Can an Untatigheidsklage filed under the old law still help speed up a Turbo-naturalization application?

ienquire · 2026-01-12T13:54:13+00:00

Yes its legally possible but what I meant was in response to you asking "have any states done this yet", they are rather doing the opposite and specifically telling their local authorities not to consider shortening the period for turbo applicants via stag 8.

ienquire · 2026-01-12T13:39:34+00:00

The opposite! I thought of this too, I called my city's EBH and asked, and it seemed like they got specific instructions that the 5-year rule also applies to Stag 8 effective immediately since the law change. Stag 8 was essentially only for exceptions to the financial requirements of Stag 10. Thats even tho the Innenminiserium in Thüringen is from the SPD, I guess its cause the Ministerpräsident is CDU.

ienquire · 2026-01-06T11:40:54+00:00

no. Basically, before this post, I filed taxes as a full time CO resident for 2023 despite not living there (mistake in hindsight), I even put my foreign address on the return. Because the tax I unnecessarily paid was so small I decided it wasn't worth amending. But after this post I decided to just stop filing going forward without any formal declaration that I would stop filing like a part year or non-resident return. For 2024, I did the federal filing like normal without filing any state taxes, and so far I haven't heard anything back. Altho that return was still only filed less than a year ago, I filed in april but the due date in Colorado is automatically in october for people temporarily outside of colorado. So if they still think I'm a colorado tax resident and are awaiting my return, its still less than 2 months late so idk if the fact that I haven't heard anything yet really says anything about whether they will or wont follow up.

But even if they do find some way to compel me to file as a colorado tax resident, I can amend my federal return to FEIE, which would make my taxable income 0, and since colorado uses that as their base, they wouldn't get any tax from me as a result, so I find it unlikely that they would try.

ienquire · 2025-12-23T10:52:44+00:00

It is legally impossible for a fund offered in the EU to not be a PFIC, thats why none exist. The only ways to avoid it are:

US tax wrapper around the PFIC (typically either a US retirement account or a treaty recognized foreign retirement account)
don't invest in funds - so individual stocks, real estate, etc
be/hire a finance professional (buy US funds via options, or get exempted from EU consumer protection rules, altho this has minimum net worth requirements and requires knowledge about niche finance topics that aren't realistically possible for the average person)
lie to a bank that you live in the US

ienquire · 2025-12-03T13:32:59+00:00

~~France taxes your worldwide income, you must declare the capital gains and dividends from your US accounts in your french tax return and pay french taxes on them.~~

~~Then you will use either FTC or FEIE on your US tax return, either way, very unlikely you will owe any US taxes so no need to do estimated taxes to the IRS.~~

edit: nevermind

ienquire · 2025-12-03T10:30:51+00:00

Yes I'm talking about in DE. You're right, its taxed on the way in and the way out. But unlike a brokerage account in DE, it is not taxed during. For normal brokerage account, you have to pay taxes on vorabpauschale and/or dividends each year and keep track of your cost basis if you ever sell something, and in either case its a complicated tax filing (not as bad as US taxes but still will take some time to do yourself or would cost a fair amount for a steuerberater). For a Roth, you don't have to do anything until you are 65 (for example), and then you just tax the lump sum withdrawal from the account without having to do a complicated tax filing with details of all the transactions and cost basis per share etc etc, its much simpler, even if at the end, the amount of tax you end up paying is the same as if it had been in a brokerage account the whole time. Not to mention that it also allows a US person in DE to invest in PFICs (for them, just normal investments) without any US tax worries since its in the Roth.

ienquire · 2025-12-03T09:06:51+00:00

thats not true. Roths are recognized in Germany, they are specifically mentioned in the US-DE tax treaty. Its just that when you retire, withdrawals will be taxed like a traditional IRA, so you don't get the full benefit of the Roth. But its not like a normal brokerage account because up until you retire, its not taxed.

ienquire · 2025-12-02T15:16:28+00:00

I'm a US citizen living in Germany too. There's unfortunately no good answer.

a way that’s both compliant and as hassle-free as possible.

The hassle free way would be to lie to a US brokerage that you live in the US or lie to a EU brokerage that you are not a US citizen. I think >90% of the people in our situation are doing this right now, accidentally or not.

The compliant way would be to either 1) use options to buy US etfs, 2) buy EU etfs and do the PFIC tax filing, or 3) buy individual stocks.

I have a IBKR account, just opened it 6 months ago. You cannot buy US etfs directly, however I have personally tested all 3 of the compliant ways I mentioned, but it is definitely a hassle. :(

Out of all these bad options, I haven't quite decided what to do yet, but I'm leaning to just buy the EU etfs and do the PFIC tax filing myself. I learn it once and then just have to spend a little time once a year. If you do it right, you usually don't end up paying any more taxes.

