U. S. Expats Are Revealing The "We're Being Scammed" Realizations They Had After Moving Abroad

[DFW]

59. Ignorance is bliss

I get all sorts of rebuttals from armchair internet warriors quoting this website or that website, showing me how full of crap I am, even though I speak German (and 8 other European languages), live here, married to a German, and contend with a tax nightmare you can't believe (the Double Taxation Treaty is full of holes that put me in an effective 73% income tax bracket). I FINALLY have an ally in the US Senate (as of yesterday!) who will push for residence-based taxation (i.e. you pay taxes where you live, regardless of your nationality), putting the USA in line with the rest of the world (except Eritrea). German taxes are theoretically only a max of 42%, but when you count all the supplemental add-ons, it's a de facto 50%. In Texas, where my income is, I paid the 39.6% US top rate. OK, I knew about and accepted the higher German rate when I moved there. I was NOT prepared for the USA to take out a certain portion of my income as taxes no matter what, and then have the Germans say, "that's your problem, not ours, we're taxing that income again." I have been arguing with them for 13 years, and since the question is too complicated for the German bureaucrats, they keep burying it until the next case worker comes along, who decides they can't handle it either, and buries it again. Welcome to EU bureaucracy.