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> It's so irritating to be an American that has moved overseas. Basically the only country in the world that charges taxes on money you make and spend somewhere

> It's so irritating to be an American that has moved overseas. Basically the only country in the world that charges taxes on money you make and spend somewhere else, just because of where you were born. This is exactly why these people are renouncing US citizenship: They’re living overseas as citizens of another country and, like anyone rich or poor, don’t want to be paying taxes to a country they aren’t living in. It’s not exactly unfair or nefarious. If they’re no longer living in the US and they are citizens and residents of another country, surrendering US citizenship is a logical choice. Renouncing US citizenship is a common move for this exact reason. This article just happens to have drawn an arbitrary line in the wealth of people who renounce US citizenship and made a headline out of the wealthier subset. The wealthy are also more like to have dual-citizenship but relocate to another country, so they’d be over represented in this set.

andi999 5y ago
One should actually be a bit careful to state such intent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Amendment_(immigration) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Amendment_(immigration)
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  A pertinent example of the kinds of people this amendment was apparently intended to bar from entry to the US: "One example discussed was Kenneth Dart of Dart Container, who had become a citizen of Belize and then attempted to obtain a diplomatic visa to serve as Belize's new consul in Sarasota, Florida."
- aarchi 5y ago
  Still seems relatively safe: > The Department of Homeland Security has stated that they cannot obtain the information required to enforce the amendment unless the former U.S. citizen "affirmatively admit[s]" his or her reasons for renouncing citizenship, and so from 2002 to 2015, only two people were denied entry to the United States on the grounds of the amendment.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  From that article: "The wording of the statute is embarrassing. How can an alien renounce U.S. citizenship? In what capacity would said alien do so officially? One assumes that a court of law would find the language incoherent and unenforceable ... This is the way we legislate at 5 o'clock in the morning 4 days before adjournment." Nice to see lawmakers falling to the specter of trying to get that commit in for the next release, along with the rest of us.
  - anticristi 5y ago
    One could actually say they push code, although "code" in this context means law.
    - spiralx 5y ago
      If you dig through legislation it begins to look like a Git repository, with patches adding and removing parts of the content and branches that if successful generate their own patches as well. Legal documents aren't code, but they do share many of the same principles and constraints - GIGO applies to both programs and contracts...
mgbmtl 5y ago
> surrendering US citizenship is a logical choice Only because of US laws. I have two citizenships, but one residency. In most Western countries, being a resident is associated with healthcare and pension, so having one residency is logical.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Only because of US laws. I have two citizenships, but one residency. U.S. citizenship carries extraterritorial benefits. For example, we're pretty good at getting our people out of thorny situations, even at great national expense. If someone isn't paying to support that, it makes sense to force a revocation decision.
  - not-so 5y ago
    What circumstances are those? There are a ton of homeless Americans where I live and the embassy doesn't do anything until they commit a crime as far as I know.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > What circumstances are those? If there is an act of war or natural disaster, the U.S. is good at extracting its citizens. There is also a decent precedent of negotiating to release people taken hostage or held prisoner by unfriendly regimes. (Or causing a fuss when Americans are harmed in a friendly country.) That, in turn, has a deterrent effect. For Americans with access to legal counsel and the State Department, the benefits expand. Rich, overseas Americans thus present a unique free-rider problem.
      - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
        For example, Israel goes to extremely great lengths extracting its citizens in trouble (search Operation Entebbe), and no, they don't charge you any taxes if you reside permanently abroad.
dr-detroit 5y ago
The nefarious part is reap all the advantages of American Democracy and then turn around and don't want to share their toys with middle class slobs.
fmajid 5y ago
Some are "accidental Americans" like UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, born in the US, who discovered as a US citizen he had to pay capital gains taxes when he sold his London apartment. Australia requires its parliamentarians to have only Australian citizenship and some discovered for the same reason they were not eligible. Furthermore, the burden of FATCA is sufficiently onerous that many banks etc. just refuse to deal with it and close the accounts of US persons. A number of long-time expat Americans, e.g. in Germany, have renounced their citizenship because they are unable to function due to this.
- aarchi 5y ago
