This article by Bloomberg is their reporting on the submissions to House Ways and Means Tax reform. It has been mentioned in multiple threads here at Isaac Brock, and was highlighted at ACA, so thought I would pull it out for better visibility. It merits comments and email to the journalist. I did send them one to thank them for drawing attention to the U.S. Expat plight, and provided the link back to the anecdotal snippets from other submissions like those @AbusedExpat has been posting.
Thought I would also highlight whitecats response to this story which caught my attention.
It must be a full moon or something because FATCA and the USA war on ‘tax cheats’ is getting to me more than usual. I posted this as a comment to this article:
OMG, Israel Jackson, you are so misinformed, and very rude. How many times have you told someone to shutup or called them stupid in your comments to this article? This alone shows your lack of intelligence and inability to think ethically, empathetically and critically.
The foreign income exclusion amount of 92K (or so) applies to ‘EARNED’ income only – meaning money you receive from an employer. It does not apply to any other sources of income such as pension income, investment income, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, etc. Try being a pensioner who is a dual citizen living outside of USA and you will be double taxed. Imagine being unfortunate enough to have lost your job and be collecting unemployment benefits – you will be double taxed. Try buying non-USA mutual funds in the country you live in – you can’t because USA considers these to be ‘passive foreign investment income corporations’ and taxes the hell out of them.
I was born in the USA to Canadian parents and left as an infant thus am dual from birth – not by choice. I have never been schooled or worked or invested in the USA, yet USA expects annual tax returns at the cost of a couple thousand per year, and annual FBARS for all my bank accounts which USA says are ‘foreign’.I live where my accounts are, so HOW ARE MY ACCOUNTS FOREIGN?
Unlike other Canadian citizens, because I am tainted with a US birthplace, I cannot take advantage of any of Canada’s registered savings plans – cannot save for retirement, cannot save for my kids university, and am required to jump through hoops every year to prove I owe little or no taxes. In addition I am required to report on every detail of every bank account with my name on it which are held in the country where I live and am a citizen of. I must spend thousands every year preparing US tax returns and ‘foreign’ bank account reports which are much more complicated than the reporting required by US citizens living in US.
Do US citizens in US have to prepare detailed reports of each and every bank account they have in US? No, but I have to report all my locally held accounts to the USA and hope to GOD there are no breaches of privacy of my personal information that might subject me to identity theft. Even the government of Canada does not require me to annually report the details of each and every account I hold.
I pay high taxes where I live already – higher than Americans in USA do. I want to be able to save for retirement so the Canadian government won’t have to pay to take care of me in my old age – I know USA won’t. Who will take care of me if I am not allowed to take advantage of my own countries registered retirement plans?
Why not renounce you say? Because, I never had a clue until now (at age 50) that USA even considered me a taxpayer. Why would I? It makes no sense to tax people who DO NOT LIVE in USA, never worked there, never earned income there, and never plan to live there. No other country does this. Since all the publicity surrounding FATCA, I discover I am in big trouble for not filing all these years, even though I have always paid taxes to the Canadian government. USA will not let me renounce unless I can prove 5 years of US tax compliance which requires paying 10′s of thousands in lawyers and accounting fees and risking PENALTIES for previous non-filing of ‘foreign bank account reports’ (aka accounts in MY country of residence).
Soon, thanks to FATCA, my own local banks will be required to send all the personal details of every account my name is on (including those held jointly with my Canadian only spouse) to the IRS because USA thinks it owns a piece of me and apparently anyone who is remotely connected to me.
Isreal Jackson and others with similar mindsets, before you whine about people not ‘paying their fair share’, maybe you should RESEARCH and try to understand what is really happening instead of blindly taking up the pitchforks and assuming everyone who does not pay taxes to the US is a witch that should be burned at the stake.
In yet another wrinkle:
– if you fail to certify on the 8854 that you have been tax-compliant for five years, you’re a covered expatriate
– which makes you subject to the exit tax, except that that doesn’t kick in until you have US$620,000 in assets
– so it’s a viable strategy, if you have less than US$620,000 in assets, to just file an 8854, baldly say that you haven’t been tax-compliant, and get on with your life – you’re a covered expatriate, but it doesn’t actually mean anything
There are associated risks, but it does cut down on the life-sucking paperwork. One possible problem is that if they ever start to try to apply the Reed Amendment, the easiest way of doing ti would be to apply it to covered expatriates.
