The up-to-date database resides in Part 2 (link at the bottom of this page).
Above is a link to data we are compiling on Relinquishments and Renunciations — a work in progress. This corresponds with the Consulate Report Directory (in sticky post below), tracking individual experiences for each Consulate, along with a timeline chart.
Note: We are using numbers instead of blog names for this public posting so there will be no compromise of private information. Your facts will help give a snapshot of relinquishment and renunciation activity and where that occurs.
Please submit information in the comments here (or someone can contact you privately). Thanks for all your help on this.
COMMENTS ARE CLOSED FOR Relinquishment and Renunciation Data (as reported on Isaac Brock), Part 1.
Part 2 is now open for your comments. Thank you.
Those folks at the Vancouver consulate are busybodies (in the most pejorative sense of the term). Insisting on the Canadian passport and sending a copy of 8854 and the instructions. And what they insisted that Tiger provide! They will have a worldwide reputation of anal retentive behaviour.
@Woofy,
You may get 8854 forms, but why would you have to fill them out and return them if your CLN confirms your relinquishment decades ago? You would have had no US requirements from that date (as I see it).
*@Woofy,
It appears that they just automatically include these forms when they send out CLNs, whether they are applicable or not..
@ Cir,
Congratulations on your CLN! Delighted to hear! Quite a great turnaround time for the CLN too.
Thanks for your kind words, glad to have been of some help. I’d like to thank you too, for your contributions on the site and your consulate report which was both informationally useful and a really fun read, too!
Welcome to freedom!
@Calgary, you confirm that the Yanks in the Vancouver Consulate are the ultimate busybodies who think that they know what is best. Toronto said not a word about taxes–that’s between you and the IRS–it is not a triangular love affair (state-expat-irs), but two separate bilateral relationships (state-expat; irs-expat). Obama’s America–made up of border guards who don’t know the law but think they do, Consulate officials who down right busybodies, and Treasury department that interprets and enforces laws in the least charitable manner with regard to Expats.
I wonder whether they care about the expense of printing these forms for the expat? The extra postage that they had to pay, etc. In England they reuse envelopes; but the US Federal government doesn’t know how to be frugal–heck, they can just create another 1.5 trillion dollars of debt soon as the Congress gets down raising the debt ceiling.
*@Petros: Naw, I hear they got it figured. Say they gonna just start stampin out 1 trillion dollar face value Platinum coins ta pay off their debt! Put em in their own account and they’re good ta go.
@Woofy Just to confirm what others have said or alluded to: the consulate in Vancouver is, so far and as far as we know, the ONLY consulate or embassy on the planet that sends out those 8854s to anyone, renouncer or relinquisher. No idea why them and no one else; maybe their consul general is an ex-IRS employee or has a relative in the IRS? Your guess is as good as anyone else’s, as to why the Vancouver consulate is carrying spears for the IRS and no one else is.
A relinquishment CLN clearly states that you ceased to be a US citizen on the date of your expatriating act, according to the State Department. If that date was pre-2004 I don’t see how the IRS has any 8854 claims on you, and they can’t enforce any such claims in Canada under either the taxation or extradition treaties. And word through the grapevine is that even some IRS employees don’t think the IRS would try to enforce 8854 on anyone whose CLN says they expatriated before 2004. So even if you live in Vancouver, get a pre-2004 relinquishment CLN and it comes from the Vancouver consulate with an 8854 enclosed, I’d just put the 8854 bumpf in the recycle bin and forget about it. I don’t think they have a leg to limp on, in that case. (But be aware, I’m not a lawyer.)
*@calgary411
So why do they ask for your social security number on the preliminary questionaire? It’s not a question on the 4079 form. I did have one but have not the faintest idea what the number is. Do they really need it?
@Woofy, you don’t need a SSN to expatriate. None of the paperwork I filled out did I give my SSN number. Asking for it is a violation of your right to privacy.
@Woofy,
I don’t think they needed it, and why Calgary does that when other consulates don’t is another of the unanswered questions — the lack of consistency in procedures from one consulate to another. The social security number didn’t appear on any of the documentation they made up and had ready for my husband and I to sign. If I were you, I’d just answer that question with what you said, “I did have one but have not the faintest idea what the number is” (i.e., I was warned, if you were, that I would be relinquishing my US citizenship when I became a Canadian citizen. I lived my life in Canada as a Canadian only and did not think I would again need the US social security number). Hopefully, they will work with you on that and it won’t be a problem. Good luck.
And, there you go — from Petros, a violation to your privacy. Indeed.
PS — Mine and my husband’s were renunciations rather than relinquishments.
@Woofy,
When I attended my first meeting (only meeting thus far) at the Vancouver consulate, I was asked if I had a Social Security number – my response was I have no idea as I left the U.S. more than 50 years. They indicated it was not a problem.
*@tiger
Thanks Tiger, Calgary, Petros and all. I’ll take that to the….er……bank.
*Just me thinkin….anybody remember back in the Day when all ya had ta do is drive up to the border, guard says “where ya from”, “where ya goin”, and maybe “why”, and……30 seconds later yer Goin Down The Road?
If you should have gotten anything stuck in your throat, this might help you regurgitate:
“I am honored and humbled to continue to serve as your President. And I am more hopeful than ever that four years from now — with your help — this country will be more prosperous, more open, and more committed to the principles on which we were founded.” —President Obama in this week’s address: http://wh.gov/V1QG
@@Woofy,
Having spent a lot of time in Bellingham, and made lost of trips back and forth across the border in the past, I certainly remember those days. No longer. It still hasn’t deterred Canadians from coming south for milk at Costco, standing in long lines for gas, and filling the parking lot at Bellis Fair Mall. So, I guess the authorities figure, FATCA is like all the border crap and inconvenience. People will just put up with it, and they may not be wrong.
