I’m back!

I’ve been slacking on posting here because of preparations for the California Dreamin’ Conference and a book deadline. The conference went well, with wonderful keynote speakers, authors Tessa Dare and Theodora Taylor, and an awesome Book Camp presenter, Janice Hardy. I survived to catch up on my sleep and finish polishing my manuscript which went off to the editor yesterday.

Yesterday was also tax day in the United States! (I filed mine weeks ago, thank goodness.) My next big event is a Facebook Hop celebrating the birth of Meghan and Harry’s first child, and I’ve discovered something that ties these two events–tax day and Baby Sussex’s arrival–together:

Baby Sussex may have to pay U.S. Income Taxes!

Are you kidding me?

Hello, you poor little rich kid!

My source for this tidbit of knowledge is an article by Laura Saunders in last month’s Wall Street Journal. Sadly, this is behind a paywall, so if you’re not a WSJ subscriber, try this link to an article from Forbes instead.

In a nutshell, Baby Sussex will be a U.S. Citizen from birth through his mama, and therefore subject to IRS tax requirements for unearned income over $2200 per year. Gifts adding up to more than $100,000 from one non-U.S. Citizen must be reported. So, if Grandpa Windsor sets up a generous  college fund for Baby Sussex in a British bank using British funds and complying with British tax rules, well so what? The IRS will want their cut also.

Baby Sussex may decide keeping up with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010 is too much trouble, but he or she will be unable to renounce U.S Citizenship until aged 16 or 17.

Apparently, the U.S. tax compliance requirements for U.S. Citizen expatriates are pretty onerous (from my point of view). Whether this is fair or not fair is a political question and I don’t do politics here. But gosh, imagine! Not only does capturing the heart of a handsome (and rich) prince come with a U.S. tax bite, so does being seventh in line to the throne if one of your parents happens to be a U.S. Citizen at the time of your birth!

I suppose the keyword here though is “rich”! Baby Sussex will have lots of good support to deal with those IRS headaches.

If you’re a fan of historical romance, do come and join us in the Facebook group I linked to above. We had a lot of fun celebrating two royal wedding last year, and this party is shaping up to be just as much fun!

Images: Baby is from Stencil.com; Meghan and Harry photo is from Wikimedia Commons and flickr via Creative Commons attribution.