After a lengthy (and illegal) delay, the latest Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate, as Required By Section 6039G will be printed in the Federal Register for Thursday, 14 February 2013.
It contains forty five names. This brings 2012’s total number of “published expatriates” to 932, or little more than half of the number seen in 2011.
Journalists who may write about this list in the next few days should be warned against misinterpreting it as a complete list of people who turned in their U.S. passports last year. The Federal Bureau of Investigation tells us that 4,385 Americans renounced citizenship in 2012, and another 167 in January 2013 alone — and that number does not even include people relinquishing citizenship or abandoning long-held green cards, both acts which should result in one’s name appearing in the Federal Register. I am aware of more than a dozen public figures who have given up U.S. citizenship in the past year, almost all for the purpose of running in non-U.S. elections, but only four of their names have been published. South Korea recorded 2,158 of their citizens giving up U.S. passports or green cards in 2011, and numerous anecdotal reports from Washington and from Seoul suggest that this “reverse migration” accelerated rather than slowed in 2012.
@BenPloni
That is a GREAT video. Thanks for posting it…
Here is the link to the higher definition version…
After reading, re-reading and researching, I believe the Federal Register “name and shame” list only includes “Covered Expatriates” due to this excerpt: “This listing contains the name of each individual losing United States citizenship (within the meaning of section 877(a) or 877A)…” Sections 877(a) or 877A appear to deal with the exit tax.
I have not yet found a reference to the exact requirements that the Federal Register must follow for posting the names of expatriates and, therefore, cannot determine whether they are breaking any laws. In other words, is the FR required to list the names of all expatriates each quarter or only “covered” expatriates? I paid good money to be listed and now that I have my CLN, I want to be counted.
@Petros.. I do not argue with your point. 🙂
When my Fidelity 1099 says this information is also furnished to the IRS, I’ve assumed that they get the whole thing. My 1099 has every single “income” transaction by type of income (interest, dividend etc.) and holding aggregated by holding and for the whole account and it also includes my account number. Again, I don’t know if the IRS gets all that detail but that is what is reported to me on my 1099. I suppose it’s possible the IRS get aggregate data for a particular TIN. I don’t know. But it seems unlikely to me that Fidelity would have to create a separate report for the IRS than the one they send to me.
The additional item that is included in FATCA which FFIs have to report (and which is not reported for domestic US accounts) is the highest account balance and, possibly, account number (if Mark Twain is right about this not being reported to the IRS domestically). My understanding is that transfers into and out of the account are not reportable items for FFIs. Of course, the US could change the rules and make that reportable in the future. In the UK IGA, there are exempt products such as Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs, similar to IRA) and exempt institutions for which there will be no reporting by FFIs though I still have to include these accounts in my 1040 as income (even though an ISA is tax-free in the UK) and on my 8938 and FBAR.
At the moment, I will receive a notification that information has been sent, but, rather unhelpfully, I won’t receive the information that was sent. I will have the right to request the information sent from either HMRC or the FFI. I can only imagine that there will be mismatches galore between what individuals report and what FFIs report.
I’ve only looked at the aspects of the UK IGA that deal with individual accounts and I don’t know what is to be reported by FFIs or how they would go about establishing that a US person had access to the account in your hockey team example. As a former treasurer of a baseball team in Switzerland I agree the FBAR and FATCA concept for this type of account is absurd.
@brucenewman, I seriously doubt that Scott Schmith, one of the lucky winners on the list, is a “covered expatriate”:
Our Photographer
http://www.sdfoto.com/index.php/en/about-sd-foto/our-photographer
@Bruce Again, I am on the list and I am not a covered expatriate. Indeed, I have filed my Form 8854 and I was below the income and wealth threshold to be considered covered.
They can go ahead and put me on the list as far as I’m concerned. I’ll wear it like a badge of honour. 🙂
@Petros -They also seem to include expatriates, covered or not, who have been quoted in the media.
Data.gov, a US government web site devoted to publication of government datasets, has approved a suggestion that it publish “a monthly or quarterly report of the numbers of Certificates of Loss of Nationality of the United States issued by the Department of State.” The suggestion is open for comments at
https://explore.data.gov/nominate/2412
Positive support for the suggestion would be welcome.
@AnonAnon, I created the following comment for you:
Thanks, swisspinoy. That should be helpful. By the way, this dataset isn’t just to be for US citizens. I’m no longer one, myself.
Other commenters, please be “nice” in your comments at the Data.gov site — don’t editorialize too much. Remember, this is a proposal to data collectors and statisticians, not politicians. Also, if you can click the thumbs-up icon under the title “Certificates of Loss of Nationality issued”, that will increase the rating number.
@AnonAnon
Much as I’d like to offer moral support on this endeavor, how would I know that those spineless hacks in Congress won’t use the information for their own political misdeeds, like say, make renunciations harder or even impossible.
