But I find it strange that you don't have a "citizen abroad" representative, I don't know how many of US citizen live abroad but since, as you say it, you pay taxes you should have some representation. Here in France we have 11 representative for expatriates and I always thought it would be the same anywhere.
Sadly, it's pretty rare.
There are exemptions which are pretty low and clearly don't cover the above examples. Plus you still have to do the overly onerous reporting of all your bank accounts. Ultimately the winners are the accountants.
It's not justified at all by services that the US does for overseas citizens, many countries do that without needing a draconian tax system for non-resident citizens.
I think it sort of comes down to Americans believing that you must be up to something dodgy if you want to live in another country :)
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/bor...
Not really. You get to offset foreign taxes and exempt more income than most US residents earn.
The filing requirements are sort of onerous, the taxation isn't.
I can see where it is sort of punitive to pay taxes on a large capital gain that has nothing to do with the US, but when you are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of such income you are talking about outliers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Individ...
As a side note, the biggest difference seems to be how countries treat foreign income.
Almost every country that has Income Taxes will tax any local income.
But there's a lot of variance on what they do for foreign income.
I moved abroad in the middle of this year and cancelled my US health insurance when I became eligible for NHS care. I'm realising now that there isn't a way to get a 1095-B from a government-run healthcare system that isn't in the US. Should I just pay the penalty for not having health insurance in the UK?
And as for voting, why? I have no representative to vote for.
https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal-m...
If you honestly see no benefit of your US citizenship, or the costs outweigh the benefits, it sounds like you should change your citizenship status, perhaps to the country you're a resident in, or maybe move back to the US.
Social Security is not a savings plan no matter how much you would like to think it is.