Guest Blogs
Knowitall.ch often invites local experts in their field to contribute to their own blogs on our site. This means not only you will benefit from the useful recommendations that we make on our News pages, but you can also profit from some of the great advice and tips that these experts have to make on their favorite subjects. Whilst each of these bloggers has been recommended to us at some point during the evolution of Know-it-all passport and knowitall.ch, obviously we are not able to test out all the suggestions they make on their blogs, nor do we necessarily agree with all their opinions. So if you do find one of their tips useful (or not!), do let us know!
To make these blogs more accessible to you, we have now decided to group them altogether in one section, entitled Guest Blogs, accessible from our main menu bar. We will also post the most recent blogs on the home page of our site in the right hand column.
We are still building up this area of the site, and are looking for bloggers in a number of sections, including Your Home, Travel, and Leisure, so if you feel you have a useful contribution to make in either of these areas, and have the time to submit blog entries approximately every month, then please get in touch!
By Aurea Fagel, text and photos
Mention The Tulip Festival in Switzerland and everyone imagines Morges, the alluring petite town in the canton of Vaud. This year in late March, The Tulip Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary at the famous venue Parc de l’Independence, albeit with less grandeur. Now the season has passed, one might think there is nothing to see. But I beg to disagree! With Jêune Genevois and Jêune Fédéral this month, this is the perfect season to spend time in this lakeside city.
For one thing, the Parc de l’Independence is a magnificent place for a lazy Sunday or weekend escape. One Sunday while I picnicked I noticed many others doing the same, or reading a book, or taking a nap on the grass, or simply taking a stroll overlooking Lake Geneva with a backdrop of the Mont Blanc. When you stroll past the park towards the port please indulge in the artisanal ice cream stand just beside the port. Their pistachio ice cream is one of the best I have tasted; make it a double and pair it with cassis noir.
by Patrick Hoza, US Tax & Financial Services
Lefty Gomez, an all-star pitcher for the New York Yankees in the 1930's, is credited with saying "I'd rather be lucky than good." He is also credited with earning the nicknames "Goofy Gomez," and "El Goofo." Still, I often think Lefty had it right and today could very well be your lucky day.
If you are a US citizen and want to give up your citizenship but have fretted over unfiled returns or the fact you do not have a US social security number, then the IRS has a procedure for you! It’s called ‘Relief Procedures for Certain Former Citizens’.
This procedure allows an individual that meets the following eligibility requirements to have a “get out of jail free” card.
- Your past compliance failures were due to non-wilful conduct.
- You have relinquished your U.S. citizenship after March 18, 2010.
- You have no filing history as a U.S. citizen or resident.
- You did not exceed the threshold in Internal Revenue Code Section 877(a)(2)(A), relating to average annual net income tax for the period of 5 tax years ending before your date of expatriation. This amount is $171,000 for 2020 and is indexed for inflation each year.
by Katie Harwood, Haut-Lac International Bilingual School
Sometimes parents hesitate when faced with choosing between English or bilingual streams. Which will be best for their children?
This article is here to demystify that decision, as neither option is right or wrong. Both can suit any family. It just depends on what is best for their lifestyle and expectations of the future.
Why English?
- English is currently the world’s most connected language.
- It’s a language used for worldwide communication, so achieving competency or mastery is an incredible asset for anyone.
- English will open up a student’s future.
- Young students who are still early in their international school career will find that knowing English will be a boon when creating friendships. Older students who demonstrate a good level of English will most likely be more appealing to employers worldwide.
- International students whose families are often on the move may also benefit from focusing on learning solely in English, rather than beginning to learn French before moving on again. English will be the constant language in the lives of international school kids, so it is best for them to develop their skills in this language as fully as possible.
- Following the English programme may also benefit local and Swiss families, who wish to give their children a deep English immersion, so as to raise their level more quickly than would happen in public school. It will also benefit students who arrive with neither English nor French. Rather than learn two new languages right away, English will be the easier language to take on first. When they feel ready, students may always try the bilingual programme later.
A gentle introduction to bilingualism: If learning French feels like a very large task, the English stream can be an easier way to get started. Students will get a period of French a day in the primary and infant sections, and can take beginner French classes in secondary. By building their confidence slowly, they will know in time whether they’re ready and willing to transition into the bilingual stream or not.
By Elizabeth Ballin, Life Coach https://ballincoaching.ch
As summer holidays come to a close, I am always reminded of how I felt as a teenager about to start a new school year. Sitting on the plane, heading home from vacation, I would be excited at the idea of returning to school. I made many promises to myself: I would be a great student, be physically fit, have lots of friends, maybe even make my parents proud! But every year, I discovered that meeting those goals wasn’t so easy to do. Each time I faced adversity, my self-esteem plummeted.
Many students seem to have a difficult time overcoming obstacles and accepting failure. They lose motivation and fall into the habit of procrastination. They can have high aspirations but can easily be dissuaded when confronted with life’s changes.
For a lot of us, not just students, our expectations do not match the reality of what it takes to reach our goals. If we don’t succeed, we can become trapped into not believing in ourselves, as I did when I was young. We freeze, we ruminate, we catastrophize. We’d rather do nothing than face failure; anxiety builds up, and we step away from what could be an opportunity of a lifetime.
Granted, not all students were like me. Over the past 15 years working with teens, I have noticed that some just thrive in the face of challenge. They bounce back from failure and are even able to manage personal trauma. They have what is known as resilience - the ability to “transform hardship into challenge, failure into success, helplessness into power’*.
As a life coach and a mindful practitioner, with a leaning on positive psychology, my interest in resilience grew. I began to notice that people who were more resilient and more mindful were handling life’s demands with a more positive attitude and were generally happier.
by Patrick Hoza, US Tax & Financial Services
While the Streamline Program has been around for quite a few years, it’s worth mentioning again for those US persons that have still not filed their returns or corrected past mistakes but were not aware of the program. The IRS accepts that taxpayers should not be exposed to extremely harsh penalties for a non-wilful failure to comply with all the various tax reporting requirements. The IRS Streamlined Voluntary Disclosure program is specifically for taxpayers who can certify that their failure to file all information, report all income and pay tax was due to ‘non-wilful conduct’ – that is, due to negligence, inadvertence and mistake, or good faith misunderstanding of these legal obligations.
The program is applied differently for US Persons that can qualify under the offshore version of the program, and those that must use the US resident program. We speak to the offshore version below.
Are you eligible?
To be eligible for the Offshore Procedure the taxpayer must meet a non-residency requirement. This requirement is met if:
- in any one or more of the most recent three years for which the US tax return due date, or properly applied for extended due date, has passed (the ‘covered tax period’)
- the individual did not have a US abode and was physically outside the United States for at least 330 full days
File the returns, pay the tax
For each of the most recent three years for which the US tax return due date (or properly applied for extended due date) has passed, the procedure requires that the taxpayer:
- file delinquent or amended tax returns, together with all required information returns
- file any delinquent FBARs (for each of the most recent 6 years for which the FBAR* due date has passed)
- pay the full amount of tax and interest due with the delinquent or amended returns