@BrokenMan: …which makes you subject to the exit tax, except that that doesn’t kick in until you have US$620,000 in assets …
Probably not viable if you have any retirement plans:
http://www.fbarlawyer.com/briefingnotecont.html
“Pensions and deferred compensation are deemed distributed on that same day. There is no exempt amount here, although US based plans could be exempt as they would be subject to withholding. In the author’s experience non-US retirement plans will present a problem as they can generate a US tax. Few taxpayers will want to pay a tax on something they have not received. There is a good argument that Sec. 877A violates some US tax treaties.”
“What if you can’t certify that everything is all up-to-date?
Simple answer. You will be a “covered expatriate” as far as the exit tax law is concerned…
OK. You’re a covered expatriate. So what?
You’re subjected to all of the exit tax rules and you have to pay the tax no matter what your net worth happens to be. That means we pretend that you sold all of your assets on the day before you relinquished your citizenship. Other fun stuff happens with your pensions, trusts, and other stuff. All of this is designed to cause you to pay tax to the U.S. government.”
http://hodgen.com/the-exit-tax-paperwork-for-people-who-have-never-filed/
I believe it’s incorrect to say the exit tax for covered expats kicks in at $620,000 in *assets*. AFAICT it kicks in if your “mark-to-market” unrealized gains exceed $620,000. The gains are determined as if the assets were sold at their fair market value on the day preceding the expatriation. It gets complicated with pensions and other stuff.
So, for example, if your *only* asset is $1 million sitting in a chequing account (unrealistic, I know), your mark-to-market gain would be $0, so no tax.
A strategy I’ve wondered about for those who are concerned about exit tax may be to formally gift those assets with unrealized gains to *trusted* non-US relatives, BFFs, etc prior to renouncing. The US unified gift and estate exemption of $5.25 million should cover most people. So even if you’re not compliant and thus a covered expat, you’ve gifted your way down to below the point where the exit tax can affect you. After renouncing, your trusted non-US relatives and/or BFFs gift your assets back to you. Attribution rules in Canada seem to rule out gifting to spouses or kids (you’ll pay Canadian tax on the unrealized gain), but AFAICT other relatives are OK. Gifting RRSPs and pensions would probably not be possible. Needless to say, the word “trusted” is extremely significant. Just something I’ve wondered about when I should be doing other things.
Hmmm, just read Watcher’s post where it seems to say the $620,000 does not apply to pension gains – i.e. you’re taxed on all of the unrealized gain no matter what. If so, that further restricts the appropriateness of the “gifting strategy”, which was more of “I wonder if …” than anything else.
@Not that Lisa ….. VD (incl. FBAR`s) for 6 years done by a useless CPA and later amended through myself with the help of a second CPA……I was way over the $1,500 threshold for some years.
Like I said the trick apparently did the wrongful tax lien assessment which brought this case to a swift closing.
@Mike Tarrantes – Thanks. By VD, I assume that you mean the longstanding traditional voluntary disclosure program of the IRS. Did I get that right? Did you have to make reasonable cause arguments. If you did, can you share them?
I have not forgotten that I promised you information on the translations the agent accepted. While it is no longer necessary for you, the answer is that I self translated the lines of the tax returns that contained information that the agent wanted to know.
By the way, how did the IRS ever come to find you?
@Mike, if you’re willing to divulge, how did you wind up owing substantial double tax? Was it from PFIC taxation?
It has been suggested that gifting is a possibly strategy to deal with appreciated assets which might be snagged by the mark to market determnations of expatriation tax liabilities as reported on the 8854 exit tax IRS form. This is a tricky proposition, but perhaps sometimes possible under US law if done properly. The notion to gift, for instance, to a non- US spouse does not accord nearly so much as the US$5.5M new and current lifetime gift exemption. That number is much lower for non- US spouses. The ordinary annual personal gift exclusion (to non- spouses, or to any other one individual) is only US$14,000 now. If gifting does not do the trick, or is antithetical to local laws, and for the even stickier situations of having pensions and/or non- grantor trust beneficial assets (where the expat was not the creator of the trust), the new trust solution alluded to in other comments, according to our knowledge and experience at Expatriation Copesthesia Consultants, might work, again only if done very carefully.
