Today, I found a very interesting post describing the main differences between US and Canadian taxes. I will surely reference it in the future but one thing that clearly stood out was the estate taxes. At the moment, I don’t have enough assets to actually owe money but it’s not impossible that I will one day. There are no taxes owed on the first $5.12 million but that number could change or I could end up making more money than expected.
What bothers me more though is that I had not really considered that aspect of the dual citizenship which could clearly end up having an impact at some point in my life. I had in mind that while it is bothersome and creates more work, I would never really have to pay more taxes because of my US citizenship (given the fact that US rates are so much lower than what I pay in Canada) but thinking about US Estate taxes has reminded me that it wasn’t necessarily true.
One possible scenario would be for someone in my family to leave a large sum of money to my wife and I, an amount that would end up making us liable on taxes.
I highly recommend that you take a look at that article here:
http://www.canadian-money-advisor.ca/threadview/5935.html
How about you? Are there some aspects of being an expat that you have recently discovered and have bothered you? Do you worry at all about changing laws?