Will I be stuck in the US?

January 9, 2012 9:01 AM

Can the US prevent me from returning home?

I've just now found out that I (a US citizen permanently settled in the UK) should have been paying US income taxes. For 3 of the past 11 years, I was in university and for the last three years I have been a stay-at-home parent. I have no money to hire an attorney or pay back taxes for the few years I was working.

My family member at home is sick and I need to go over and see her.

I also worry that my drug-addict sister has used my SSN to commit fraud - not that there is any evidence of this, but she did the same thing to my father a few years ago.

Can the US prevent me from returning to my home if I get caught? I have a US passport but a new name (same SSN). My child is not a US citizen, so I am very very concerned over this.

posted by anonymous to Law & Government (19 answers total)

Without knowing the country you reside in this question can't really be answered.

You say you should have been paying US taxes; that may or may not be true. While it is true that the US is alone in assessing taxes on its citizens' worldwide incomes, it is also true that the US has tax treaties with a number of countries which prevent the occurrence of double-taxation subject to a certain income threshold.

The bottom line is, you may or may not owe income taxes. You should have been filing a tax return with the IRS, but it doesn't necessarily follow that filing a tax return means you owe the government taxes (welcome to our ludicrously complex tax laws).
posted by dfriedman at 9:16 AM on January 9, 2012

You may have incorrect information. US citizens do not pay income tax on income earned abroad under a threshold (currently $95,100 in 2012, up from $80,000 since 2000).

You do need to file taxes if you earn under this amount and you may have some penalties due to not filing, but if you are not able to afford a tax lawyer to investigate this then you almost certainly do not actually owe any taxes.

I can't help you on the other questions, except to note that your child will be a US citizen by default, as long as their birth is registered with a US Embassy or consulate before they turn 18. I don't believe they lose citizenship if it is not, there just might be a few more documentary hoops to jump through.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:18 AM on January 9, 2012 [6 favorites]

You are entitled to a free credit report once a year. Use that to determine whether your sister has been using your SSN. You can then put a fraud alert on your credit so that if she does try something, you are notified immediately.
posted by Fui Non Sum at 9:18 AM on January 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

You have right of return, barring some weird civil-liberties-violating-terrorism-bs. The US cannot "block" you from returning home, but they may choose to arrest you when you return home, if your violations are severe enough. Your tax situation doesn't sound severe, especially since it's unlikely your income is above the $95k specified by Happy Dave. Consider this from the POV of the US government: it takes time and money to come the airport and arrest you, so it has to be worth the trouble.
posted by beerbajay at 9:23 AM on January 9, 2012

It's hard to speak with any degree of certainty concerning the tax situation without knowing the country that you're in, but I wanted to respond to this:

My child is not a US citizen, so I am very very concerned over this.

This will depend on the laws of the other country in question, but so long as you've lived in the States for five years out of your life, two of which were after you turned fourteen, your child is a U.S. citizen. The requirements are even less stringent if your child's other parent is also a citizen.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:25 AM on January 9, 2012

Mod note: Updated the post with location info, as per request of the OP
posted by taz (staff) at 9:25 AM on January 9, 2012

Presuming you're eligible to transmit citizenship to your child as Johnny Assay describes, what you need to do is go to the consulate and get a Certificate of the Birth Abroad of an American Citizen. I have one of these; I was born to a US citizen mother and a UK citizen father, in the UK. Getting the state of Texas to understand this document was a bit of a hassle when I turned 18 and went to register to vote, but apart from that, I've had no other problems.

I hope your other problems have as clear a solution!
posted by KathrynT at 9:28 AM on January 9, 2012

Would this be something she could ask the US embassy about?
posted by empath at 9:29 AM on January 9, 2012

OK, well, if the OP is in the UK then the $95,000 income limit cited above definitely applies. If the OP earned less than this in 2012 he or she does not owe taxes in the US, but still does need to file a tax return with the IRS.

My recommendation is to speak with the US embassy in London, or consulate if there is one more convenient to the OP to figure out the tax reporting issues. Or, at least to be pointed in the correct direction.

The US and UK have good bi-lateral relations, for what it's worth, and unless the OP has reason to believe he or she is on some terrorism watch list there likely should not be much reason for concern over the tax issue.
posted by dfriedman at 9:34 AM on January 9, 2012

There seems to be some ambiguity as to what the OP means by "home."

Will I be stuck in the US?
Can the US prevent me from returning home?

I assume this "home" means the UK.

My family member at home is sick and I need to go over and see her.

In this context, the use of "home" sounds like it means the US.

Perhaps some clarification will help find the right answer.
posted by The Deej at 9:34 AM on January 9, 2012

An immigration or tax attorney would be better placed to give you a definitive answer on this, but before they arrested you they'd have to know you committed a crime, it seems to me. If you went over to the UK for university and simply haven't filed your taxes for the past decade, I don't think the government has any idea what you owe them or what you've been up to. There's nothing for them to audit, even. Unless you are of such prominence that your activities would have been well-reported in the press back home, I highly doubt you're on any sort of watch list. The IRS only audits 1.5 percent of returns a year. This is not to suggest that you shouldn't figure out how to fix this situation as best you can --- it is definitely against the law for you to not file. But it's against the law to speed as well, but you don't get a ticket for it unless a cop sees you, yeah? Trust me, the IRS has nothing like the metaphorical equivalent of the British network of speed cameras.
posted by Diablevert at 9:52 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is not immigration-related, but I am a US citizen resident in the US and in my callow youth I did not file or pay my taxes for several years and it never caused me any trouble except that when I finally did file I had to pay some penalties.

