Ask your questions about Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship and Certificates of Loss of Nationality.
Please note that the guidelines for this discussion are published here.
Ask your questions about Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship and Certificates of Loss of Nationality.
Please note that the guidelines for this discussion are published here.
Hear! Hear!
Couldn’t agree more – except I came with my wife in ’68 and we’re still married.
We are Canadian! (apologies to Molson.)
@lovecheese- congratulations. I guess that you may now be even more thankful for the kindess of your grandparents and that they loved you so much that they let you live with them for a very precious seven months.
Who would ever think that those seven months would prove to have been so important to you later in life.
Schubert:
Well said. And me too, I’m still married to the same lady.
LOL!!! If they were still alive I would thank them dearly!! To be honest, I hated those 7 months as they were mean and unkind to me, but hey, it was all worth it now!! ha ha.
@schubert1975- Well said!! 🙂
@Arrow, congratulations! Many happy returns!
@johnnb also belated congratulations! Didn’t scroll up the page far enough and missed your post the first time.
Congratulaltions to all you guys on your long marriages. Happy Belated Valentine’s Day.
I’m not the ex-wife of a draft dodger, I’m the ex-wife of a Canadian. I’m a “spiritual draft dodger” like Arrow. Thanks for the term Arrow!
@Arrow and Jonb – Congratulations! That is so wonderful. Am working up to that. We were married in March 1990 in a civil ceremony (legal one). Church wedding followed in September. First best thing I ever did. Second was having the girls. Third will be (if they accept me) becoming a French citizen. 🙂
@ Schubert
Your earlier post is so “right on”. How can we possibly “renounce” what we did not have. I most defnitely, like so many of you, “relinquished”. In my case it was in 1972.
I was looking at the U.S. State Dept. forms today that you need to fill out to apply for your CLN, if you performed an expatriating act. Those forms are: DS-4079, DS-4081 and finally the CLN itself, DS-4083. Perhaps I am missing something here, but nowhere on those forms do I see a place that you would enter a former name ie in my case, my maiden name. I landed in Canada the day after my wedding. Since my wedding, I have always used my married name. How do the IRS match the name on the CLN to the name I was known as when I lived in the U.S. The DS-4081 has a line that states Former U.S. Citizen’s Name – it does not say “Former name of U.S. Citizen”.
@Tiger: Very interesting dilemma! For the first time, I’m sorry I reverted to my maiden name after my divorce. Lucky you!
@ tiger
DS-4081 ask for the name of the former US citizen
NOT former name(s) used by the US citizen. I had my name legally changed in Québec, I will renounce using my current name.
@ Tiger
Yes the US forms leave a LOT to be desired. Notably the statement that it should take the average person 15 minutes to collect all the information needed for the five-page relinquishent form (4079) and prepare it. I’d like to know what was being smoked by the bureaucrat who came up with that number!
On several places on 4079 and 4081 it is suggested you might want to attach a document or an explanation of something. My advice would be , among other things as needed, to prepare a sheet of paper listing in chronological order your name changes and attach to the sheet photocopies of your birth certificate and your marriage certificate. Bring that with you to the consular appointment and call it to the officer’s attention at the beginning of the meeting.
See Johnnb’s excellent thread on his visit to the Halifax consulate, where he lists all the documents that he was told to bring with him to the meeting. see http://isaacbrocksociety.com/2012/01/24/vist-to-halifax-consulate/. He and his wife were specifically asked to bring their marriage certificate with them.
I don’t imagine any other consulate is going to want more than what Halifax asked John for, but if you can get a live human on the phone before the meeting, ask them. By “passports” that would be your current Canadian passport and any US passport you might still have, valid or expired. I’d bring copies with the originals but don’t give them the originals (except you will have to surrender any US passports you have, I think).
Good luck!
@ schubert
I am still not at the stage of booking a consular appointment, nor have I made a definite decision that is what I would do. However, I don’t think I would want to show them my marriage certificate. No where on the form do they ask for it. It would show my maiden name, which of course is the name on record in the U.S.
You are correct, the forms leave a lot to be desired. One of the questions (6) ON FORM DS-4079 states: “When did you first become aware you might be a U.S. citizen”. Well, I wonder, could it have been in my 4th grade civics class? Perhaps I knew when I was one or two years old? Question 7: “How did you find out that you are a citizen of the United States?” Let me see, I think my Dad mentioned it once at the dinner table.
Remember that 4079 says much more about the U.S. than it does about you. The entire form is written with the thought that the person filling it out is trying to *claim* U.S. citizenship and the idea that someone might actually be trying to get rid of it never entered their head.
If you read the questions with that in mind they make much more sense.
We just treated it as one more hurdle to jump on the way to getting them to where we knew we already were.
@johnnb
“We just treated it as one more hurdle to jump on the way to getting them to where we knew we already were.”
Very well said, bravo! That’s exactly right.
@ Schubert (Feb 15, 4:45pm) “If you’ve lived the past 35 years of your life as a Canadian, not as an American, and have never for one microsecond thought of yourself as an American, acted like one, claimed to be one, and have always been a proud Canadian earning every penny of your income in Canada from Canadian sources, the US claim to your having US citizenship anyway and having to renounce rather than relinquish is essentially a theft of your identity and the reality of your very life for the past 35 years.”
