New banking scam targeting expat Americans

The IRS has FATCA thrust upon them,
but I don't think they're too upset about it.

There's a new banking scam targeting overseas Americans and there's not much you can do to protect yourself. Yesterday the IRS issued a warning to FATCA-compliant banks stating that scammers posing as IRS agents are calling banks and requesting confidential account information of US persons for FATCA compliance.

Grateful For High Taxes in France?

The grocery store by our home in La Rochelle

It's been a while since I've posted. We've been very busy with our company and I've been working other projects. On my Facebook page, I've made some comments about French health care, in particular referencing this post about cancer treatment in France. Once again, I received private messages from people talking about taxes in France, so let's talk about them after we explore a bit what this means.

We're back from New York ... sort of ... (pics)

Doubtless you've noticed the lack of updates recently. This was a combination of a significant work load, lots of work last month to get out the survey results (and I still haven't posted the last part) and a business trip to New York, the latter of which was a huge amount of fun but left me a bit wiped out. I was only there for a day and couldn't get many photos and had to apologize to friends for not being able to meet up with them (you know who you are).

The New York Stock Exchange

Overseas Exile Expat Survey Results — Politics

Today is part 4 of the Overseas Exile survey results. It's all about that subject we love to hate: politics. The answers may surprise you. As usual, click on the images for larger versions.

If this is your first time reading the survey, see also:

• Part 1 Expat Results: Personal
• Part 2 Expat Results: Living Abroad
• Part 3 Expat Results: Emotions

Starting off with the last US presidential vote, 63% of expats said they voted. This contrasts with 57% of the general US population voting.

234 participants by voting in last presidential election

Overseas Exile Expat Survey Results — Emotions

Today's summary of expat results revolves around expat's emotional responses to being an expat. In other news, I'm learning more about Excel's pivot tables and am doing a better job labeling them. As usual, click on imagine for a larger picture.

See also:

• Part 1 Expat Results: Personal
• Part 2 Expat Results: Living Abroad

Fully three quarters of expats are very or somewhat happy to be an expat. Only 15% of expats are somewhat or very unhappy.

234 participants by how happy they feel being an expat

Overseas Exile Expat Survey Results — Living Abroad

This is the second entry in my Overseas Exile 2013 US Expat Survey results. Click here for the first entry, covering "Personal Information" about expatriates. Click on any image to see a larger version.

The second part to the survey was about "life abroad". Slightly more than half of participants felt that the local's had a better quality of life than in the US, with slightly less than a quarter feeling it was about the same and only 20% feeling that locals were worse off than the US.

235 participants by local quality of life

Initial Overseas Exile Expat Survey Results

Image by Mizunoryu

As of this writing, the US Expat Survey has 235 responses. That's after removing obvious "joke" responses and duplicate responses. Duplicates were determined by seeing all 50 questions answered identically, with freeform responses required as those require people to type in an answer and those are unique enough to say "yup, this is a duplicate". The survey's only been running for nine days, but almost all of the responses were in the first three days. I'll leave the survey up, but I don't expect significantly different results.

Keep in mind the following:

• Internet surveys are notoriously unreliable
• Publishing results is more likely to bias subsequent results
• Internet surveys are notoriously unreliable

In other news, consider this information "fun" rather than useful.