That is a very interesting question. If you are looking at total power bill and use electric for both heating and cooling, you’d need to separate HVAC from other electricity uses. Other stuff you do helps heat the house (except if you use a heat pump hot water heater with internal source only and a significant portion of hot water energy goes down your drain), so that reduces the winter HVAC cost but increases the summer HVAC cost. Part of cooling energy requirement goes to dehumidifying, which can require significant energy from what I understand, so straight temp comparison might not be accurate. What portion of that solar load gets inside your conditioned space is another part.
Congrats to George and Amal.
Must be nice to be offered citizenship!
I read that the T administration wants to get rid of dual citizenships.
Probably doesn’t apply to Israeli citizenship though.
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I can’t help but wonder: in the unlikely event the US abolished dual citizenship, how would they handle the situation where someone acquires a new citizenship, but refuses to pay the exit tax and jump through the hurdles to renounce their American citizenship?
Duh, seize all assets of the traitor.
Believe it or not, straight to jail. And by jail I mean CECOT.
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I’m curious what proportion would drop US citizenship
Most other countries tax individuals on a residency basis so, unlike the US, they don’t whack their citizens tax-wise if they just drop their citizenship. I have to think the US basis of taxation is a serious consideration in the decision to drop US citizenship.
I say that, not only because of the significant one time tax hit that some folks would have on renouncing their US citizenship, but also what it might mean for their future tax situation depending on their residence afterwards.
Since the US does generally give a tax credit for taxes paid to foreign jurisdictions, and since income taxes in much (most?) of the developed world are higher than US income taxes, for most people it’s not about US tax liability as much as it is about the added headache of the bureaucracy in filing US taxes as an expat.
Probably the bigger headache is in finding a bank that is willing to do business with American citizens, because of the extra reporting/compliance requirements imposed by the US on foreign banks when it comes to American citizens’ accounts.
From my days advising non-US expats on international tax planning, I can assure you there are many more legitimate ways to avoid tax for non-US citizens than for US citizens. There are tax opportunities that American citizens don’t have that could be a consideration in their decision to revoke their citizenship.
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I’m looked somewhat seriously at renouncing American citizenship once I have Canadian citizenship, but it’s non-trivial for sure, mostly due to the existence of my 401k and trying to avoid that being slashed horribly by tax implications in both nations.
I was thinking of the ex-pat Americans I know whose lives would be simpler if they dropped their US citizenship.
Wouldn’t you be partly protected by the Canada - US tax treaty? I’m assuming you’d get hit by exit taxes by the US. But I’m wondering if you’d get covered against double taxation on the Canadian side?
Well, you have to pay the higher of the two, and so I’d end up paying 25%ish to the US and 25%ish to Canada.
You can theoretically transfer it to an RRSP account to delay the Canadian taxes, but you have to do it dollar for dollar, so I’d have to have enough free cash to put the 25% of US taxes into the Canadian RRSP. Which I don’t because moving across countries is really expensive.
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I used to give a lot of advice to Americans and Canadians on strategies for their retirement savings plans on moving between Canada and the US but that was over 30 years ago so I am no longer qualified to give advice. Only comment would be that US-Canada was messier than dealing with other situations, e. g. Canada-UK transfers, where there are more accommodating rules!
The Globe and Mail has recently done several articles on US-Canada retirement savings rules which you might find helpful.
I believe there’s a proposed bill to restrict social security payments to US citizens, so one may lose out on SS if one renounces citizenship. It also creates problems for green card holders if they choose to not get citizenship, even if they paid into it for years.
I’ve been planning on $0 SS payments as part of my retirement planning, so it wouldn’t hurt to lose it, but it’s certainly another consideration. I hate what the US has become and I hate having that passport, but there is only so much financial hit I can take to get rid of it.
Amzingly, the leasehold scam in the UK is still going on.
The UK is full of these type of financial scams on the average person.
