I saw some posts about american wanting to move to Europe; so just before you guys make the move, double-triple check insurances/banks, because literally every time I (not american) do smth financially related in France, they ask me if I am american? If yes, they won’t even open accounts/ give me insurance etc… Sounds discriminatory but apperently because legal
I dont know if that expands to any other field
EDIT: lol i am now wondering what are people are downvoting for? You dont like that fact, so you downvote whoever told you that fact? Some reactions are hilarious
american in europe here,
this is true. it’s very nearly impossible to open a bank account. There is exactly one bank in Switzerland who allows americans to open accounts, UBS. So far no banks in france have allowed me to open an account, even though I have a french residency permit. This makes it nearly impossible to take loans to buy things like houses or cars. Basically life here is impossible because being american fucking sucks.
You have residency, but do you have an official French ID, like a police ID? In Finland at least the residency permit does not count as a valid ID and you have to get a separate one (like a driver’s license or police ID) in order to for example open a bank account.
That’s crazy. I never had any of these issues living in Japan. Why does the EU make it so much harder than Japan does?
Open an account at Service CU out of NH. Designed to work in Europe (IBAN, free foreign ATMs, etc). Everyone who works for the state department gets it, and afaik it’s open to the public.
iban thing is nice, do you know if you can finance cars or homes? right now i have to have to drive around a beater because no european bank = no loan
Never tried that. Worth emailing their rep probably.
I’ve used ServiceCU for more than 20 years and yes you can buy cars and such through them
thanks! I’m going to check them out.
Renounce your citizenship.
i don’t have a second citizenship to fall back on, so i’d be stateless. also, i can’t afford to since you have to pay all the taxes on potential income for the next 10 years or something
Only people who make more than 200k/year or have more than 2 million in unrealized taxable assets have to pay an expatriation tax.
There is no paying future taxes as that’d be asinine.
You only have to pay taxes for 10 years after expatriation if you set foot on US soil for more than 30 days during that period.
TIL, i thought i read that 10 year tax thing somewhere. probably just bs i saw online and didn’t look into it
I would absolutely talk to an embassy or at least an international tax professional before making decisions and not rely on Lemmy.