Les Fant, lesfant@expatriationcopesthesia.com
@Les Fant:
In March your Copesthesia website stated that your firm has “expertise in (nonembassy- visit) Sections 1-4* expatriations / renunciation of US citizenship”. Is your firm still providing this service? Could you please tell us how to expatriate without visiting a US embassy or consulate? Thank you. Innocente
@ Not that Lisa ….. I will go into more details once I have eyerything in B&W in front of me which I was told could take another 6 weeks.
Les Fant (and following up on Innocente’s comment),
I too would like to know how, as indicated in your website, the (presumably typical) US person can effectively expatriate without going to the US embassy/consulate. Can you advise as to the number of US persons you have assisted in going this route? You say:
“You can choose how to expatriate. It is a misconception that the only option is making a sometimes difficult-to-get appointment at a U.S. embassy, meeting residency requirements, filling out intimidating U.S. expatriation questionnaires, paying for the pleasure, not knowing what procedures will be used in your case and facing inordinate delays, multiple interviews, even possible harassment.”
Following up on (I believe) another comment somewhere in this forum, I would not be willing to contact you via your website as you require an identifier (birth date) that would not normally be disclosed online just for the purpose of arranging a consultation and finding out the cost of the retainer.
@IRSCompliantForever:
IBS posters discussed concerns about Copesthesia’s services and its website on 18/ 19 March in this thread: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/renunciation/comment-page-10/#comment-233932
@Les Fant:
Perhaps you would like to address these concerns and questions.
@Les Fant
You are incorrect AFAICT, and, I believe, mixing up different gifting concepts.
The lifetime unified gift and estate tax exclusion ($5.25M for 2013) allows gifting to anyone (US or or non-US person) with no tax consequences as long as the gift does not exceed the remaining balance of your exclusion. (Since the purpose of the gifting is to renounce, there is no need to leave a balance for your estate.) IRS forms need to be submitted for this.
OTOH, the $14,000 figure you cite is the maximum annual amount that can be gifted to anyone without requiring IRS paperwork. And, there is apparently no maximum to the number of individuals that can be gifted to in a year. Have 20 non-US BFFs? Give each $14,000 and file no IRS paperwork.
Finally, there is the annual spousal exclusion for a non-US spouse, currently at $143,000. This also requires no IRS paperwork.
@LesFant,
I, too, have seen your website. I would like to comment on the “non-embassy-visit.(1)-(4) relinquishments” you write of on your website. There is no such thing as a non-embassy visit s(1)-(4) relinquishment.
If a person wants a Certificate of Loss of Nationality (which is the only way the US will recognise that he is a no longer a citizen), the person has to, according to the US Department of State rules, either:
renounce (349(a)((5)) — at a meeting with an official at a US consulate/embassy; or
formally notify the US govt of his relinquishing act (349(a)(1)-(4)), using the prescribed forms — at a meeting with an official at a US consulate/embassy.
The CLN will be backdated to the date to the date of the relinquishing act. But until you notify them of it, the relinquishing act means nothing to the US. And the only way to do that is apply for a CLN, which can only be done at a US consulate or embassy.
It’s a pretty basic point. Points don’t get more basic in the expatriation field.
tdott,
My understanding also is that there is no “IRS paperwork” (IRS 709) if you keep under the maximal annual exclusion for gifts.
However, given that IRS, based on everything we know, is likely to be suspicious of all gifts, and probably all transactions made by US persons abroad (IRS default position), I suggest that there should be maximum paperwork recorded and kept detailing the transaction, with signatures, some valuation, exchange rate at the time of transfer, and written confirmation that the gift is a gift per IRS—just in case.
Perhaps you also meant to say that the purpose of the gift was only to give something, without any consideration, for the usual (non-expatriating) reasons (e.g., to be nice).
