American citizens and U.S. resident aliens, including individuals holding dual citizenship, who have lived or worked outside of the United States during all or part of the year 2011 may have a U.S. tax liability and are required to file a U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. Even if you may not have a tax filing liability, failing to file a U.S. tax return will leave the protective Statute of Limitations open, allowing for the IRS to audit that open year without the passage of time, which would have closed the door on an IRS audit. Normally, the IRS is not allowed to audit a tax return that has been filed with IRS more than 3 years earlier. Another important factor to keep in mind, the burden of proof showing that you did file your tax return is upon you and you alone. It is easy and cheap to file your tax return via Certified Mail Return Receipt Requested as the IRS recognized way to prove your timely mailing of a tax return.

WHAT IS MY DEADLING FOR FILING?
Citizens of the United States and U.S. resident aliens living and/or working outside of the United States or serving

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Xi Jinping, in 2012, is going to become the next President of  the People’s Republic of China.  For those of you interested in in knowing something about him, here’s a brief CV, as taken from the South China Morning Post, 19 October 2010:

1953 - born in Beijing, the son of Xi Zhongxun, vice-premier of China, from 1959-1962.
1975-1979 - studied at Qinghua University, majoring in chemical engineering.
1979-1982 - secretary at the General Office of the State Council and the General Office of the Central Military Commission.
1982-1985 - deputy party chief and later, party chief of Zhengding county, Hebei Province.
1985-1988 - vice-mayor of Xiamen, Fujian Province.
1988-1999 - various party chief positions in Fujian province, including party secretary of Ningde county and the city of Fuzhou.
1999-2002 - Fujian province governor and deputy party secretary.
1998-2002 - studied Marxist theory in an on-the-job postgraduate program at Qinghua University, graduating with a doctorate in law.
2002-2007 - governor and party secretary of Zhejiang province.
2007 - party secretary of Shanghai municipality.
2007-the present - member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China;  member of

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Offshore Investing – Legal or Not

Ever since I became interested in the offshore world, I have had a devil of a time trying to explain to people what it is.  The most common response to any conversation about offshore investing are the raised eyebrows followed by the comment “but isn’t that illegal?”  It seems that for most people, the image of the swashbuckling international playboy with the numbered Swiss bank account holds true. 

Of course, the reality is so much more prosaic then that above – I myself am surely no international playboy, as my wife could well attest to! – but this seems to be the dominant image in our popular culture.  I have, however, always assumed that people in the financial world surely understood the reality versus the image. Tthis assumption has now been completely swept away after reading this utterly simplistic and ill-informed article in the Wall Street Journal by the well-known financial columnist James Stewart:  Read his column here  I have regularly read Stewart’s monthly columns in Smart Money and the WSJ, and for the most part he has written about investment strategies and specific stocks, and he always struck me as

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