================================================= Expat Worlds Monthly Digest ================================================= June, 2007 Vol. 9, Issue 6 .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== THE STORY =================== -=Taxing Matters=- ==== OTHER EZINES ================ ==== EW SPECIAL ================== -=The world's greatest consultancy=- ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... == -=Trivia=- -=News Story=- -=Jokes=- ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============= -=ZPG - ZEBU's Password Generator=- ==== INSIDE THE CURRENT EXPAT WORLD == -=Table of Content=- ==== THE STORY ================================== TAXING MATTERS AS TAXES FOR AMERICAN EXPATS RISE, THEY ARE WEIGHING THE VALUE OF A U.S. PASSPORT She is a former marine, a native Californian and, now, an ex-American who prefers to remain discreet about abandoning her citizenship. After 10 years of warily considering options, she turned in her US. passport last month without ceremony, becoming an alien in the view of her homeland. "It's a really hard thing to do," said the woman, a 16-year resident of Geneva who had tired of the cost and time of filing yearly U.S. tax returns on top of her Swiss taxes. "I just kept putting this off. But it's my kids and the estate tax. I don’t care if I die with only one Swiss franc to my name, but the U.S. shouldn't get money I earned here when I die." Historically, small numbers of Americans have turned in their passports every year for political and economic reasons, with the numbers reaching a high of about 2,000 during a Vietnam War-era boom in the 1970s. But with new tax pressures facing American expatriates due to legislation enacted in Washington this year, some international tax lawyers say they detect rising demand from citizens to renounce ties with the United States - the only developed country that taxes citizens while they are overseas. "The administrative costs of being an American and living outside the U.S. have gone up dramatically," said a well known international tax attorney. To date this year, the Internal Revenue Service has tallied 509 Americans who have given up their citizenship, said an IRS spokesman, although he added the full figures were still being counted for "renunciants.". Applicants are on the rise at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, according to an official there, who did not want to be named. In London a U.S Embassy spokeswoman said that the number of renunciations had remained stable for the last two years. Neither embassy disclosed the actual count of applications. A Geneva-based tax lawyer, however, said that clients of his seeking to turn in their passports were facing far longer waits for an appointment at the London embassy than in previous years. Typically, expats take the step "because they do not have strong ties to the United States and do not believe that they will ever live there in the future. All have 2 citizenships and generally say they would like to simplify their lives by giving up a citizenship they are not using." Andy Sundberg, a director, of Geneva-based American Citizen Abroad, has been tracking renunciations dating back to the 1960s through U.S. Treasury Department figures published yearly. He considers the numbers relatively low at this point, but he has also noticed a surge in interest among Americans in taking the ultimate step. "I think the cup is boiling over for a number of people living abroad," Sundberg said. "With the Internet and the speed and the ubiquity of information, people are more aware of what's happening." With the changes in the tax laws, he said, some expatriates fear "they're heading toward a real storm." He cites, for example, a survey released last month by the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore, which polled its members in October and November and found that many were considering returning to the United States because of higher taxes. Concern about taxes among expatriates has surged since President George W. Bush signed into law a bill that sharply increases tax rates for Americans abroad with income of more than $82,400 a year. The legislation also increases taxes on employer-provided benefits like housing allowances. The changes, enacted in May and tweaked by the Treasury Department under guidelines issued in October, apply retroactively to last Jan. 1. An international tax lawyer in Geneva, said demand for legal counsel on the citizenship issue was coming largely from American citizens who hold second passports and who have minimal ties to the United States. He said some expatriates were weighing the value of their American passports and debating whether it was worth keeping them if the cost topped $50,000 a year. He also said: "The waiting period for appointments at the US. Embassy in London had increased from a few days to more than three and a half months, With more than two applications processed each