The Foreign-Born Population of the United States: Multi-National Families and “Tax Expatriation”
The U.S. is known as the “melting pot” of people and immigrants from around the world that fuse and mix together. The term became popularized from the 1908 play of the same name, The Melting Pot by Israel Zangwill.
The United States Census Bureau publishes various data and statistics of foreign-born persons residing in the U.S., which can be reviewed here. Some highlights from the The Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2010 are as follows (with nearly 40 million foreign born persons). What number of foreign resident family members might these 40 million persons have? What type of assets and businesses remain in the country of origin for these foreign-born persons?
The regions of greatest foreign-born populations is Latin America (21 Million), Asia (11 Million) and Europe only 4.8 Million.
Why is this so important for “U.S. tax expatriation” purposes? As people move in and out of the U.S. (family members, entire families, newly wed members of a multinational family) necessarily may trigger the application of the U.S. tax expatriation provisions discussed in this blog. The tax issues can be particularly acute for lawful permanent residents. See, Countries with U.S. Income Tax Treaties & Lawful Permanent Residents (“Oops – Did I Expatriate”?)
Foreign born families regularly (if not most commonly) keep important ties with their home country. Some have the majority of their family members living in that country, assets and businesses from the country of origin or neighboring countries in the same economic region, and many may ultimately have a plan to move back to their country of origin.
More related information and details to come in future posts.
June 6, 2014 at 5:13 pm
[…] table series provides a range of social and economic characteristics for the foreign-born population and their children and is the only federal source of data on the “second generation” […]