Schubert1975: I did n’o’t know that Vancouver alone sends out 8854s and I ponder the meaning. What you say about pre 2004 relinquishers also makes me wonder about post 2004 renouncers. Since we are no longer US citizens, what is the threatening power making us answer anything pertaining to the IRS?
I have not yet read 8854, nor its atrocious instructions.
Cir
@Just me
Washington State has worked hard to maintain British Columbian shopper’s contribution to the sales tax revenue stream. It was feared that when BC went to the harmonized sales tax it would dry up, as the HST was viewed as a VAT and would then exempt BC residents from having to pay WA State tax sales tax. WA State had a law that allowed non-residents a tax break if their state/provincial sales tax is below 3% or had a VAT, however in 2010, legislation signed into law permanently bars residents from the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, and Quebec from the exemption. Apparently many from BC will still argue about it though (probably the same wise ones that voted to reinstate the GST/PST in BC after the HST was implemented).
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/no-tax-exemption-for-b-c-shoppers-in-washington-1.1130914
*regarding the Canadian oath – in my consultation with a tax lawyer last week, he explained that the Canadian oath changed in 1988, and that prior to this, the oath was considered to be a renuncitory oath.
I remember getting a letter from the Canadian government when I applied for Canadian citizenship back in 1984. The letter explained that if I became Canadian, that I would loose my US citzenship, but that this was being challenged in the Supreme Court. The letter named the specific legal case that was challenging this. Hence, when I took out my Canadian citizenship, I did so fully understanding and intending to become Canadian and to renounce.
I have sent in a privacy request to Immigration Canada (forms on their website – no cost to do this) asking for copies of my written immigration file, and my electronic information file (not sure how much was electronic back then). I had to submit two requests to get this information, and am now waiting to get the contents of these files. I am hoping that I will be able to get a copy of the oath I took and of the letter they used to give out explaining the implication of taking the citizenship oath.
*@Lagoon
I took the oath in 1974, and it was a renunciatory oath then. I never got a letter explaining this prior to the ceremony, but the judge did individual interviews and was careful to explain that I would be losing US citizenship when I took the oath. Which I did.
@Lagoon and Woofy,
Canada did not allow dual citizenship until 1977. However, even before that they changed their oath to ‘exclude’ the ‘renunciatory’ words.
I became a Canadian in 1972. At that time, in addition to the oath of allegiance to the Queen and her heirs, I also swore the following: “I hereby renounce all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign sovereign or state of whom or which I may be at this time a subject or citizen”. In April, 1973, they supposedly removed those words from the Canadian citizenship oath. However, there had to be Canadian citizenship courts still using the ‘old’ forms, because I know Canadians who used those words in ceremonies after April, 1973.
The U.S. consulate in Toronto informed me prior to my Canadian citizenship ceremony that by swearing the above, my loss of citizenship would be ‘permanent and irrevocable’. I also remember someone at the ceremony explaining that I was giving up my U.S. citizenship by becoming a Canadian.
Lagoon, the Supreme Court case you make reference to might have been Richards vs Secretary of State. Richards became Canadian in 1971 and then later tried to tell the court tht his intention had not been to relinquish U.S. citizenship – he had been ‘forced’ to in order to get a particular job in Canada. Both the lower court and the higher court ruled against him and in their judgement reference was made to the ‘swearing of a renunciatory oath’.
Amazing thing about the U.S., is they believe that they are so EXCEPTIONAL they can change the rules or interpret the rules any way they choose to and the rest of us are caught in their clutches.
*Tiger and Lagoon. The landmark supreme court case was Afroyim v. Rusk. (1967)
This decision negated the Nationality act of 1940
As a result, the Att’y general of the US issued guidelines on the loss of citizenship that still pertain. Fed Register Jan 22 1969.
Essentially the new rules hinge around intent. If you became Canadian intending to relinquish US citizenship, end of story.
Doesn’t matter what the wording of the oath was. What matters is your intent based on the preponderance of evidence. So if you never again behaved as a US citizen – by voting, using a US passport, registering your kids etc. then your intent is clear
Repeat, it doesn’t matter which oath Lagoon took. He relinquished his citizenship. All he has to do is inform them of that fact.
Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that citizens of the United States may not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily.[1][2] The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a Polish-born man who had voted in an Israeli election after having become a naturalized U.S. citizen, but the Supreme Court decided that Afroyim’s right to retain his citizenship was guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In so doing, the Court overruled one of its own precedents, Perez v. Brownell (1958), in which it had upheld loss of citizenship under similar circumstances less than a decade earlier.
@Duke,,,you don’t even have to take an oath. Simply naturalize through an application process with intent, and it’s enough under …8 U.S.C. § 148 a (1),,.obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own
application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized
agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years;
@bubblebustin
and we thank you for your contribution! 🙂
Renunciation Data Update
I have received today my CLN from Montreal. My first and only meeting was on November 14, 2012 and that is the date of my CLN. The form was approved by the Department of State on January 11, 2013 (Sir John would be proud) and the covering letter from Montreal is dated January 23, 2013. No tax information or forms were included in the envelope.
Excellent turnaround relative to some of the stories I have heard on this forum. Can’t speak for the other locations, but I give the staff at Montreal top marks.