I saw some posts about american wanting to move to Europe; so just before you guys make the move, double-triple check insurances/banks, because literally every time I (not american) do smth financially related in France, they ask me if I am american? If yes, they won’t even open accounts/ give me insurance etc… Sounds discriminatory but apperently because legal
I dont know if that expands to any other field
EDIT: lol i am now wondering what are people are downvoting for? You dont like that fact, so you downvote whoever told you that fact? Some reactions are hilarious
american in europe here,
this is true. it’s very nearly impossible to open a bank account. There is exactly one bank in Switzerland who allows americans to open accounts, UBS. So far no banks in france have allowed me to open an account, even though I have a french residency permit. This makes it nearly impossible to take loans to buy things like houses or cars. Basically life here is impossible because being american fucking sucks.
You have residency, but do you have an official French ID, like a police ID? In Finland at least the residency permit does not count as a valid ID and you have to get a separate one (like a driver’s license or police ID) in order to for example open a bank account.
Open an account at Service CU out of NH. Designed to work in Europe (IBAN, free foreign ATMs, etc). Everyone who works for the state department gets it, and afaik it’s open to the public.
iban thing is nice, do you know if you can finance cars or homes? right now i have to have to drive around a beater because no european bank = no loan
Never tried that. Worth emailing their rep probably.
I’ve used ServiceCU for more than 20 years and yes you can buy cars and such through them
thanks! I’m going to check them out.
That’s crazy. I never had any of these issues living in Japan. Why does the EU make it so much harder than Japan does?
I might be wrong but it could be because America has uhh integrated itself with Japan pretty well ever since they capitulated to the Burgers in WW2.
Too many people wants to live in EU, so they limit it the best way they can figure out.
Unfortunately that is not a very good way.
Incredibly better than what US is currently doing, but still not great.
Renounce your citizenship.
I want to add that renouncing your citizenship also isn’t a valid option for many during the stages they talked about
One of the hard requirements for renouncing your citizenship is having citizenship in another country, and that is easier said than done in many countries. Like for example, Canada, you have to be a perm resident in the country for four years and also have lived there for the past six, Mexico requires 5 years. most of the EU has 5-10 years as their resident requirement.
And that’s also ignoring the cost that they require of a citizen to renounce their Citizenship. It’s 2300+ USD to do if you manage to get it first try, and that can be denied still.
Once you are established somewhere else as a citizen, fully agree. But that’s defo easier said than done.
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i don’t have a second citizenship to fall back on, so i’d be stateless. also, i can’t afford to since you have to pay all the taxes on potential income for the next 10 years or something
Only people who make more than 200k/year or have more than 2 million in unrealized taxable assets have to pay an expatriation tax.
There is no paying future taxes as that’d be asinine.
TIL, i thought i read that 10 year tax thing somewhere. probably just bs i saw online and didn’t look into it
I would absolutely talk to an embassy or at least an international tax professional before making decisions and not rely on Lemmy.