Paul Sullivan for the New York Times writes: Living and working abroad may sound romantic. But having a financial life in more than one country — if one of those countries is the United States — is becoming increasingly complicated.
Managing an international financial life was once solely the purview of the superrich, who jetted around the world. But given the still-high unemployment rate in the United States, opportunities for middle-class jobs abroad, in areas like finance, oil and construction, are becoming more appealing.
By taking those jobs, though, many middle- and upper-middle-class Americans have found it more and more difficult to comply with requirements on reporting the existence and value of bank accounts overseas and to reconcile the taxes of different countries.
At the same time, Americans from immigrant families who have bank accounts in their home countries that they may have overlooked are being swept up by the same laws used to ferret out millionaires and billionaires stashing money in secret Swiss accounts. The Internal Revenue Service has increased its examination of such accounts, lawyers said, with serious penalties for those who have not reported them.
So how should Americans working abroad or with a financial life in two countries manage their finances?
BASIC CONFUSION One of the great enemies of people working abroad is bad advice, especially since there are fewer sources to counter misinformation thousands of miles from home.
For example, Americans working abroad are eligible for the foreign earned income exclusion, which in 2012 exempted the first $95,100 from tax. But even if Americans earn less than that or are paying higher taxes in the country where they are working, they still need to file a tax return with the I.R.S.
“Some think if you’re paying taxes in Germany and the Netherlands and the taxes are higher than in the U.S., you don’t have to file a return,” said Ian M. Comisky, partner at the law firm Blank Rome and co-author of “Tax Fraud and Evasion.” “That’s not accurate. You have to file a U.S. return, and you get a credit for it.”
Increased I.R.S. scrutiny of bank accounts abroad under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which began to take effect this year, means foreign banks must report more information on American account holders. Mr. Comisky said he had received calls from people with undeclared overseas accounts who asked if they could transfer the money to a friend who was not an American citizen and have that person transfer it back to them as a gift to avoid the penalties from years of not paying their taxes.
“I said, ‘You can do it, but it’s illegal,’ ” Mr. Comisky said. “That’s pure tax evasion.”
There is also the issue of other countries’ taxes that the United States does not recognize. Marylouise Serrato, executive director of American Citizens Abroad, a lobbying group, said many wealth, social and value-added taxes in Europe were not eligible for credits or deductions on American taxes. “They could be a significant part of your foreign tax bill, but you can’t apply them to your U.S. taxes, so you just pay them,” she said.
While making mistakes on taxes is common, Frank Reilly, president of Reilly Financial Advisors, which has had an office in Saudi Arabia since the 1970s, said people working abroad also often made poor decisions about real estate.
With homes in the United States, there are two common problems. One is the logistical challenge of renting out a home you own from thousands of miles away. The other is deciding to buy a retirement home somewhere in the United States when you plan to work abroad for many more years. By the time you stop working, you may not want to live there.
The most financially destructive real estate problem comes when income and mortgagepayments are in different currencies. “When someone in the United States takes out a mortgage, they know that their payment is $1,300,” Mr. Reilly said. “When they take out a mortgage in euros, it could be 1,300 euros. That could be $1,500 or $1,800 or $2,300. They’re exposed to currency fluctuations.”
Mr. Reilly said he counseled clients to imagine what a shift in the exchange rate could mean to them and asked some to consider putting many months of payments in that currency as a hedge.
ACCOUNT COMPLICATIONS While new American reporting requirements are meant to catch tax evaders, they are causing problems for people simply making a living abroad.
Ms. Serrato said her group had heard of many instances of Americans abroad having their accounts closed in the United States because the banks did not want to deal with the reporting requirements. On the other end, she has heard that opening accounts in different countries has become more difficult.
“We support the crackdown on tax evasion, but there has been a lot of blanket legislation put out there that can hit the unknowing or the unwitting,” she said.
Foreign pension plans, for instance, are not considered tax-exempt under American law. Americans are required to report the plans to the I.R.S. as they would bank or investment accounts. Failure to do so carries harsh penalties.
“If you’re a person who didn’t know your pension account needed to be reported but you reported your checking and savings account,” Ms. Serrato said, “now you’re faced with criminal penalties for a filing error and you could end up paying a penalty that could wipe out 50 percent of that account.”
The I.R.S. put a streamlined procedure in place in September for people working abroad who owe less than $1,500 in back taxes on these plans. People who owe more than that will be treated as “higher risk” cases, the I.R.S. said.
There is now a third, voluntary disclosure program in place for people with unreported money offshore. But now that the offshore inquiry has gone beyond traditional tax havens like Switzerland, lawyers said that immigrants and their children were coming under scrutiny. The increased attention on the Middle East and Asia for tax evaders — or terrorist financiers — is raising concern among people who have accounts in their home countries that they never thought to declare in the United States.
Robert J. Kipnees, a partner at the law firm Lowenstein Sandler, said he recently worked with two clients who had accounts at Bank Leumi in Israel, after the bank notified them that the I.R.S. was asking for all of its account information on American citizens.
“It’s not just high-net-worth people,” he said. “You have people who are first- and second-generation Americans whose families left money behind in the old country and they did not know they had an interest in the account.”
PROPER PLANNING Americans who spend their entire career working abroad will probably not be eligible for much, if anything, from Social Security since they cannot contribute to it while working abroad. This puts a premium on saving on their own and creating a realistic financial plan.
Charles Crew, a chemical engineer, and his wife worked in Saudi Arabia for 36 years until they retired to Minneapolis. Mr. Crew, 62, said that when he was around 40 he realized he was not going to be able to count on Social Security. So he began saving through the plans offered by his employer, the oil company Saudi Aramco. “They had a qualified retirement plan and a 401(k) plan, and both were administered by Vanguard in dollars,” he said.
Like many expatriates who became used to living somewhere with far lower costs — and spending like tourists when they returned to the United States — Mr. Crew said he needed to adjust his expectations quickly and stick to the financial plan he had put together.
“You get excited being back and say, ‘I lived away — I should be able to treat myself,’ ” Mr. Crew said. “You can, but you need to look at some of these things and their impact on the long term and do that without the emotional element to it.”
That’s sound advice for anyone.