Spoke too soon

Not my passport. A battery charger that the UNGS bought. boooooo.

Multiple citizenships, another privilege of the privileged

In reading over the weekend (again) the rules about double citizenship and how it’s never going to happen for me in Germany – I saw that if your country of origin would impose a financial penalty, you can keep your first citizenship.

Now if I had USD2m, I would have a case, as the US would find that I was expatriating for tax reasons and at minimum make me file tax forms for the next 5 years. The fees to get this done professionally would be enough to push me well over the minimum financial penatly threshhold.

Unfortunately, we don’t have USD2m and aren’t going to have them any time soon, barring the UNGS getting a big refund on the stupid tax he pays occaisionally. It irks me that fiancial reasons are all that counts – that aging parents aren’t as, if not more important, in this calculation. So, everything remains the same, and  I’ll be sticking with my US citizenship – which I will actually be able to prove again in about an hour because

drumroll

My passport came! Two weeks on the nose. Yey for the passport service – they have come through for me for the second time. (It was not an emergency last time but still.) The UNGS will be picking up said passport because the only official ID I have is inside the envelope he’s picking up!

Practical Tax Note

For those of you filing like law-abiding doobies (as I am) -

here’s a link to last year’s official conversion rates courtesy of the American consulate in the UK.

link

I know, I know, you all pay someone else to do your taxes.  Or don’t file, as I was stunned to find out the other night from a two-passported acquaintance.

Or are already done. Good for you!

Cheating

I am just going to alert you to my comment over at 50% of my DNA.  link to comments and original post

Ms Yelli (hope I’ve got that right) makes some interesting points about living here and travelling. Although I am sure she did work very hard to get over here, I think most people would agree she is in a fortunate field to have been able to do that . The barriers to immigration are a lot higher for most other fields, save IT (and even those folks can sing a song or two at the moment). And all you English teachers can tell everyone how hard it is to earn a decent living on what most of you make.

Fair play to her for having managed the move on her own. I cannot even imagine what it must be like to be professionally relocated – unknown luxury!  As with so many things, I fall into the “none of the above” category.  I moved myself, but didn’t have that much to move, so no bonuse points for me. I have no furniture to move and we’ve been moving what I do have  slowly- potentially illegal suitcase by potentially illegal suitcase (German customs and the unknown value of my 15-year old science texts – a post for another time) because shipping it over would be a customs nightmare.

Although bigger trips aren’t in the budget for us, it is yet another reminder that we need to be doing more of what we can do locally. There is still plenty we haven’t seen here in the area.