Jack Lew continues Timmy Geithner’s tradition: gross violations of 26 USC § 6039G

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, not later than 30 days after the close of each calendar quarter, the Secretary shall publish in the Federal Register the name of each individual losing United States citizenship (within the meaning of section 877 (a) or 877A) with respect to whom the Secretary receives information under the preceding sentence during such quarter.

The Federal Register for 30 April 2013 contains no Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen to Expatriate, as Required by Section 6039G. Perhaps Lew got confused by the badly-punctuated title and thought that Section 6039G required these individuals to expatriate, rather than requiring him to publish their names. (In reality, it is other invasive sections of 26 USC — such as Section 1297 and Section 1471 — that require individuals to give up U.S. citizenship if they want to lead normal lives abroad.)

On the bright side, this means Lew also has not yet told any bald-faced lies about the number of people giving up U.S. citizenship since he was officially confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury. The FBI received information from the State Department about 850 people who renounced U.S. citizenship in the first quarter of 2013; Lew is supposed to publish not only their names but also the names of individuals who relinquished U.S. citizenship by any of the other five methods specified in 8 USC § 1481(a) — of whom there should be roughly three or four for every five renunciants — as well as the names of individuals who turned in long-held green cards.

Therefore, if Lew belatedly decides to set the unusual precedent that the Secretary of the Treasury actually follows the nation’s tax laws, the list should have thousands of names, rather than the few dozen it has contained in recent quarters.

12 thoughts on “Jack Lew continues Timmy Geithner’s tradition: gross violations of 26 USC § 6039G”

So the gist of this posting is that the specious quarterly report is (a) untimely, or (b) will not exist for just-ended quarter? My first addled quick scan gave me the impression that the number for the just-ended quarter was a pure zero. Why not? May as well go straight for the big lie – dress that number right down to what the ideology of exceptionalism believes it should be.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the USG will demonstrate continued success in the war on renunciants by publishing an “official” number that shows a significant decline. And I’m also going to boldly predict when the “official” numbers get so ridiculously low that IBS renunciants in the quarter outnumber the “official” list, they will paradoxically claim that to publish the small number of names on the “official” list is too time consuming and that they are phasing it out.

If directors of a US listed company have to take on personal liability and responsibility for financial statements and that they represent a true, fair and not misleading representation of company financial performance, why does the government get to publish obviously false and misleading statistics?

The misleadingly-crafted Federal Register list will probably appear 10-20 days late, as usual.

Meanwhile, a request to Data.gov to make public the actual numbers of CLNs issued by the State Department is “Under Review” after two and a half months:
https://explore.data.gov/nominate/2412

Note that the request is only for numbers, not names. There’s a disturbing hypocrisy in that the US government won’t report accurate data on the numbers of people giving up their citizenship, while millions of its own citizens living abroad are required to report exhaustively on details of their financial situation and activities.