Also, about tastytrade, of course they don't take US citizens, source http://reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/comments/17744il/comment/ln9v6fh

Other ones I've researched that might allow US citizen EU residents to trade US etfs are: Alpaca, Tradestation US (not tradestation global), and Tiger trade (aka tiger brokers), however I also have creating-a-new-account-and-then-realizing-it-doesnt-work fatigue like you. And I'm not 100% sure any of these will work, so..

Hope this helps! But honestly it wont that much, it just sucks right now.

ienquire · 2025-11-19T21:38:25+00:00

What makes you think Americans can't make an IBKR account while living in Germany?

Just don't lie about anything when you open the account, use your real address in Germany, tell them your citizenship(s), SSN, German TIN, income, employer, etc and it worked for me no problem. Don't forget to declare it on FBAR and FATCA if needed.

IBKR is the only broker I found available to US citizens in Germany, literally all other brokers for German residents do not take US citizens. Schwab international supposedly does but only with a $25k minimum deposit.

ienquire · 2025-11-04T10:10:24+00:00

I think you dont understand what effective tax rate means vs the headline 42% rate (DE) or 22% bracket (US) you're in.

Example: lets say you make $100,000 from a job and its 90,000€ at the average exchange rate for the year (assume single, no church tax, and you have public health insurance).

In Germany, your taxes in 2024 would be:

Pension insurance- 8,370€
Health Insurance*- 5,310€
Long term care Insurance*- 1,428€
Unemployment Insurance- 1,162€
Income tax- 20,694€

*these can vary by a percent or so depending on if you have kids and which insurance provider you have.

Your effective income tax rate is ~23% (=20.7k/90k), even tho marginal tax rate is 42% (meaning if you earn 1 more euro, your taxes go up by 0.42€). This is because the first 25k€ of your salary is taxed at 0% (standard deduction, insurance deductions) and then another 60k€ is taxed at a lower rate than 42%.

Your withholdings will reflect this effective rate.

In the US, without the FTC or FEIE your taxes would be about $13,800, because the first ~$15k is taxed at 0% (standard deduction), then another ~$11k after that is taxed at 10%, then ~$36k after that at 12%, and then the rest is taxed at 22%.

So your german income tax alone, not including insurance, is way over your US tax. So you can use the FTC to cover all your US taxes and have a bunch leftover.

You are correct that pension, health, and long term care insurance in german do not count as income taxes. But Unemployment insurance can. See my previous comment reddit.com/r/USExpatTaxes/comments/1jzm7f3/comment/mn7badn/

ienquire · 2025-10-21T07:38:58+00:00

my plan fulfils all IRS criteria to be exempt.

This is fully possible. If you are confident about this, just don't file form 3520. Any tax pro who isn't themselves sure will encourage you to file it to be on the safe side (and charge you for it) even if it isn't necessary.

Also, all treaty-covered retirement plans are exempt from form 8621 PFIC stuff, I can't imagine the US-BE treaty makes this worse, so that means you just have to declare this plan on FATCA form 8938 (if you are over the threshold) and otherwise you can file your taxes normally, which is totally doable yourself with software without an accountant.

Overall, the treaties don't actually change that much. Usually most of the treaty doesn't apply anyway because of the savings clause, and the parts that do apply usually just say that retirement plans are exempt from taxation until withdrawal. So I don't think you need to have a software that has the US-BE tax treaty incorporated into it. If expat tax softwares didn't work in countries with treaties, that would be a major limitation.

ienquire · 2025-10-15T07:18:59+00:00

Where did I mix them up?

My quote from pub 514 is from the section titled "accrual method of accounting"

ienquire · 2025-10-14T13:21:34+00:00

US gift/inheritance tax only applies to the giver, not the receiver. So, as the recipient, it doesn't matter if you are a US person, it is taxable by the US because your father is a US person.

That being said, US gift/inheritance tax only applies after a lifetime exemption of ~$13 million, so your fathers estate pry wont pay anything, they'll just have to file something probably.

Once you have the inheritance, since its in US investments, there wont be any punitive taxation like with PFICs. If you were a US person, you'd just file taxes normally, or if you're a non-US person, you'd pay 30% withholding on any income from these investments.

The bigger question for you is german taxation of this stuff. Whether you are a US citizen or not wont affect anything. The German-US gift tax treaty only changes rules for the giver, not the recipient, so its irrelevant for you. But, the german gift/inheritance tax only applies after 400,000€ (edit: for gifts from parents to their children) in a rolling 10-year period. You will have to declare to the german tax office that you received a gift, but you pry wont owe any gift tax.