day." He had recently approached embassies in Vienna, Bern, London, Paris and Brussels before finally getting an appointment in Amsterdam for a client's renunciation. The legal ritual of renunciation is largely unique to the United States because other countries base taxation on residency, not citizenship. Other countries don't have the renunciation issue over citizenship. They only have the problem of rich people say in Germany who don't want to pay taxes in Germany just move to a lower-tax country in Switzerland." While taxation is driving many Americans to turn in their passports, others cite political reasons and their displeasure with the Bush administration. Their mix of sentiments, tax lawyers say, is more complicated than the motives of some of the super-rich in the 1990S. In 1996, Congress sought to stop that flow by requiring former citizens to continue filing tax returns for a decade and forbidding Americans who renounced their passports for tax reasons from visiting the US again. But in practice the government is mainly interested in wealthier ex-citizens with a net worth of more than $2 million - few of whom pay further U.S. taxes because they generally avoid making American financial investments after giving up citizenship. As for the bar on entry to tax refugees, he said, it has not been enforced by the authorities. Still, that threat prompts ex-citizens to tread carefully and remain discreet about their choices. EDITOR'S NOTE: The US is the only developed country that taxes its citizens while they are overseas. ==== OTHER EZINES & BOOKS ======================== ASIAN TIMES ONLINE Asia most trusted source for news, business,commentary and analysis from throughout Asia and our world. (www.atimes.com). ----- SURVIVAL BOOKS Go to and check it out! ----- japan-guide.com Extensive, up to date online guide on Japan living and travel related information. http://www.japan-guide.com/ ==== EW SPECIAL ================================= THE WORLD'S GREATEST CONSULTANCY The world's greatest authority on offshore living, working and being anonymous -- a world authority in offshore banking matters and 2nd nationalities, the "PT" movement and the whole enchilada of international living is now available for limited consultations. Expat World is offering you this Guru, the international lawyer and consultant who edited and wrote most of the WGH books on the Hill CD, as well as a very expensive PT oriented newsletter for millionaires only. You may have his services via secure email connections for 1 FULL YEAR at a one time fee of US $10,000. For those of you that need very specific advice but don't need the full year's service, a special offer promotional sample consultation can be had that provides 3 hours of work in answering email questions for $400. This is less than 1/10th the fee he charges as a lawyer and consultant. Expat world's consultant will not help plan any crimes or illegal activities so don't even bother to ask. But regardless of your past, he will review your options. You do not need to give your name or address and can stay 100% anonymous. To get the very best usage out of your consult, Expat World and our consultant recommend, again for your own benefit, that you be familiar with the Hill CD material and Bye Bye Big Brother ( BBBB) if at all possible, so that he wont waste his time and your money on questions already answered in that material. The $400 fee would for this promotional special offer consult will be deductible from the $10,000 dollar one year unlimited [but reasonable] consulting fee if you later chose to avail yourself of it. Because of the nature and privacy demanded in a service of this kind, where the world's greatest guru on PT and International solutions to your problems, it is necessary for EW to collect your fee of $400 for the promotional consult offer. EW will then collect an email address from you where you want the Guru to contact you along with your consultation questions. EW will then send the Guru of Gurus your email with your consult questions. From there on you will be dealing directly with the Guru and it's between you and him. He will contact you directly at the email address you give Expat World for this particular project. EW emphasizes this consultancy isn't for everyone. It's only for those who want to know in today's world how you can still protect you ass and assets overseas, maintain some semblance of privacy and learn the real ropes of using the global world to your advantage. It's geared also more to the accomplished rather than the wanne be. For the smart ones, who want advice that your lawyer would never tell you even if he knew, go to www.expatworld.net and pay the $400 on our secure payment link. We will get the payment confirmation sent to us from the payment processor which will contain your email address and service paid for. If you want to use another MORE SECURE email address put that email in the comments section of the payment form. After you have sent the payment, send us the consult questions and details and we will send it off to the Guru. The Guru will then contact you directly. If we don't hear from you within a week's time after receiving your payment we, Expat World, will then contact you and request you send your consultation email to us for forwarding on to the Guru. And for a limited time only, for the $400 paid for the promotional consultation fee Expat World will send you FREE a Hill CD containing 5 of the greatest books ever written on beating the bureaucracy using the international playgrounds of the world. ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... ================ NEWS STORIES Thief asks cops for 'time out' PHILIPPINES police chased down an unfit thief today after he ran out of breath and asked his pursuers for a "time out". "He was panting and gasping for air when we caught up with him after a 500 metre sprint," Erwin Buenceso, one of the arresting officers, said on local radio station dzBB. Buenceso said the man and an accomplice broke into a house in the Philippine capital and stole two expensive mobile phones. Screams from the residence alerted a local police patrol, which started chasing him. The robber asked for a "time out" using hand signals. After he regained his composure, police seized the two stolen phones and took him to a station for questioning. --- Newton's fourth law: apocalypse RENOWNED British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics and astronomy, predicted the world would end in 2060 in a 1704 letter that went on show in Jerusalem today. A famed rationalist, who secured a royal exemption so that he would not have to follow the teachings of the Church of England, Newton nonetheless based his prediction on a Biblical text. Working from verses in the Book of Daniel, the elaborator of the classical laws of gravity, motion and optics argued that the world would end 1260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire in western Europe in 800 AD. The letter, on show at Jerusalem's Hebrew University as part of an exhibition entitled "Newton's Secrets", is part of an array of papers of the British scientist bequeathed to the institution by a wealthy collector of scientific manuscripts. The university said it was the first time the letter had been put on public show since 1969. Newton's late 17th century work at Cambridge University was the foundation stone of modern science until the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics in the last century. But it has long been known that the ground-breaking physicist from Grantham, England, also took a keen interest in superstitions of his day that have long since fallen foul of modern science. Newton spent four years in the 1670s preparing a work on alchemy, the notion that base metals can be turned into gold. --- Penis hacking all the rage Bangkok - They have been boiled, fed to ducks, even attached to hot air balloons and cast into the night sky - when it comes to permanently depriving a cheating lover of a recently severed penis, the imagination of the wronged Thai woman knows few bounds. Thailand has become the world centre of penis reattachment surgery, but then it has been forced to be. While not unique to the kingdom, penis severing has been honed here to its most devastating effect through a mixture of infidelity, assertive womanhood and a national cuisine that lends itself to a kitchen full of sharp knives. The men are now fearful of a rash of Thailand's most notorious crime of passion, according to the surgeon who has stitched back many a male member for grateful patients. Sitting in his office at Bangkok's Paolo Memorial Hospital, surgeon Surasak Muangsombot recalled how he re-attached his first phallus in 1978 and soon discovered that penis hacking was a peculiarly Thai form of sexual violence. Since then Sweden has had three cases, the US two - including the notorious case of John Wayne Bobbitt who returned from surgery to star in porn films - and one in Australia. In the same period, Muangsombot's team alone has operated on 33 cases and many more have been reported. Tradition of polygamy Doctors and psychologists blame the attacks on a mix of Thailand's tradition of polygamy, which was banned about 100 years ago but still persists, and the fact that the phallus is revered as a symbol of power and fertility. The phenomenon has become so widespread that doctors have had to keep up with increasingly inventive and angry wives and lovers who want to prevent the offending item from being reattached. The latest case was reported on Tuesday when a 29-year-old farmer in northeastern Thailand was admitted to hospital with a severed penis, claiming that his wife kicked him. The couple had fought, she then denied his requests for sex and kicked him when he complained, according to him. Such was the length of her toe nails, she severed his penis. Thai psychologist and media