@IRSCompliantForever
Agreed. One conclusion I’ve drawn since becoming aware of this mess is that one shouldn’t underestimate the willingness and ability of the IRS to make your life miserable regardless of how innocent you may be. Dot all the ‘I’s and cross all the ‘T’s, and do so even when it’s not officially required.
And yes, being nice for the sake of being nice is its own reward.
The US government (DOS) forms asking about prior expatriating acts, or as a way of noticing expatriative intent via prior expatriating acts (sections 1-4, as they have been referred to here), are simply not required (under any circumstances). A notice of such (prior expatriative act or acts) relinquishment of US citizenship can and we believe should be made to the DOS by letter, there being no required specific format for so doing. We consult with clients to prepare those notices (this, of course, separate from the tax aspects of expatriation). These clients do not visit an embassy/consulate. And, to be absolutely clear on this point, they receive the CLN (eventually, and when it ultimately comes) by post. There is no interview. There are no questionnaires returned. There is no contact face to face. And this most definitely works, time and again. We do not view this process as an ‘application’ for a CLN, but rather as a legal notice (with the requisite details properly expounded upon and shown, to be certain) of a (prior expatriative acts) expatriation, under one of the sections of the code which is not section 5 (oath of renunciation at the embassy), with a requisite and concurrent request for the CLN to be issued accordingly. The doing of the act is a matter which the government can not legally control, the intent (which definitely must be present and shown) is that of the citizen, not of the government, and the right to so expatriate, including under these sections 1-4, etc. is a long- established right of any citizen, with a long high court track record upholding this right, and the government can not abridge it. Our clientele pursuing this route of expatriation are proof that it is legal and it works, albeit not the favorite of the government to be certain.
Les Fant, http://www.expatriationcopesthesia.com
Since a Supreme Court decision in 1986 (if I remember the year correctly), and as of about twelve months ago, it was NOT possible to get a relinquishment CLN from the US State Department without meeting in person with a US consular officer in an embassy or consulate and signing forms 4079 and 4081 in front of that officer. Unless there has been a significant change in US law or State Department policy in this regard since then (and as of this writing I’ve heard and seen nothing credible of the sort), it is still not possible.
I personally know, and met extensively with, two persons who about a year ago tried to get relinquishment CLNs by sending (by registered mail) affidavits describing their cases directly to the Director, Office of Policy Review and Interagency Liaison, Office of Overseas Citizens Service, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Department of State, in Washington, and on the basis of those affidavits, asking they be issued CLNs. They did this on the paid advice of a lawyer who assured them this would work. I have seen one of the affidavits, which I know followed to the letter the advice of the lawyer (and which covered in the person’s own words every one of the questions on form 4079). The other person’s affidavit was written along the same lines. Both affidavits and letters were sent separately, about two months apart, to the same address in Washington. Both persons received the same reply from the above-named Director, returning their affidavits to them; I have before me a copy of one of the replies, from which I now quote:
“I refer to your letter of (enclosed) seeking a Certificate of Loss of Nationality of the United States (CLN) as a result of your naturalization as a Canadian citizen.
“Please be advised that the Department of State is authorized to issue a CLN pursuant to Section 358 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a copy of which is also enclosed for your reference, only upon receipt of a written report from a US diplomatic or consular officer at a US embassy or consulate abroad indicating that he or she has reason to believe that a US citizen has voluntarily committed a statutory act of expatriation with the intention of relinquishing his/her citizenship. Therefore, if you are intent on expatriating yourself, I would suggest that you meet with a US consular officer at either the US Embassy in Ottawa or at one of our consulates in Canada. At that time, you may present your letter.”
Both persons then went separately to a US consulate and presented their letters and affidavits as attachments to 4079, and completed and swore to forms 4079 and 4081 in front of vice-consuls. Both persons subsequently received by mail their relinquishment CLNs, backdated to their dates of becoming Canadian citizens (more than 30 years ago). Though their having attempted the mythical “short cut” process did not prevent them eventually from getting their CLNs (which I have seen), they each lost a couple of months and spent legal fees that arguably they didn’t need to spend. It’s possible the lawyer’s advice on the structuring and clarity of their affidavits, which they attached to their 4079s, might have expedited one of their cases, but that is sheer speculation on my part, and it clearly did not expedite the other (very similar) case.