  Well Germany also requires that you surrender other citizenships when you get a German citizenship, unless you are a German dual citizen through ancestry.
  - eduardo_f 5y ago
    This is incorrect.
  - rsstack 5y ago
    Imprecise but not incorrect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Dual_(or_other_multiple)_citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Dual_(o...
    - anticristi 5y ago
      I heard rumours that this law is basically to put a thorn in the eye of Turkish immigrants minus what the EU does not allow. Is there any truth in this?
      - rolleiflex 5y ago
        Yes, and Turkey moved to nullify this by creating a system in which if you are otherwise a valid Turkish citizen that has to give up because of a requirement from a foreign country like this, you can get on a special status in which you cannot vote, but have all the other privileges of Turkish citizenship. That status is not citizenship in theory, but practically you have everything as usual, and can participate in the Turkish social security, retirement, health system and all else. It’s called the blue card.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jontas 5y ago
The article is not drawing an arbitrary line: > The IRS publishes a quarterly list of the names of people who have renounced their citizenship or given up their green cards, but it only includes people with global assets over $2 million It may be an arbitrary line, but if so, it's the IRS drawing it.
- f38zf5vdt 5y ago
  It seems like no one actually knows what the list represents. > Gibbons expected that the list would include only "a handful of the wealthiest of the wealthy" motivated solely by taxes; however, the people named in the list turned out to have a wide variety of motivations for emigrating from the U.S. and later giving up citizenship, and few were publicly known to be wealthy.[7] > ...In contrast, Andrew Mitchel, a Connecticut tax lawyer interviewed by The Wall Street Journal for its reports on Americans giving up citizenship, states that the list is required to include all former citizens. [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarterly_Publication_of_Individuals_Who_Have_Chosen_to_Expatriate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarterly_Publication_of_Indiv...
- kogepathic 5y ago
  > The IRS publishes a quarterly list of the names of people who have renounced their citizenship or given up their green cards, but it only includes people with global assets over $2 million This claim is total crap. The list includes all US citizens who renounce their citizenship, regardless of their net worth. [1] You also cannot renounce your citizenship for tax dodging [2]: > Persons who wish to renounce U.S. citizenship should be aware of the fact that renunciation of U.S. citizenship may have no effect on their U.S. tax or military service obligations (contact the Internal Revenue Service or U.S. Selective Service for more information). So plan to become rich after renouncing (and without the IRS noticing). [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/quarterly-publication-of-individuals-who-have-chosen-to-expatriate https://www.federalregister.gov/quarterly-publication-of-ind... [2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Renunciation-US-Nationality-Abroad.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
  - 5y ago
steve76 5y ago
>It’s not exactly unfair or nefarious. >Eric Schmidt, the former Alphabet CEO, has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus. The rich jerk who needed free trillions or otherwise the world would end left us high and dry. Wow imagine that. And I wonder how this is going to end. Not like it's too difficult today to spread word through Turkish prisons that it's open season on rich Americans in Cypress. Public outrage? Likely you'll get complementary cigarettes sent to you in the mail.
jarl-ragnar 5y ago
There’s an irony in there somewhere given the original motivation for the “Boston Tea Party”. No taxation without representation.
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  Americans can vote overseas though
  - jarl-ragnar 5y ago
    I know. I was referring to the comment about not feeling represented.
  - skatkartoffel 5y ago
    Not all of them and even if you are eligible to vote, some states make it nearly impossible to request a ballot. I’ve been removed from the registry multiple times and had to fill out an emergency ballot which didn’t even get counted in the 2016 election.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    “No taxation without representation” does not imply “no representation without taxation”.
- larkost 5y ago
  You are mistaken about the cause of the the Boston Tea Party. It was not about taxation without representation; it was about lack of taxation on tea from the East India corporation (which the King and his friends had a financial interest in). Many of the people protesting were owners in the local tea companies who's product was suddenly undercut because the King did not want to lose money on teas that were not selling in England. The "no taxation without representation" was a slogan applied after the fact.
greyhair 5y ago
Commonly called "click bait"
wolverine876 5y ago
> This article just happens to have drawn an arbitrary line in the wealth of people who renounce US citizenship and made a headline out of the wealthier subset. The wealthy are also more like to have dual-citizenship but relocate to another country, so they’d be over represented in this set. Do you have any evidence of this?

