Lynnley Browning (Twitter: @LynnleyBrowning) brings us the two-and-a-half-month old news that songwriter Denise Rich, the ex-wife of Marc Rich, had her name published in the Federal Register back in April due to her renunciation of U.S. citizenship in November 2011. Her editors at Reuters seem to have decided that a neutral statement of the aforesaid fact wasn’t good enough for the headline, so they pushed it out over the wires it as the inflammatory “Socialite Denise Rich dumps U.S. passport”. The story has also been picked up by HuffPost and MSNBC.
It seems that Denise Rich indeed put down the US$450 and renounced rather than relinquished U.S. citizenship; she didn’t acquire any new passports or government jobs recently, and she probably learned a thing or two from her ex-husband’s failed attempts back in the 1980s and 1990s to argue that he had relinquished U.S. citizenship by naturalising in Spain.
The article features the same old U.S. mainstream media sensationalism about renunciation we’ve all come to love hate love: a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-style recounting of the renunciant’s possessions and travels, every item of dirt that can be dug up about the renunciant’s financial situation, and a description of the renunciant as part of a “wave of wealthy people” who “leave” the U.S. — even though no public figures are available about the financial situations of the former citizens and green card holders, or about the timing of their departure from the U.S. relative to their relinquishment or renunciation of U.S. Personhood. But this article has something new, too — this item of hilarious spin on the U.S. tax system:
While Austria, like the United States, generally taxes its citizens on their worldwide income, it has generous tax breaks for citizens who spend half the year abroad.
Of course, Austria — like every other civilised country on earth — taxes people who live or invest there, and doesn’t tax people who don’t live or invest there. Describing the non-taxation of people who don’t live or invest in your country as “a generous tax break” is an amusing new way of trying to justify the U.S.’ citizenship-based taxation system, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing that line repeated in the American media in the future.
And finally, when reading the news these days, you have to go one step beyond looking at the truth or falsehood of the statements in the story itself, and ask: why this story? Why now? Denise Rich’s name was published in the April 30th “name-and-shame” list, alongside Eduardo Saverin. It took Bloomberg Businessweek a grand total of ten days to notice, fact-check, and publish the Saverin story, and another week for the demagogues to introduce their Allow Schumer to Sermonize and Harangue on American Television Act Expatriation Prevention by Blah Blah Blah Act in response. What took Reuters seven times as long? Perhaps it just took that long to get Rich’s spokesperson to return phone calls?
Coincidentally, the story about Denise Rich comes out just as interest in the last Evil Unpatriotic Tax Cheat has died down. The number of people viewing Eduardo Saverin’s Wikipedia article has fallen from 40,000 people per day at the height of the frenzy in mid-May down to just one-fifth that number. Similarly, traffic to Ex-PATRIOT Act article dropped by almost the same proportion, from 1,500 per day to a few hundred. Indeed, barely any noise has been heard all month about the Ex-PATRIOT Act. What better to put it back front and centre in front of American television viewers than a rerun of the events that led up to its introduction? (I guess it wasn’t an option to wait around another month as the IRS busts through its 30-day publication deadline for the second quarter list, which will no doubt have even more names both famous and utterly unknown in it).
Update: In the comments, Shadow Raider points out a gross error in Browning’s article which I hadn’t noticed:
Rich, who wrote songs recorded by Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blige and Jessica Simpson, is the latest bold-faced name to join a wave of wealthy people renouncing their American citizenship. Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin gave up his U.S. passport to become a citizen of Singapore, an offshore tax haven, before the company’s initial public offering in May.
Apparently Reuters did not make use of the past two-and-a-half months to fact-check the snarky asides in this story. As even Wikipedia manages to get right, Saverin is a citizen of Brazil, not of Singapore, and he has explicitly stated to Singaporean media that he has no plans to become a Singaporean citizen. Naturalising in Singapore would require Saverin to give up his existing Brazilian passport, to make CPF contributions on his salary, and to send all his future sons off to Lee Kuan Yew’s army, so it’s unsurprising that he’s not interested in it — but Homelanders seem to have a very hard time grasping the fact that you do not have to be a citizen of the place where you live in, that other countries let foreigners live within their borders too, and that as a result people of other nationalities live all over the world outside of their respective countries of citizenship.