The “short cut” definitely did NOT work twelve months ago, and I have no credible information (and no information at all other than Fant’s post on this thread) that things have changed since then. I don’t believe things have changed. From the facts above, and absent any official and more recent statement to the contrary issued by the State Department, I consider any attempt to follow this write-directly-to-Washington approach to be a waste of time and likely also a waste of money, if someone is charging you a fee for the “advice.”
“Caveat emptor,” from my high-school Latin.
@ Les,
Regarding non-embassy relinquishment, could you provide some background to this information?
I haven’t been able to find it in the Dept of State procedure manuals. So far, I’m not aware of any other expatriation lawyers/accountants/consutlants or Dept of State officials mentioning this possibility, and no one has written here, or anywhere I’ve seen, that a consulate told them, “You don’t need an appointment. You only need send a letter to …” Nor did it come up in my communications with a senior DoS official in Canada regarding relinquishment requirements as recently as February.
I suspect that the consulates which have a high ratio of relinquishments would welcome a procedure could have the relinquishers bypass them entirely.
*****
I know that a person could obtain a CLN, completely by mail, without visiting a consulate decades ago. I know that changed at some point, though I don’t know when, as the earliest copy of the DoS rules I have are from five years ago, 2008. So I don’t know exactly what year the requirement for consular attendance and completion of specified forms, such as DS-4079, came into effect, but it was before 2008.
Since at least 2008,
That opinion would presumably be formed in person as this regulation further states that the officer is to note the person’s demeanour.
*******
You wrote:
There are indeed specific forms which must be filled out and one of them the 4079 Questionnaire.
I’m not sure what the “publication date of this subchapter” was, but this statement has been in it since at least 2008 (it still read exactly the same in 2013):
*******
You wrote:
Agreed. I controlled the act. But the Dept of State controlled the issuance of my CLN.
You have the right to expatriate yourself, no doubt about it. Take s.(a)(1), for example, you are no longer a US citizen at the moment you take the oath to your new country. But if you want the US government to recognise that you terminated your citizenship (by issuing a CLN), you have to prove it to them, by the balance of probabilities. And they developed Form 4079 where you present the criteria with which you prove it. This form must be signed by the person and by a consular officer on pages 4 and 5, after which the consular officer affixes the consulate seal, as indicated on the form itself.
*******
You wrote:
I’m going to stick with the word “application.” You can and do expatriate yourself, but if you want a CLN, you have to apply for it.
I do see it as a “legal notice” too, as you do, but I also consider to be an application. It’s very rare, but CLN applications have been refused. The s. (1)-(4) CLNs applications are judged on the balance of probabilities, with the onus, since 1986, on the applicant. Balance of probabilities is a relatively low onus and in most cases the relinquisher’s case is clear-cut. Nevertheless, I consider it an application because the US issues the CLNs and the US decides if it will issue one.
In your last sentence, the word “request” also sounds more like an “ application” than an order.
********
You described yourself/your firm as:
Why would the average person need to go to any court, let alone “high court” to exercise the right to expatriate? As you can see in the Consulate Report Directory, people just go to the consulate, sign the papers, and get their CLN in a few months.
No matter how experienced in this field, it would be the rare lawyer who has a “long track record” litigating CLN matters because they’re usually so routine. I’ve only been able to find very little jurisprudence on this compared to other subjects I’ve been researching. People usually don’t even go to the appeal level at DoS because they usually just get their CLN with no problems, let alone going to higher levels in the court system. Since you’re writing here about your long high court track record, would you kindly tell us a bit about it.
