Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
That's interesting, because US citizenship operates different from every country on the planet, save Eritrea. If you have a parent who is a natural born US citizen, you can be born elsewhere and you're a US citizen. What that means isn't jus that you can vote in elections and such, it means that you have the pay US taxes. I don't want to derail this thread, but then again it's a disaster and it feels like Twitter was sold eons ago!
Google "accidental Americans" and you can find all kinds of stories of people who had no idea that they were US citizens. Never lived there, never voted and had no attachments...but owed taxes. In my line of work that becomes a problem for people when it comes to things like RESPs/TFSAs and such (along with the other tax issues that arise). And if you have a passing interest but wonder...no, you don't have to "claim" the citizenship for it to be valid. You are a US citizen in those cases and have to deal with that ramification...either through renouncing this citizenship or filing US taxes and the associated things.
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The IRS is pretty ruthless about getting their tax money from these people too. Had a family member deal with them involving something similar. Thankfully they didn't get the money (would have been 40+ years worth of taxes) but some lawyers sure got paid.