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I agree that you are ethically in the right, but it is still legally "tax evasion", and therefore probably not the best advice to be given to others. I say this as someone who has personal experience with the "accidental American" status. Depending on where you are, the IRS may discover your "American" status, and the penalties could be worse. For example, Canadian banks share information with the IRS under FATCA.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fatca-tax-deal-forces-canad...



If North Korea passes a law tomorrow saying that every person on the planet owes it $1000 in taxes, if you ignore it are you committing a crime?


Legally? You'd be breaking the law in North Korea, so technically yes, but that's not really the point here. Does North Korea have the ability to realistically threaten my assets, livelihood or freedoms? If so, then the proper legal advice here would be to pay it. We are not discussing ethics here, we're discussing whether or not following the "just ignore it" advice is a good idea or not.

In the case of the US, they have the capacity to make legitimate threats against me regardless of where I live, with zero defense provided by my sovereign nation. So what's the right move?


If ethics are not a concern then the right move is whatever you can get away with. As other posters pointed out, if you don't disclose your US citizenship to foreign banks then that information is not going to make its way back to the IRS. Canada is probably the only country where you wouldn't want to try this.


Which is exactly the point I was making in my comment. And also:

> if you don't disclose your US citizenship to foreign banks then that information is not going to make its way back to the IRS

I would not assume this to be true. Certainly not without researching into any specific case more.




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