Further to Pacifica’s post:
As it happens, I happen to be one of the persons Pacifica refers to, and to date am the only person I know, who got a CLN simply by writing the US State Department, and not by meeting with a consular officer. However my CLN was issued in 1976, following a letter I had sent to the Secretary of State earlier that year on the occasion of the Bicentennial of the US Declaration of Independence, and even then only after the Embassy in Ottawa mailed me a couple of months later a two-page questionnaire that I completed and mailed back (very much shortened and less intrusive version of what became form 4079). I never actually met with any State Department officials in the entire process. But, I repeat, that was in 1976, about ten years before the Supreme Court decision and the amendment by Congress to section 358, and since that time I’ve never heard of or met anyone who got a CLN simply by writing to State. I agree with Pacifica; I have no doubt that many consular officers around the planet consider this process to be a burden (especially for relinquishments under articles 1-4 of Section 349 of the Act) and would love to let Washington handle all of this. But having also worked for decades in the Canadian federal government, I can’t imagine any bureaucrat on either side of the border ignoring a Supreme Court ruling nor an amendment by Congress to a piece of legislation governing these things. Unless there has been a Supreme Court ruling or a Congressional amendment on these matters in the past twelve months, I don’t believe what you say is possible. If you have handy a web link to a Supreme Court ruling or an act of Congress after January 2012, contradicting what Pacifica and I have just said, we’d all love to see it here.
clarification of my last sentence in the last post (I can’t seem to edit a post once it’s up):
I meant to say “a Supreme Court ruling or an act of Congress AFTER January 2012 …”
Sec 358 (8 USC 1501), cited by Schubert 1975, about how a US citizen can relinquish citizenship, clearly is properly reserved for situations in which a US consular officer comes to believe that a US citizen has commited one of the legal expatriative acts of INA 349 (8 USC 1481), of which there are quite a few. In that situation, the consular officer seized with that knowledge shall report same to the DOS who may then, through a process described in this article, initiate expatriation of that individual. I submit that this scenario will never happen sua sponte since clearly the DOS is currently opposing expatriation and the hemorrhaging of citizens and they are engaging in a great deal of obfuscatory and dilatory behavior accordingly. It is quite apparent that the DOS does not like relinquishment in particular, even though it is well settled expatriation law, because they can not control this process as they can renunciation. Anytime the DOS, through a consular officer somewhere, can confront the expat citizen, they can demand lots of things, very little of which, if any, is authorized by law. This includes not only all kinds of DOS forms/questionnaires, but demands for tax returns, even other potentially incriminating documents. They also get the chance then to “interview” that person, mostly without the benefit of counsel, and I think some of the readers here know all too well how that can be.
Nowhere in INA 349 can it be found any legal authority for the “required” visit to an embassy/consultate to present the evidence of the prior expatriative act to a consular officer. It simply does not exist. Surely the DOS can try to delay, even try very doggedly to prevent the expatriation, and they do so with procedures not always authorized, inordinate and inexplicable delays, intimidation, disinformation (how many readers have confidence in IRS information, for instance?), or otherwise. See the relatively recent Weber case from the D.C. circuit (unfortunately not appealed), for instance, which labeled a would- be expat essentially a lunatic and denied him the right to sign the oath in a section 5 renunciation, but, alas, that scenario following on the heels of such an ominous encounter with a consular officer at an embassy.
We are not suggesting any of this is easy, nor that it is palpably facile to state completely, concisely and with full documentation, under oath, the full extent of the relevant, legal prior expatriative act(s) to the DOS, nor that any would- be expat qualifies under any of the sections of INA 349 just because they might like to relinquish rather than renounce, nor that the CLN comes quickly and painlessly in all cases, but our clients still very much prefer relinquishment to renunciation in most cases, if they are eligible, and we think many of the readers can easily imagine why so. Also, they need not wait for appointments or re- appointments, and they need not pay fees in addition to not facing the interviewer or his somewhat unpredictable questions and forms.
We have copies of the documentation which came from successful relinquishment (including the CLN issuance) which occurred totally without any meeting ever with any consular officer/DOS, and also without any visit at all to an embassy/consulate, and including recently. There is a recent Court of Appeals case the DOS lost which illustrates this situation well, and we stand for the ability of expatriating American citizens to fully benefit from all of their rights under law, especially now in these difficult times when many of them feel under siege.
To those who wish to take to heart everything Schubert 1975 writes, I can only say to them: “Et iterum ex errore imperitae suis addicta”.