So: you should file your taxes as soon as you can, but it's breathtakingly unlikely that you are going to get in trouble about this.
posted by mskyle at 9:59 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

You will not be arrested for any piddling amount of back taxes you may owe. What might happen is that if this comes to the attention of the IRS they can dun you for taxes plus fines. I don't know if they have the capacity to garnish your wages in the UK from the US.

However, I happen to know for a fact that the US has a tax treaty with the UK, so if your earnings have been taxed in the UK, you should be able to produce those documents and use them to demonstrate (even if you did make technically taxable income) that you do not owe taxes.

Get your credit report and figure out the thing about your sister - that will be a mess to untangle if there's fraudulent stuff, but won't impact your travel.

I know various people who didn't file taxes for years while making very little money who then filed a bunch all at once, paid fines and got stuff sorted out. Nothing bad happened to them. This will be completely okay.
posted by Frowner at 10:04 AM on January 9, 2012

According to the IRS, if you live abroad and haven't been filing taxes, they recommend you file for the last 6 years to get yourself up to date. I'm not sure if you need to file if you earned nothing.

Personal antecdote - I have lived in the UK for 10 years and go back to the US 2-4 times a year. I wasn't up-to-date with my taxes until late last year. Nothing ever happenned.

I didn't owe any tax and wasn't charged any penalties. I did all the filing myself, although it took awhile and I didn't find it very straightforward. I didn't file for years where I had no income.
posted by peanut butter milkshake at 10:27 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

I also want to add that if you ever take your child to the US, make sure you get his US passport (if eligible) before going. Anyone eligible for US citizenship must enter and exit the US on a US passport. Its tempting to just go with the baby's British (or whatever) passport to save the time and hassle, but your child could be refused entry.
posted by peanut butter milkshake at 10:31 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

First and foremost: I don't think there's anything that you need to worry about.

It might be worth a trip to the embassy to check to make sure your identity hasn't been fraudulently used. Otherwise, the tax stuff doesn't sound like it would set off any red flags remotely severe enough to be barred entry to the country.

Also, if your child is not traveling on a US passport, you probably want some documentation establishing that they are, in fact, your child. For the future, get the documentation sorted out, and apply for dual-citizenship. It's a very handy thing to have.

dfriedman: "The US and UK have good bi-lateral relations, for what it's worth"

It's worth very little, for whatever that's worth. US/UK border agents love to hassle US/UK citizens. I've never been extensively hassled by border agents in any country other than the UK, and perhaps more tellingly, I've been hassled every single time I've entered the UK. British citizens tell similar stories about entering the US.
posted by schmod at 10:33 AM on January 9, 2012

schmod: "Also, if your child is not traveling on a US passport, you probably want some documentation establishing that they are, in fact, your child. For the future, get the documentation sorted out, and apply for dual-citizenship. It's a very handy thing to have.

dfriedman: "The US and UK have good bi-lateral relations, for what it's worth"

It's worth very little, for whatever that's worth. US/UK border agents love to hassle US/UK citizens. I've never been extensively hassled by border agents in any country other than the UK, and perhaps more tellingly, I've been hassled every single time I've entered the UK. British citizens tell similar stories about entering the US."


Just to clarify on these points - there is no such thing as formal 'dual citizenship'. In the case of the US and UK, you apply for citizenship of your host country (in your case, you already have US citizenship so you would be applying for or may already have British citizenship). In your child's case, they have two citizenships from birth. They have UK citizenship by virtue of being born in the UK to someone settled here and US citizenship by virtue of being your child. Registration and a US passport is required in order to travel to the US.

In both the UK and the US, you (and your child in future) should enter on the passport of the country in question. So if you fly back to the US, you enter on US passports. When returning to the UK, you enter on UK passports. To do otherwise will get you extensive searching questions from border officials and especially if your require consular assistance while abroad.

Good luck with resolving your tax issues. May I recommend the forums at UK Yankee for advice and support on this and a range of other issues regarding being an American in the UK? They're wonderful and there are several immigration lawyers and case workers on the boards who can offer support.
posted by Happy Dave at 11:45 AM on January 9, 2012

As a US citizen, you'll certainly be allowed entry into the US. Your child is also probably a US citizen, and if so, should enter on a US passport.

On the tax issues, if and when you file tax returns for the years you missed:

Since you're filing late, you're probably not eligible to take the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, which exempts the first $90,000-ish of earned income from taxation. However, you can take the Foreign Tax Credit for income tax paid to the UK. If that amount is higher than what you would have paid on the same income in the US, it'll cancel out any taxes you would otherwise owe to the US.

Note that much of the UK-US Tax Treaty will not protect you from taxation by the US, since you're a US citizen and the treaty contains a saving clause.

One other thing, which may be more important: if, at any point, you've had more than $10,000 total in bank/financial accounts outside the US, you're also required to file an FBAR disclosing all accounts abroad. In theory, the penalty for failing to file can be pretty draconian, although I'm not sure how it works in practice.
posted by neal at 4:53 PM on January 9, 2012

Anecdata, but I had a friend who had their American passport cancelled when they tried to get more pages added to their passport book at an American embassy in South America. Their name was run through a database that showed that this friend was behind on child support payments for this person's two kids that lived in the States with a custodial parent. Their passport was immediately cancelled (the embassy drilled a hole straight through it) and this friend was unable to get a new passport and return to the US until they could prove they had sorted their child support issues.
posted by msali at 8:32 PM on January 9, 2012