The US has a big exemption and credit for foreign taxes.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

The filing requirements for US expats are onerous, they are hardly "pretty screwed" when it comes to earning income.

As an expat let me tell you how screwed I am.

1) Some banks to want to deal with the liabilities of American clients (even dual citizens). There have been many cases were they simply said that all Americans must withdraw all of their money in a month and that they are no longer welcome to open an account [1]

2) I must report ALL of my money located abroad (since I am worth more than $10,000). That includes; bank account, pension fund, joint bank accounts (even with a non-American spouse), tax account after working at least once as a contractor, etc. No free tax software deals with all of that, so I must pay an American tax accountant located in my country a yearly I-am-an-American fee. If there is any mistake I could be fined up to half of everything that I own in America and in my country. [2]

3) Since I am lucky enough to have another citizenship, if I want to get rid of my American one, I will have to pay several thousand dollars to do that. [3] And there have been several cases were it has been more difficult for those people to receive visas to visit America.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/07/31/most-f...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2012/06/04/fbar-penal...

[3] http://nomadcapitalist.com/2015/11/16/renounce-fee-relinquis...

I assume you mean "Some banks don't want to deal with". I have also have heard of this problem in some countries. Fortunately I live in the UK and I am unaware of any bank there that is rejecting US citizens.

Since you are referring to a $10,000 limit I assume you mean FBAR (rather than FACTA as that has a $200k limit combined across all accounts for non-residents). If so, have you looked at filing it yourself? It is really quite easy, just a bit time consuming to fill all the address details in the first time ( after which you can just copy and update it every year).

And yes, the increased fee is a joke. Do you have a source for people having visa problems? I've not heard about that but I'm interested to know more.

To be a little bit clearer, it's a big-ish exemption (~$100k) OR credit for foreign taxes. You choose.

The foreign earned income exclusion only applies to salary. Lots of people have their own company and invoice clients. In these cases FEIE may not apply depending on how money is taken out of the company. It gets complicated quick :).

If you've formed your own company you can generally structure it in such a way that you're able to claim the FEIE. Self-employed people can also claim the FEIE even though they're not necessarily receiving a (W-2) salary.

> In the UK you only become a full tax resident after ~90 days (or something like that - I didn't deal with it).

183 days (Income Tax Act 2007 section 831 (1) (b))

haha no. If only it were that simple.

The 183 is the point where you're guaranteed to be a resident, but you can become one much earlier based on HMRC6 [1].

My employer brought in tax experts for this & they determined that I'd flunk after 90 days.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

This changed in 2013 when the Statutory Residence Test was introduced.

This (step 1). But keep in mind that even with a double tax agreement in place there are limits. Under the FEIE, salary beyond about $100k will be subject to double taxation (bar deductions):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_earned_income_exclusio...