US Senate Finance Hearing Affects Americans Abroad AKA Mini-Multinationals – Action Needed!

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Introduction

The background: The US Senate Finance Committee has begun hearings for the purpose of discussing further reform of the rules of International Tax. These reforms would appear to include raising the GILTI tax and raising US corporate tax rates in general. Each of these would have a massive negative effect on Americans abroad. The reasons are detailed in the rest of this post.

Bottom line: Americans abroad need to send their views (presumably objections) to the Committee. The rest of this post provides the background, SEAT’s understanding of the issue and templates individuals can use to email Senate Finance.

Please forward this post to anybody who you believe would be affected by this (anybody who runs a small business through a corporation.)

Okay ….

The Background – SEAT’s Statement On March 24, 2021…

On March 24, 2021 SEAT published a post on its site that included:

The Senate Committee on Finance has scheduled a hearing to hear testimony on “How U.S. International Tax Policy Impacts American Workers, Jobs, and Investment.” The focus of this hearing will be on how US taxation of multinational corporations affects incentives to hire domestic US workers and invest capital in US businesses. The issues of US citizens living outside the US will likely not be mentioned at all. However, it is important that Congress ensures that policies aimed at US multinationals do not adversely impact American entrepreneurs living (and doing business) outside the US. Americans living overseas help increase goodwill towards the US and increased opportunities for US firms to market overseas. It is in the interest of the US economy for Congress to fix the problems faced by American emigrants due to the US extraterritorial policy of citizenship-based taxation. See below for how you can have your statement added to the record of this hearing.

The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, March 25, 2021, at 9:30 a.m Eastern time.

More information about the hearing is available at this link. It is our understanding that the hearing will be live streamed at the same link.

SEAT’s Statement And Call To Action After Having Seen The Hearing

After The Hearing: SEATDescribes It’s Interpretation And Provides Templates For Americans Abroad To Respond!!

On 25 March 2021 the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on “How U.S. International Tax Policy Impacts American Workers, Jobs, and Investment .” You can read more about the hearing and the experts providing testimony in our previous post. As mentioned in that post, there is an opportunity to give the Committee your feedback on the impact of U.S. International Tax Policy on the lives of Americans who live outside of the U.S.

SEAT has submitted a statement to the Committee. You can read it here. We encourage you to provide your own personal statement. Unless Congress hears from actual Americans living overseas, they will certainly continue to ignore the effects of U.S. international tax policy on the lives of US citizens around the globe. If you don’t know how to get started, you can download one of our templates and edit it to fit your personal situation. Your submission must be received no later than 7 April 2021 – so don’t delay!

How You Can Submit A Statement

SEAT has prepared five templates to assist you in drafting your submission to the Committee. Download the one that most closely matches your circumstances and edit the file to add your name and address as well as any further detail you’d like to provide the Committee on how U.S. extraterritorial taxation is affecting you personally. Personal stories have much more impact than form letters, so we encourage you to edit the templates. It is very important that the Committee receive a large number of submissions, so even if you don’t want to add your own story, please make a submission.

  1. General Template
  2. Template for those running small business outside of the U.S.
  3. Template for Accidental Americans
  4. Template for long term emigrants from the U.S.
  5. Template for temporary or recent U.S. expats
  6. Template for Renunciants

Once you’ve downloaded and edited one of the templates listed above, send it via email to Statementsfortherecord@finance.senate.gov. Be sure you have followed the submission guidelines at https://www.finance.senate.gov/hearings/how-us-international-tax-policy-impacts-american-workers-jobs-and-investment and in our previous post. Specifically, your submission must be a single spaced Word document not to exceed 10 pages with your full name and address on the front page. It must be received by the Committee no later than 7 April 2021.

For more information on the hearing and why you should submit a statement, listen to this podcast with John Richardson, Laura Snyder and Karen Alpert:

Additional General commentary …

March 25, 2021 – The Senate Finance Committee Describes The Need To Raise GILTI Tax And US Corporate Rates In General!

Coverage Of The Hearing From American Expat Finance

Laura Snyder, Karen Alpert and John Richardson describe the necessary call to action!

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