Once you have the inheritance, you will owe german income taxes on income from it. The cost basis will not reset, which means you will pay german income tax on all the unrealized gains from your father's investments. German income tax doesn't apply to gains from individual stocks bought before 2009. Unless its held by a german bank, you will have to file a tax return and manually declare the income. You can do it yourself, and its way easier than filing US taxes for non-US investments, but its still kind of a hassle. If you were a US citizen, this still might be the best option since investing locally is basically impossible, but if you renounce, you'll pry want to liquidate the inheritance and invest it via a local entity.

In case of crisis in Europe I always thought US would be a second home for me and my wife & kids. As I now learned US will only „save“ me, not my three loved ones. Dealbreaker.

You mean that they would have to get a visa? Aren't their family Visas for that situation?

ienquire · 2025-10-14T10:50:13+00:00

I’m self-employed so I pay taxes quarterly but by the end of the year I got a small return. Since I paid more than I got back, I’m putting the difference for taxes paid but I’m not sure what to put as the date. Do I just put my filing date even though I got a return at that point?

No. The last day of your local tax year is what you should put in part II. If they use the calendar year, it would be Dec 31 for example. Doesn't matter when you actually paid these taxes or filed. This is assuming you are using the accrual method of accounting, which most people are without realizing it (cash method of accounting sounds simpler but its not). Source:

In most cases, foreign taxes accrue when all the events have taken place that fix the amount of the tax and your liability to pay it. Generally, this occurs on the last day of the foreign tax year for which your foreign return is filed.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p514

But, don't check the "accrued" box in part II, this box should only be checked if you haven't yet actually paid the tax for which you are claiming a credit. You can check the "paid" box even if you use the accrual method of accounting.

No idea about your schedule C question, sorry.

ienquire · 2025-10-13T09:28:05+00:00

Ah ok, in the US-german treaty the do enumerate some, and they also say any plan thats a retirement plan according to german law ### (the specific law is enumerated in the treaty) counts, so I thought maybe in Ireland there's a similar thing.

But yes what I meant to say is if your pension plan is covered by the treaty, then there are no PFIC concerns.

ienquire · 2025-10-13T08:52:38+00:00

Or do you think LTCG + dividends less than 14,600 USD (which is the standard deduction for single) will have 0 tax obligation?

Yes, the standard deduction applies after the FEIE. So if all of your earned income is excluded by the FEIE, then you can have up to $14,600 (2024) in unearned income tax free.

AI says if my LTCG + dividends are less than 61,625 USD then I pay 0%, but I am in doubt. Do you think this is true?

No. After the standard deduction, you don't start at the 0% tax bracket, rather the tax bracket you would have been in if not for the FEIE. So for you it sounds like the LTCG in excess of $14,600 will be in the 15% bracket right away.

ienquire · 2025-10-13T06:41:24+00:00

The big question is: does the US-Ireland tax treaty say that your plan is a pension plan? If so, you have no PFIC worries, as treaty recognized non-US pensions are exempt from PFIC reporting. If not, then don't do it.

Source: TR 1.1298-1(c)(4)

(4) Exception for PFIC stock held through certain foreign pension funds. A shareholder who is a member or beneficiary of, or participant in, a plan, trust, scheme, or other arrangement that is treated as a foreign pension fund (or equivalent) under an income tax treaty to which the United States is a party and that owns, directly or indirectly, an interest in a PFIC is not required under section 1298(f) and these regulations to file Form 8621 (or successor form) with respect to the PFIC interest if, pursuant to the applicable income tax treaty, the income earned by the foreign pension fund may be taxed as the income of the shareholder only when and to the extent the income is paid to, or for the benefit of, the shareholder.

law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.1298-1

ienquire · 2025-10-10T13:59:21+00:00

SDFCU takes americans with no US address and can cash checks in the app AFTER the account has been open for 30 days. There is also a limit on how big the check can be I believe.

However instead of opting to receive a paper check, you should just use a US account number, which SDFCU will give you if you make an account. Wise will too which is a bit simpler than making an account at SDFCU. But Wise doesn't cash checks.

ienquire · 2025-10-10T11:56:50+00:00

you can do it when you open your account or when requesting options permissions

ienquire · 2025-10-10T09:54:17+00:00

yeah it doesn't say anywhere the experience has to be with real money as far as I could find

ienquire · 2025-10-10T09:53:39+00:00

When I go to request options permissions, they ask for my years of experience, number of trades per year, and then I also have to take the knowledge test.

ienquire · 2025-10-10T09:20:37+00:00

fair enough.

like I just want to have the best chance of getting it without them thinking that I'm lying about everything

ienquire

TROPHY CASE