Ok, I admit to having no idea about who she is (though I have heard of Marc Rich of course – I’m probably too young to have heard of her), but I think that the media definitely waited for the shock and horror of Saverin’s renunciation to wear off before cherry picking another person to burn at the stake. The timing here is perfect, since the last wave of Saverin articles hit about 10 days ago. His renunciation “announcement” was timed perfectly with the Facebook IPO and hers is timed perfectly to keep the homelanders angry.
Wikipedia has a not-very-good article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Eisenberg_Rich
And a much better article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalissimo_Francisco_Franco_is_still_dead
By the way, according to Wikipedia Marc Rich has Belgian, Spanish & Israeli citizenship. How on earth did he manage that, considering that Spain does not allow those who naturalise to retain former citizenships and he should have lost Belgian citizenship at that time. I don’t know anything about Israeli nationality law. Is that one of the ones that is impossible to renounce like Greece or Morocco?
There are other “whales” including a few Canadians that no one has picked up on in the media. One of the richest women in Singapore(who’s deceased husband relinquished into Singapore nationality himself ten years ago) recently relinquished/renounced.
*Don Podormo,
There are often ways to retain a former citizenship in a country which does not allow persons to become naturalized citizens without evidence that their former country no longer consididers them to be a citizen of that country.
Germany, for example, is very strict about this. But if you are born abroad to a German parent and have both German and another citizenship from the moment of birth, you are not required to renounce that other citizenship in order to retain German citizenship.
I talked with a German friend (who is very much up on citizenship issues because, among other things, he has a daughter born in the US who has dual citizenship.)
Very briefly he told me that “there are ways” to obtain German citizenship without renouncing your prior citizenship. He did not go into detail and I did not question him further, but knowing him as well as I do I suspect he spoke from knowledge.
@Roger Conklin
Belgium used to have the same rules as Germany, so I don’t see how Rich pulled this off. He should have lost Belgian citizenship when he naturalised in Spain, or Spain should have stripped him of his Spanish citizenship when it became apparent that he did not renounce the Belgian one. This really bothers me because I think that something behind closed doors happened in his case – Average Belgian people could not acquire other citizenships through naturalisation until 2008.
Germany allows other EU citizens to naturalise there without having to renounce currently. I have a friend from France who recently did this and kept both passports. I think that other people have to send in a form explaining close ties to Germany to be allowed to retain their previous citizenship, but I think that the acceptance rate for this is not too great. This also works the other way though – Non-EU people naturalising in Germany can try to get an exemption to retain their previous citizenship, with one of the qualifers being that the country of origin imposes exceptionally harsh financial penalties for renouncing or does not allow renunciation. I wonder if any US citizens have retained both citizenships through claiming that the US exit tax was prohibitive?
@Don Pomodoro
Something definately did happen behind closed doors in Spain prior to Franco’s fall and probably afterwards. There are several books written about Rich that probably have more accurate information than Wikipedia.
@Tim
Of course, but not just in Spain! Somebody turned a blind eye in the Belgian government too to make this possible, and that is what really annoys me since Belgium used to be really vigorous about enforcing its restrictions on dual nationality. You even used to have to “phone home” every ten years whilst abroad to confirm that you were going to retain citizenship…Yet surprise, surprise the law didn’t apply to the rich and powerful it seems : /
The Singaporean woman I am referring to is Vivian Chandran wife of Chemoil(massive shipping company) founder Robert Chandran who has since passed away after relinquishing his US citizenship back in 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Chandran
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/79/singapore-10_Vivian-Chandran_IB1V.html
More info on Robert Chandran:
http://www.forbes.com/global/2007/0903/044.html
Last post of mine that will clog up this thread – promise!
The English & Dutch Wikipedia pages on Rich are terrible. The French one is also equally lacking in information, but I like the way that it opens at least:
“Marc Rich…est un homme d’affaires controversé.”
Much better than the “Marc Rich is an international commodities trader” opening like in the other two 🙂
Whoever wrote this article is a very bad journalist, as it contains errors and it seems to distort information. Eduardo Saverin did not renounce US citizenship to become a citizen of Singapore, he was already a citizen of Brazil. He has probably paid more taxes because of his expatriation, as the Facebook stock price has fallen. Some countries and territories are accused of being tax havens, but they cannot be deemed as such with so much certainty as written in the article. Singapore does have taxes, for example. And calling residence-based taxation “generous tax breaks” is ridiculous, it shows that the writer either does not understand anything about the subject, and therefore is not qualified to write about it, or is misinforming the public on purpose. Austria is not the exception, the US is.