andi999 5y ago

One should actually be a bit careful to state such intent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Amendment_(immigration) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Amendment_(immigration)

pmoriarty 5y ago
A pertinent example of the kinds of people this amendment was apparently intended to bar from entry to the US: "One example discussed was Kenneth Dart of Dart Container, who had become a citizen of Belize and then attempted to obtain a diplomatic visa to serve as Belize's new consul in Sarasota, Florida."
aarchi 5y ago
Still seems relatively safe: > The Department of Homeland Security has stated that they cannot obtain the information required to enforce the amendment unless the former U.S. citizen "affirmatively admit[s]" his or her reasons for renouncing citizenship, and so from 2002 to 2015, only two people were denied entry to the United States on the grounds of the amendment.
bee_rider 5y ago
From that article: "The wording of the statute is embarrassing. How can an alien renounce U.S. citizenship? In what capacity would said alien do so officially? One assumes that a court of law would find the language incoherent and unenforceable ... This is the way we legislate at 5 o'clock in the morning 4 days before adjournment." Nice to see lawmakers falling to the specter of trying to get that commit in for the next release, along with the rest of us.
- anticristi 5y ago
  One could actually say they push code, although "code" in this context means law.
  - spiralx 5y ago
    If you dig through legislation it begins to look like a Git repository, with patches adding and removing parts of the content and branches that if successful generate their own patches as well. Legal documents aren't code, but they do share many of the same principles and constraints - GIGO applies to both programs and contracts...

mgbmtl 5y ago

> surrendering US citizenship is a logical choice Only because of US laws. I have two citizenships, but one residency. In most Western countries, being a resident is associated with healthcare and pension, so having one residency is logical.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Only because of US laws. I have two citizenships, but one residency. U.S. citizenship carries extraterritorial benefits. For example, we're pretty good at getting our people out of thorny situations, even at great national expense. If someone isn't paying to support that, it makes sense to force a revocation decision.
- not-so 5y ago
  What circumstances are those? There are a ton of homeless Americans where I live and the embassy doesn't do anything until they commit a crime as far as I know.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > What circumstances are those? If there is an act of war or natural disaster, the U.S. is good at extracting its citizens. There is also a decent precedent of negotiating to release people taken hostage or held prisoner by unfriendly regimes. (Or causing a fuss when Americans are harmed in a friendly country.) That, in turn, has a deterrent effect. For Americans with access to legal counsel and the State Department, the benefits expand. Rich, overseas Americans thus present a unique free-rider problem.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
      For example, Israel goes to extremely great lengths extracting its citizens in trouble (search Operation Entebbe), and no, they don't charge you any taxes if you reside permanently abroad.

dr-detroit 5y ago

The nefarious part is reap all the advantages of American Democracy and then turn around and don't want to share their toys with middle class slobs.

fmajid 5y ago

Some are "accidental Americans" like UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, born in the US, who discovered as a US citizen he had to pay capital gains taxes when he sold his London apartment. Australia requires its parliamentarians to have only Australian citizenship and some discovered for the same reason they were not eligible. Furthermore, the burden of FATCA is sufficiently onerous that many banks etc. just refuse to deal with it and close the accounts of US persons. A number of long-time expat Americans, e.g. in Germany, have renounced their citizenship because they are unable to function due to this.

