The Democrats Abroad Taxation Task Force visited Congressional offices from May 15-19 to continue conversations on tax reform for Americans abroad. This report serves as a summary of the meetings attended.
Overall achievements from the door knock included:
- 25 meetings over 5 days
- 14 Democratic offices
- 9 Republican offices
- 13 House offices
- 10 Senate offices
- 3 non-Congressional meetings
Top issues for discussion included:
- Residency Based Taxation
- Combining the FATCA & FBAR forms into one form
- GILTI and its impact on small and medium sized American business owners abroad
- Expanding Direct File to include Americans abroad for the 2025 tax filing season
- Punitive tax compliance issues for non-US pensions and savings accounts (especially the Australian Superannuation, UK SIPPs, and Canadian TFSAs)
- Barriers to being able to open a US bank account from abroad
- Re-opening Tax Attachés abroad
The barriers that exist to progress on American abroad tax issues include:
- Identifying a House Republican champion, a Senate Democrat champion, and a Senate Republican champion. Currently, we have Donald Beyer (VA-08) in the House who is on the Ways & Means Committee (the tax writing committee in the House) as a champion of our tax issues. However, in order to demonstrate support for a bill, it requires a lead in each Congressional chamber, in both parties, and who is a member of the tax writing committee to help a bill progress through to passing. Even going into Democratic offices, they ask if any specific Republican offices support these issues. Without identifying a champion on both sides, it is difficult to take the next required steps to pass a bill.
- Neither Democrats or Republicans have introduced Senate companion versions of the House American abroad bills (H.R.2729 - Commission on Americans Living Abroad Act of 2023 and H.R.5432 - Tax Simplification for Americans Abroad Act).
- Progress on these bills is limited without more constituents abroad contacting their Members of Congress to express support and/or explain the problems and issues they face to compel Congress to take action.
- In order to combat the perception that Americans move abroad to evade taxes, it would help to get more coverage to raise awareness of the reality in DC focused press.
The Taxation Task Force will return to Washington DC in September to continue conversations and work on progressing tax legislation for Americans abroad.
5 things you can do to help us fix the tax and financial access issues for Americans abroad:
- Register to vote at votefromabroad.org and cast your ballot in this year's critical election.
- Sign up for the Taxation Task Force mailing list, bookmark our emails from [email protected], and take action everytime we email you. (We don't send emails unless absolutely necessary, so it's worth reading when we do email you!)
- Contact the IRS and tell them to stop treating your non-US pension like a foreign trust (deadline is July 8!)
- Ask your House rep to co-sponsor the Americans Abroad Simplified Filing Bill
- Ask your House rep to join the Americans Abroad Caucus