And to follow up, let’s not make it so complicated. It’s an income tax. The UK has it and the US has it.
But I’m sure that there are major differences between them. I’m sure that the UK has different deductions and credits than the US, and probably vastly so. And primarily, the UK does not require its citizens living in the US to pay income tax.
So how much of this substantive law is counted as “double criminality”? Is it broad enough to say that “pay your fucking taxes” is the law? Or do we go down the line and say (making this up) that this US citizen living in the UK, under UK law, would have had a much lower tax rate and had an (again making it up) an NHS credit of so many pounds that he would have had no tax liability here, therefore he has committed no crime under UK law, therefore no double criminality, so piss off.
I’m sure it’s possible to have different opinions on this (as in most of law), but I would argue that if you fraudulently (i.e., with intent to pay less in taxes than you owe under the applicable tax law) make false declarations, you’re doing something which is punishable under both U.S. and British law, no matter what it’s called under the respective laws, and that would be sufficient for double criminality.
Suppose you’re a UK taxpayer, and you’re fraudulently claiming, in your tax returns, a deduction that you’re not entitled to (and you know you’re not entitled to). You’re committing an offence under British law. Suppose now that under U.S. income tax law you would actually be entitled to that deduction. I would argue that this doesn’t matter; the point is not whether you would get the deduction under US law, the point is whether you were entitled to the deduction under the law under which you were taxed, i.e., British law. You’re not, so you’re committing a criminal offence. Similarly, if you were making fraudulent declarations under American law you’d be committing an offence under American law, so double criminality is fulfilled. The fact that the deduction you claimed exists under American law is of no importance because you’re not being prosecuted for claiming that particular deduction; you’re prosecuted for knowingly making false statements, which is punishable in bboth jurisdictions.
To get back to OP - we’re not talking about evading tax, we’re talking about the difference between a state that requires tax filings despite not being a resident, and one that does not. “If I had done similar behaviour against the extraditing state, is it a crime?”
Perhaps - some states have sex tourism laws. Some states don’t. Can Britain extradite someone to the USA for what they did in say, Cambodia or the Philippines? (I’m going to guess the answer is yes because I’m guessing Britain has similar laws).
Interesting - I wonder if he ever had to formally renounce US citizenship, or if the IRS has its eyes on him… I’ve heard speculation that even if you lived in another country your whole life, they could in theory go after you for a lifetime of earnings if you ever set foot in the US.
Not germane to the OP, per se, but there’s that nifty Foreign Earned Income Tax exclusion whereby the first xx dollars (presently about 100,000) you earn in another country is not subject to US taxes. Years back, colleagues of mine did multi-year stints on projects in Saudi Arabia and profited vastly as a result. Since they were employed by a US company, I don’t know if they had to pay income tax to Saudi Arabia. but if they did it was presumably less than the US tax would have been.
And that leads to an interesting conundrum: if you earned, say, 150,000 dollars in the other country, and paid taxes on the whole 150,000, but only 50,000 was taxable in the US, could you claim credit for the full tax to the other country or just the 50,000 worth that would have been taxable in the US.
I believe they were going after him, for capital gains tax on the sale of his house, as some real estate transactions which are free of tax here aren’t over there.