Les Fant, http://www.expatriationcopesthesia.com
@Les, Thanks for the response. Having the law on our side is one thing. Getting the State Department to act in accordance to the law is quite another. I found it a nuisance to announce my relinquishment to the US Consulate in Toronto, but others have had to go to a consulate that was at quite a distance. The procedure is quite unnecessary, I agree, but State issues the CLN, and some of our people have insisted on their rights to no avail, as Schubert has mentioned.
We have found that most people who have gone into a Consulate to indicate their relinquishment have had considerable success in receiving a CLN without too many hassles. I have heard firsthand at least one story in which that wasn’t the case, and the bastards refused to accept a person’s statement of relinquishment, and others have testified to similar problems. What I’m getting at is this: if we are the little people, we can’t get very far with the US government officials with their attitude problem (“we are the Federal Government, and we can do what we want when we want and there is nothing you can do about it”). They make up their own rules and withhold the CLN to people who have relinquished their US citizenship. Most here do not have the resources to fight this kind of bullshit. I agree with you that indicating a relinquishment in writing should suffice–having a few recent cases (as you suggest) where people did this successfully is hardly helpful–when dealing with capricious and arbitrary power. But if a person needs a CLN to show their bank or a neanderthal US border guard, then going to the Consulate and seeing a consular official in person, seems to be the only course.
I would ask, if you will, please tell us the name of the recent Court of Appeals case that DOS lost, so that we can study it.
@ Les,
One thing that has concerned me since I first started helping people expatriate is unnecessary fear. People who find out they may be a retroactive USC are stressed out enough.
So, while it’s important that we do whatever we can if we find misconduct occurring at the consulates — and I have — I feel it’s also important not to cause unnecessary fear in relinquishers.
Just because something can happen, doesn’t mean it will happen — and that’s true with government departments (as well as other institutions) everywhere. I’ve been tracking the consulates regarding expatriation for about two years and they have a pretty good track record. And when there are glitches or problems, even serious problems, DoS has shown itself to be open to deal with, at least in my experience.
You refer to Weber elsewhere in your comment. Is this Weber or a different case? I’m familiar with Weber (2012). There were particular issues about mental capacity in that case. I’ve always felt that the facts of his case are relatively unique.
The reports we get on these meetings usually range from “pleasant” and “professional” to “friendly” and “helpful,” and face time runs about 10-15 minutes.
Not sure why a person would even want to have counsel. Having read one’s 4079 while the relinquisher is in the waiting are, the consulate officers generally don’t have anything to ask, except for stuff like “Would you like to pick up your CLN here or do you want it mailed to you?”
Documents unauthorised by law. Tax returns? Against Department policy. Report them.
Other potentially incriminating documents. What potentially incriminating documents? Birth certificate? Citizenship certficate? Passport? Marriage certificate, if you changed your name upon marriage?
I rarely stand up for the US government. But I think this is grossly unfair to DOS. And can make people expect a horrible event, when going to a consulate meeting is not a horrible event. Also if person expects to encounter bullying, in the highly unlikely event they do (due to a rogue official), they’ll just put up with it because they believe it’s supposed to be that way.
Once again, against Department policy. Report them.
Sure it’s not a perfect world, and any large organisation can, and probably does, have some capricious employees. But I know personally that if you feel a consulate is trying that type of malarkey, DOS acts very quickly to remedy it (like problem resolved 2 days after couriering them a letter about it). That consulate also cleaned up its act after this and is now actually getting excellent reviews from people expatriating there.
Once again, I rarely stand up for the US government. But I think this is grossly unfair to DOS.
You may be aware from reading Brock that the Consul General for Canada actually initiated contact with a couple of us regarding expatriation matters. Why? Because they want it to go as smoothly as possible for everyone – DOS staff and people expatriating.
Based on reports we receive here, it seems to me that there is a general concern by DOS officials in countries around the world to just have the process go smoothly. Consulates elsewhere have also been streamlining the procedure to handle the tidal wave of expatriations, such as adding additional staff to deal with CLN applications and switching from two visits to one (for renunciations – relinquishments generally took only one visit all along).
So, why not do it the easy way? Fill out the forms, get a consulate appointment in about 1 month and a CLN about 3 months later. Doesn’t cost anything either.