Being confronted with all the challenges you have to overcome living in one country, being of another nationality, and even working in a 3rd country, I was wondering why we still don’t have the concept of a ‘European Citizenship’.

Currently, as a citizen of a EU Member country I am allowed to work in any of the other EU countries. But still, I need a work permit for those countries. I need to pay tax in those countries and I need to go through all the necessary paperwork for every single country. This is not really helping me.

One of the goals (but correct me if I’m wrong) of the EU was to make it easier to do crossborder business. So why not introduce a special ’status’. A ‘European Citizenship’. Those persons who apply for it get a ‘European Passport’, and instead of paying tax for every country he or she works in, you pay your income tax to the EU. Of course this would not stop me from doing the paperwork connected with paying tax, but it would make things a -lot- clearer. I would even be prepared to pay for such a status.

I wonder, how does that work in the US? Do you pay tax on state level? Do you have to register a citizenship by state?