Well speaking of whales who have renounced, what about this one. He probably was fed up with all the IRS harassment and hours spent in touch-tone menu hell. I heard that they even sent him a delinquency notice that was laced with Kryptonite.
Superman Renounces His U.S. Citizenship
*I find it interesting that the emphasis is on people renouncing the citizenship in order to avoid paying taxes. Nothing is said about the taxation of Americans who live and work abroad, an exception in the world, as we all know. It does seem that some people are being scapegoted in order to protect the unfair taxation without representation of Americans Living and Working Abroad.
*The reason no one in the media caught it is that it appeared under her maiden name Denise Eisenberg.
@Eric: …why this story? Why now?
Schumer and Casey’s Ex-PATRIOT nonsense is poised to move to committee or vote and needs propping up?
This is the updated version of the article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/09/entertainment-us-usa-immigration-deniser-idUSBRE8680MN20120709
Eric…
Thanks for the alert on that. I just sent a quick tweet.
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/222385019140833280
I have to head out right now, but see that their are no comments yet, so will try to do one later today. Strike while it is fresh. I put a comment on “The Hill” piece that I just posted too.
@Markinpinetree, I agree, it’s almost as though they’re gagging the ugly truth of the unfairness. I used to believe we had a free press but realize now that we don’t. Things are slanted or edited or removed to suit the publishers’ agenda.
Perhaps I’m a coward but almost feel resigned to these injustices being too big for me to fight; at least I’ve found a good accountant and financial adviser so my double taxation should be minimal after next year. I’ll just have to continue paying for them to file my annual tax returns. I admire those of you who continue to fight on and you have my full support though am going to remain away from the frontline for now.
What does amaze me is how oblivious and even indifferent homelanders are about our plight.
@just me
what’s a ‘quick tweet’? 🙂
‘While Austria, like the United States, generally taxes its citizens on their worldwide income, it has generous tax breaks for citizens who spend half the year abroad.’
Should read: ‘While the world, like the United States and Eritrea, generally taxes its citizens on their worldwide income, it has generous tax breaks for citizens who spend half the year abroad through territorial taxation.
Readers who are unfamiliar with citizenship base taxation may wonder why someone would have to ‘dump’ US citizenship in order to have the freedom to live abroad.
@ Don Pomodoro:
Marc Rich’s citizenships:
1) US Citizenship: According to the book “King of Oil”, Marc Rich naturalized to become a US citizen in February 1947 while living in Kansas City with his parents.
2) His parents’ citizenship and Marc Rich’s possible first citizenship: His father, David, was born in Galicia, Austria-Hungary empire, and grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. His mother was from Saarbrucken, Germany. Marcell Reich (Marc Rich) was born in Antwerp, Belgium. It is conceivable that he had his parents’ German citizenship, which he relinquished to obtain American citizenship, and never had Belgian citizenship. The book makes no reference to Belgian citizenship that I can find.
3) Spanish citizenship: he obtained Spanish citizenship while running the Philipps Bros. trading office between 1964 and 1974. He wrote to the US Consulate in Zurich in September 1982 that he relinquished his American citizenship when he swore allegiance to the Spanish king.
4) Israeli citizenship: various news sources report that he has Israeli citizenship but I find no mention of this in the book.
5) Swiss citizenship: although he has lived and worked in Switzerland since 1982, I can find no mention that he is a Swiss citizen.
@bubblebustin
“quick tweet”
Me doing one in a hurry as I run out the door without much thought or effort in crafting one! 🙂
@shaddow Rader or Eric…
Are you going to post that correction to the Reuters story, or just leave it unchallenged? I just got back, and so far I see only one comment by CitizenAbroad. I thought in the time I would have been gone, that all that post here would have at least gone over to Reuters to comment? If we just comment to each other, we are just staying in our echo chamber? I am not sure the point of that, other than it feels good, but it doesn’t informed others outside our circle. If no one else will, I will, but I don’t want to duplicate an effort if someone is going to do it or is in the process?
In the meantime, I will make my own comment unrelated to the Eduardo Saverin mistake. But….That definitely needs highlighting so Reuters knows they can not be so sloppy!
re: “While Austria, like the United States, generally taxes its
citizens on their worldwide income, it has generous tax breaks
for citizens who spend half the year abroad.” …
But Austria doesn’t tax it’s “citizens”, unless they live in Austria, does it? If she is an Austrian citizen who is a resident of London, you’d think she’d be paying her taxes to the UK.
It is sloppy journalism. It amazes me how for most people citizen is a synonym for resident. I will try to comment