to think the govt is treating my family like a cash machine

[petelly]

So, story is met and married a forinuh (and a non EU one at that) when living abroad. We married in 2001 and have 2 dcs. In 2008 I was offered a good job in the UK and we decided to move here.

First off, £750 for a spouse visa. Usually good for two years. Then you come to the UK, take the stupid 'Life in the UK test' for £35 and then apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain which costs £840. After 3 years in the UK, you can apply for citizenship which costs £735. So over £2000 forked over to govt just for the privilege of a married couple living together.

Now, in our case, we'd been married for 7 years when we applied so we found a loop hole where dh could get indefinite leave as part of the original visa (saving us £840!!). BUT you had to take the Life in the UK test which you HAVE to sit in the UK. So dh got on a plane, flew to the UK, sat the test (passed ) and flew back again which cost us £400 plus carbon footprint - but significant saving for us.

Then last year our bag was stolen while we were abroad with all our passports. We all got new passports - easy enough.

But then the flipping border agency charged £270 for a replacement visa stamp in dh's passport. Now, the worst thing is that you'd think for that money you'd get a good service but NO!!! With the replacement stamp the border agency kept his passport for SIX MONTHS DH lost work because he couldn't prove he was eligible to work in the UK. He also nearly missed a previously booked business trip but persuaded his embassy to give him a temporary second passport (another £100). Our MP got involved and his assistant found dh's original indefinite leave within SECONDS on the computer.

When dh applies for citizenship, the Border Agnecy also say it can take six months. But WHY FFS if we are paying through our noses? can't they at least provide a decent service? They also have a premium number phone-line where you get through to some passive-agressive 'computer says no' kind of person.

The Border Agency openly say that they use the revenue generated by over-charging legal immigrants to fund the deportation of illegal immigrants to make the immigration system self-funding. WTF!!! So all non-EU immigrants need to PAY for illegal immigrants??? I don't get it and it just doesn't seem fair.

We also get charged a 'community integration fee' to help LAs struggling with high immigration levels. But a lot of the problems are caused by EU immigrants eg Polish who don't speak English and don't pay a penny because they're EU. I'm British, my children are British, we all speak English - and no-one has lifted a finger to help us 'integrate' either. So why are we paying for a fucking community integration fee??

Is it just me (because we're paying!!!) or does this just seem totally OTT, unfair and exploiting people who don't have much of a choice???

Oh sorry, the hypothetical person came and took over the keyboard in the post before my last

StarExPat: I think the rule is that if you don't owe US tax you don't have to file US tax returns. However, it's a good idea to file returns anyway to document the fact that you don't owe, iyswim. I did that for years but can't be bothered, although it was handy one year all those I-Don't-Owe-Anything-Returns (long story I won't go into).

I have heard completely conflicting things about state tax returns. I came from California and still have tiny interest income there so have to file if I owe... I read the CA website and it seems to have a foreign-earned income exclusion. But a friend insists that CA doesn't have such an exclusion .

I may well be doing it all wrong, but the only time I got a quote on professionals to do the returns for me, it was like 2k GBP (each tax year), so I'd rather take my chances in stumbling thru the tax returns system myself.

Plus I seem to hear a lot of stories about professional accountants getting tax returns wrong, especially if yours is anything but a bog-standard situation. People like me are such small fry to the IRS, the risk assessment is that it's not worth me paying a fortune to accountants or getting my knickers into a twist about it all.

Your best bet is to file, you don't have to pay. But if you do return at a later date... you will probblay need to back file your taxes to prove you didn't have to file. which means finding out how much you earned..and doing taxs times however many years you've been gone. Not something I could be arsed to do. So now that I am going back to the states and havent filed for years I told the foreigner if he wanted to com with he'd have to file for me...

He was horrified.

ragged I'm 29 now. And baby is due December 22.

Thank you TheDeadlyLampshade, will be going to Embassy website.

Also, nice to see all the stuff about taxes. I'm glad to know about it.

It is also nice to know none of us are alone in these difficult experiences.

DH files his US taxes every year but we dont have to pay anything cos he doesn't earn enough in the UK