aarchi 5y ago
Well Germany also requires that you surrender other citizenships when you get a German citizenship, unless you are a German dual citizen through ancestry.
- eduardo_f 5y ago
  This is incorrect.
- rsstack 5y ago
  Imprecise but not incorrect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Dual_(or_other_multiple)_citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Dual_(o...
  - anticristi 5y ago
    I heard rumours that this law is basically to put a thorn in the eye of Turkish immigrants minus what the EU does not allow. Is there any truth in this?
    - rolleiflex 5y ago
      Yes, and Turkey moved to nullify this by creating a system in which if you are otherwise a valid Turkish citizen that has to give up because of a requirement from a foreign country like this, you can get on a special status in which you cannot vote, but have all the other privileges of Turkish citizenship. That status is not citizenship in theory, but practically you have everything as usual, and can participate in the Turkish social security, retirement, health system and all else. It’s called the blue card.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jontas 5y ago

The article is not drawing an arbitrary line: > The IRS publishes a quarterly list of the names of people who have renounced their citizenship or given up their green cards, but it only includes people with global assets over $2 million It may be an arbitrary line, but if so, it's the IRS drawing it.

f38zf5vdt 5y ago
It seems like no one actually knows what the list represents. > Gibbons expected that the list would include only "a handful of the wealthiest of the wealthy" motivated solely by taxes; however, the people named in the list turned out to have a wide variety of motivations for emigrating from the U.S. and later giving up citizenship, and few were publicly known to be wealthy.[7] > ...In contrast, Andrew Mitchel, a Connecticut tax lawyer interviewed by The Wall Street Journal for its reports on Americans giving up citizenship, states that the list is required to include all former citizens. [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarterly_Publication_of_Individuals_Who_Have_Chosen_to_Expatriate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarterly_Publication_of_Indiv...
kogepathic 5y ago
> The IRS publishes a quarterly list of the names of people who have renounced their citizenship or given up their green cards, but it only includes people with global assets over $2 million This claim is total crap. The list includes all US citizens who renounce their citizenship, regardless of their net worth. [1] You also cannot renounce your citizenship for tax dodging [2]: > Persons who wish to renounce U.S. citizenship should be aware of the fact that renunciation of U.S. citizenship may have no effect on their U.S. tax or military service obligations (contact the Internal Revenue Service or U.S. Selective Service for more information). So plan to become rich after renouncing (and without the IRS noticing). [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/quarterly-publication-of-individuals-who-have-chosen-to-expatriate https://www.federalregister.gov/quarterly-publication-of-ind... [2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Renunciation-US-Nationality-Abroad.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
- 5y ago

steve76 5y ago

>It’s not exactly unfair or nefarious. >Eric Schmidt, the former Alphabet CEO, has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus. The rich jerk who needed free trillions or otherwise the world would end left us high and dry. Wow imagine that. And I wonder how this is going to end. Not like it's too difficult today to spread word through Turkish prisons that it's open season on rich Americans in Cypress. Public outrage? Likely you'll get complementary cigarettes sent to you in the mail.

jarl-ragnar 5y ago

There’s an irony in there somewhere given the original motivation for the “Boston Tea Party”. No taxation without representation.

rejectedandsad 5y ago
Americans can vote overseas though
- jarl-ragnar 5y ago
  I know. I was referring to the comment about not feeling represented.
- skatkartoffel 5y ago
  Not all of them and even if you are eligible to vote, some states make it nearly impossible to request a ballot. I’ve been removed from the registry multiple times and had to fill out an emergency ballot which didn’t even get counted in the 2016 election.
- masklinn 5y ago
  “No taxation without representation” does not imply “no representation without taxation”.
larkost 5y ago
You are mistaken about the cause of the the Boston Tea Party. It was not about taxation without representation; it was about lack of taxation on tea from the East India corporation (which the King and his friends had a financial interest in). Many of the people protesting were owners in the local tea companies who's product was suddenly undercut because the King did not want to lose money on teas that were not selling in England. The "no taxation without representation" was a slogan applied after the fact.

greyhair 5y ago

Commonly called "click bait"

wolverine876 5y ago

> This article just happens to have drawn an arbitrary line in the wealth of people who renounce US citizenship and made a headline out of the wealthier subset. The wealthy are also more like to have dual-citizenship but relocate to another country, so they’d be over represented in this set. Do you have any evidence of this?