USA Dual Citizenship - Nasty surprise regarding USA tax!

[IrishCitizen]

I'm Irish, born in Ireland, to Irish parents and have lived in Ireland all my my 33 years and am obviously Irish domiciled, resident and ordinarily resident (using Irish tax law here).

I recently found my US passport in my mothers house which was issued when I was a few months old!

My parents had worked in New York for a number of years and had become US citizens before returning to Ireland and having me.

They made me a US citizen so I have dual citizenship with Ireland & USA.

I have spent all of two weeks on holiday in America.

I have become aware of a nasty surprise that America taxes all of its citizens on all worldwide income regardless of their situation.

Further I am supposed to have been filing annual tax returns apparently despite having no American assets or income apparently and may be have to pay thousands to a country that I really have had no connection to.

Banks in Ireland and many countries have a reputation of being 'hesitant' to do business with American citizens due to the regulatory burden placed upon them.

I am struggling to get a full picture of what my situation is and how to proceed as I haven't been able to find a good tax lawyer/accountant here that is knowledgeable about this.

Would you have any advice of where I can get more reliable information before I decide how to proceed with this?

Thanks.

 

[seaworld]

You probably do not owe any taxes because of foreign earned income exclusion and totalization agreement between US and Ireland.

 

[Lizzit]

Search online and read up on "Streamlined Filing Offshore". There's lots of info out there.

Once you've girded your loins, you should speak to someone who has done international dual national US income tax returns for multiyear nonfilers for a minimum of ten years. Less than ten and they're folks who jumped on the bandwagon rather than folks who can handle whacky cases that do not meet the "Streamlined Filing" specifications. You should find out in advance how many multiyear cases they do a year (at least twenty) since before Streamlined. You should find out how many they pushed to OVDP or OVDI instead of writing a Request for Waiver of Penalty Under Reasonable Cause. They should have almost all or all cases done with either Streamlined or a Request for Waiver. OVDP and OVDI were just for egregiously criminal reasons for failure to file which so does not describe what happened to you. You don’t need a representative that specializes in criminal cases so you don’t need someone who did/does a lot of OVDP and/or OVDI.

You'll be just filing the last three years of income tax returns and the last six (or seven) years of Foreign Bank Account Reports (FBARs).

If your parents or grandparents have a bit of dosh, then you may be the future beneficiary of a trust for which only they are the current beneficiaries. If that’s the case, you need a specialist in trusts. If you do your work through a cute teensy limited company you set up to get around Irish taxes, again, you’ll need a specialist in foreign corporation tax. When getting fee quotes, mention these two items and again, ten years’ plus experience for multiyear non-filers who live abroad or more is what you need. I do both of those.