commentator Doctor Wallop Piyamanotham said the practice stemmed primarily from the outlawed, but flourishing, Thai habit of keeping secret wives. "Before a man could have many wives but later we followed the western law of one man one wife, but men still act the same and have many wives so the only revenge open to the wife is to cut off his penis," Piyamanotham said. Doctor Muangsombot said despite the damage done to patients, the recovery rate is surprisingly high. He said it was now possible to make replacement penises from arteries and skin taken from other parts of the body that could be inflated with pumps, but warned men who insist on being unfaithful to follow a few golden rules. "If you have a mistress they (wives) will get mad and cut it any time, so make her very happy, always carry a thermos to put it in and keep the name of a good doctor close by," he said. --- Oxymoron: wholesome ----- "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." -- Drew Carey ----- I like the West - that's where men are men and women are women, and it's hard to beat a combination like that. -- Milton Berle ----- Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy. ----- Two old women were sitting on a bench waiting for their bus. The buses were running late, and a lot of time passed. Finally, one woman turned to the other and said, "You know, I've been sitting here so long, my butt fell asleep!'. The other woman turned to her and said "I know! I heard it snoring!" ----- Three Irishmen, Paddy, Sean and Shamus, were stumbling home from the pub late one night and found themselves on the road which led past the old graveyard. "Come have a look over here," says Paddy, "it's Michael O'Grady's grave, God bless his soul. He lived to the ripe old age of 87." "That's nothing", says Sean, "here's one named Patrick O'Tool, it says here that he was 95 when he died." Just then, Shamus yells out, "Good God, here's a fella that got to be 145 years old!" "What was his name?" asks Paddy. Shamus stumbles around a bit, awkwardly lights a match to see what else is written on the stone marker, and exclaims, "Miles, from Dublin." ----- A man came home from work sporting two black eyes. "What happened to you?" asked his wife. "I'll never understand women," he replied. "I was riding up in an escalator behind this pretty young girl, and I noticed that her skirt was stuck in the crack of her ass. So I pulled it out, and she turned around and punched me in the eye!" "I can certainly appreciate that," said the wife, "But how did you get the second black eye?" "Well, I figured she liked it that way," said the husband, "So I pushed it back in." ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============================ ZPG - ZEBU's Password Generator ZPG is a Windows application. With ZPG you can generate passwords. Everybody knows, that passwords should be choosen very carefully, therefore this software is very good to produce accidental passwords. It is proofen, that ZPG generates passwords more accidental than one can do this 'by hand'. There are two possibilities for generating passwords: Standard passwords: The length of the password can be set freely, of course. For the generation ZPG uses optionally small characters, capital characters, numbers and a self-defined set of symbols. Passwords from a given sentence: Here you enter a sentence. Every first character of every word is used for the password. Punctuation marks are also inserted into the password. Additionally there is the possibility to replace a given number of letters into numbers. Download it at . ==== INSIDE THE CURRENT EXPAT WORLD =============== EXPAT WORLD NEWSLETTER (VOL.19 ISSUE 06) Table of Content: - NORTH KOREA -THE HERMIT COUNTRY - OTHER LITTLE TID BITS OF THE JOURNEY - LETTER FROM SINGAPORE - SINGAPORE -- SEX IN THE UPTIGHT CITY-STATE - SINGAPORE RANKED 29TH MOST PEACEFUL NATION - TAXING MATTERS - AS TAXES FOR AMERICAN EXPATS RISE, THEY ARE WEIGHING THE VALUE OF A U.S. PASSPORT - THE PATH TO A POSITION IN THE US FOREIGN SERVICE HAS BEEN REVAMPED - AROUND THE WORLD WITH EXPAT WORLD - INTERNATIONAL SNIPS AND CLIPS - THE WORLD'S GREATEST CONSULTANCY - EXPAT WORLD'S PRIVACY WORLD - BIG BROTHER TODAY - THE USA HAS THE MOST PRISONERS IN THE WORLD - CRAPPER RAPPER - RECOGNIZING AN OPPORTUNITY - STRIKING UP A CONVERSATION - DRINKING WATER - BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS YOU MISSING SO MUCH Each week the EXPAT WORLD DIGEST gives you just a smattering of what you can find in the EXPAT WORLD newsletter that we produce once a month. Why not get the whole story and subscribe now to our electronic version for just US $30 per year. Go to our website: www.expatworld.net to sign up. ********************************************************************* EXPAT WORLD - the newsletter of international living URL - http://www.expatworld.net Email - office@expatworld.net ---------- End of Expat World Digest --------------------------------