That is *exactly* what went through my horrified mind when I found out about this retroactive citizenship: “They’re trying to negate 35 years of life!”
When asked, “Why does it matter?” I’d actually used that term you used, “Because it’s the reality of my life.”
Just one example from my life, over the decades, I’ve been very active in poltiics. Never once represented the interests of any foreign country — never even thought of such a thing, being 100% Canadian. It seems a dual might, or should, feel allegiance to two countries — that’s not me.
And that’s only one aspect of my life. Every aspect of my life has been Canadian, and only Canadian, all these years. It’s what I am.
A country can make retroactive laws and policies, but a person can’t just turn on allegiance and a sense of belonging like flipping a light switch. It defies reality.
This retroactive citizenship is unbelievably disorienting. Like Alice in Wonderland or something. Up is down. Left is right. Black is white. I can’t wrap my head around it. It’s like my brain short-circuits at the thought –“does not compute.”
I passed on Johnnb’s great quote to a friend who freely and intentionally relinquished her US citizenship three decades ago and is applying for a CLN. She crosses the US border on a Canadian passport that shows a US birthplace (she’s never had a US passport in her life, and never will), and border guards have in fact asked her why she isn’t crossing on a US passport. She’s always replied, “because I’m a Canadian and I’m not an American.” No one has yet pursued an argument with her (and they’d get into a pitched battle if they did, if I know her …). She sent me the following comment, which she’s agreed that I can share on this forum:
“I have always been amused by the great pains – and passion – with which border guards and IRS officials have informed me that yes, I can certainly GET MY US CITIZENSHIP BACK. Again, it does not seem to ever occur to any of them that it might be the last thing I would want . As I have said before, one of the (many) problems with the US is that, far too often, Americans believe their own mythology. My response to this is that `You have to be brave to live in the land of the free.’”
I have taken the time over the weekend to read the entire «renunciatinguide». My understandin is, that I, if I renounce my UScitizenship, I would be classified as a covered expatriate because I do not meet the compliance test. As KalC wrote, it would be an expensive pain in the derrière. However, as has written avowd on feb 14 at 8:05 AM, the exit tax would not apply to me because I am in the excepton for adults. That is «I received citizenship of both US and some other country at birth..»
As per my post on feb 13 at 9:41 PM »My short story» born in US from Canadian parents and formely took my Canadian citizenship some 30 years later».
Question: I am really in the exception for adults ?
Question 2: since I unfortunately got a SSN and US passport in the fall of 1994, which I have never used and since I have on a few occasions signed an «affirmation of allegiance» the last one signed in 1999 (my post on feb 13 at 10:28 pm) ) can I relinquish and get a CLN and forget about the renounciation process ?
@Greenwood My layperson’s reading of the rules is that even if you received citizenship of both US and some other country at birth, if you don’t have the five years’ worth of compliance you’re a covered expatriate. But covered expatriates have a lower but still significant threshold of IIRC something like US$640,000.
I suspect that if your assets are below that threshold you could renounce without the five years of returns, but you’d need legal advice.
I’ve wondered for a while if there isn’t a very simple template for middle-income accidental Americans consisting of (1) relinquishing based on a non-US passport application then (2) filing an 8938 saying that you weren’t tax compliant but had assets below the exclusion, so farewell Uncle Sam then (3) opening a beer and forgetting about the whole business.
What is meant by the acronyme IIRC ?
@ Greenwood. If I Recall Correctly.
If I recall correctly it means If I recall correctly.
From what I understand, pension plans (in my case fed pension plan i.e. being a fed employee) cannot be included in the net worth test, that is, not counted as part of my assets under the «deemed sale». Thus, 30% of the total would be withheld etc. etc…
“To be, or not to be (a US citizen expat)–that is the question.”
– Hamlet
@Greenwood
Federal superannuation in Canada, as well as CPP and OAS, are NOT included in net worth for Form 8854 as far as I’ve been told(I’ve heard professional confirmation of this). Assets for purposes of 8854 are things that can be sold, transferred, or cashed in on your death by your estate (which is what the mark-to-market stuff is all about). None of those three plans pay a cent to your estate, nor can you cash them in (as you can an annuity or an RRSP or a RRIF or a TFSA or a GIC or …) nor can you sell or transfer them. They’re income streams, specific to you alone (or your spouse on your death under certain conditions, for CPP and superannuation) and when you die, the stream ends. That’s not an asset, and the IRS can’t put their filthy hands on a cent of it. It is NOT included in the calculation of your net worth. (Quite apart from the fact that every penny of those pensions are paid by Canadian taxpayers in return for contributions from you and your employer — namely the taxpayers of Canada — in the case of CPP and superannuation, and OAS is a benefit to all eligible Canadians over 65 paid for by Canadian taxpayers. The IRS and by extension the US taxpayer has no right to put their filthy hands on one penny of any of these pensions or include them in 8854.)
Genuine assets like RRIFs, annuities, investment funds etc etc are another story.
However I’m not a lawyer or accountant and I can’t give professional advice. If in any doubt about this, get advice from an accountant or a tax lawyer who is based in Canada and is a Canadian citizen. (On these matters I wouldn’t trust any American on any of this any further than I can spit.)