able to, again depending on circumstances, avail yourself of what is called the Foreign Earned Income Exemption or Exclusion which basically says if you live abroad for longer than 335 days, there is a certain cap at which you are not going to be taxed on foreign earned income. And then there are a number of other things associated with sort of the nature of any funds that may accrue to you overseas - again earned versus unearned income - and then you have investments, royalties, dividends, things of that nature, the nature of the revenue if you will is going to dictate the analysis regarding accessibility and liability regarding tax. 

That being said, and honestly the thing to take away from this video is unfortunately there was really a time, and it was mostly born of the fact that the system was not overly sophisticated, it had not been digitized; it basically couldn't track everybody down wherever they were at. You may have had liability, but they just couldn't find you. These days, we are in a very different position. I mean digitization has come along and it has strongly changed the nature of expatriation, especially for Americans. This stuff tends to follow you. Again, banking issues are going to become increasingly acute as an issue for American expats I think moving forward if for no other reason for example here in Thailand, say you are on a standard O Retirement Visa, just the basic Retirement Visa. That requires an 800,000 Baht bank balance or you have got to show income coming in. I mean if you show the income, you may be able to avoid having to do Foreign Bank Account Reporting, FBAR filings, but if you use lump sum, which the vast majority of folks I know and we deal with, do use lump sum, yeah you are going to have to deal with an FBAR filing every year, if nothing else. You may not even have to do a tax return; you just have to file that with FinCEN. 

So the thing to take away from this video is yeah, tax liability unfortunately for Americans, it's going to follow you around.