Frankly, I’m more inclined to think that the less those idiots know, the better off those of us that really want out are.
@AnonAnon
On the other hand, I am curious on what the true number of renunciants, and relinquishers truly is.
@AnonAnon
Great idea to ask for this, devoid of any rule artificial thresholds or agendas. I commented on it, and hope others give it more thumbs up, at the very minimum.
Thanks for taking the initiative.
@MJH, I agree that things could backfire. I was originally going to wait three more years so that all my statutes of limitation would have closed beforehand. But I share your fear that rather than hearing our plight, the politicians will only make things harder so am going to try and renounce ASAP. I suspect that things will start really tightening up from April 2015 when the FATCA data will start being directly reported.
@mjh49783, even if the data collectors and statisticians get some data from the feds, the data will be censured and restricted to support the demorepublican dictatorship. As such, there is no reason to not support this effort since it won’t make a difference. It’s no different from asking the former Soviet Union to allow the press to freely discuss capitalism. The danger for you is that which is not being reported.
@MJH, I suspect that even if Congress doesn’t officially tighten up the rules that renunciations will become much harder as waiting lists surge.
Unfortunately, the newest (and erroneous ) Federal Register numbers are causing incorrect conclusions from commenters like Andrew Mitchel from the International Tax blog: http://intltax.typepad.com/intltax_blog/2013/02/number-of-expatriates-for-2012.html
He might be interested in the stats from the FBI site.
……….”Mitchel is quoted here as saying: “According to Andrew Mitchel, a lawyer who publishes the International Tax Blog, there were 932 expatriates in 2012. The number of expatriates decreased by 48% compared with 2011.
Regarding the drop, Mitchel said that many U.S. citizens who live permanently outside the country became aware of their U.S. tax obligations in the past few years as a result of the publicity surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s limited amnesty for taxpayers with undeclared offshore accounts.
“It appears that most of the individuals who have decided that their U.S. citizenship is not worth the cost of continuing to file U.S. tax returns have already renounced their citizenship,” said Mitchel.” from http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2013/02/15/feds-release-latest-u-s-citizenship-renouncers/
@badger, I was just going to mention the wsj article in response to your comment, but you beat me to it. While Andrew Mitchel doesn’t allow comments, wsj hasn’t deleted mine yet, so I better post it here::
It doesn’t appear that the comments are being moderated, but:
Very few people know of the horror that is being implemented with 2010 HR 2847 act. Of the 7 million US Citizens oversea, about 6.7 million of them were knowingly declared tax evaders by that law. The application of that law is so horrendous and draconian, that no one can Believe it or understand it. For me, it has taken 12 months to understand that it will devastate any US person overseas. I see no other alternative than to renounce US citizenship to get away from the monster. Only a few people will understand (the writer will not) well enough to get out of USA, and as a result those that remain will be bankrupted.
Another interesting thing: despite Kuwait’s crackdown on dual citizenship we have not seen a single Arabic name in the Federal Register in the second half of 2012.
I am not on the list and I am not a covered expatriate. Indeed, I have filed my Form 8854 and I was below the income and wealth threshold to be considered covered.
The US government claims that it wants to have financial transparency, so it should technically have enough beef to provide renunciation transparency as well and a correct and timely one.
I have a question regarding FBAR – SOL ….the statute of limitations for assessing a 2006 FBAR penalty will expire June 30, 2013…4 more month. If the IRS misses this date is there a reason for me to be happy or do they have another legal card up their sleeves to get around this.
Interesting description here about an IRS program to collect and report stats on those moving from state to state, and their incomes (presumably to use re considering state taxation policy issues?):
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/01/31/were-picking-up-good-migration
“We’re Picking Up Good Migrations”
By John H. Fund from the February 2013 issue
“The IRS backs down on concealing the number of people fleeing high-tax states.
If you run a high-tax, budget-busting state, the embarrassing government statistics you fear the most are probably the migratory data numbers put out by the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Census Bureau.
The figures show the number of people moving into and out of every county and state in the nation, along with their income levels. It’s an invaluable guide to how people vote with their feet. It won’t surprise you to learn they tend to flee high-tax states such as California and Illinois for low-tax states such as Texas and Florida.
No one knows who was behind it, but the IRS suddenly decided in December to end the data program after 21 years. “We were just told this morning that the program is indeed going to be discontinued,” an IRS economist said in an e-mail obtained by the Daily Caller. “It is not our decision at all, and we are very disappointed.”
After some criticism, the IRS at first admitted the program was being “discontinued.””……….
………… “BUT THIS STORY has a happy ending. After much criticism that it was “airbrushing” data out of existence, the IRS apparently reversed course. Officials, in a classic case of bureaucratic gobbledygook, claimed the migration data program wasn’t really ending: “To improve data quality, the methodology for collecting and tabulating the population migration data was recently changed.””………..