Looks like I’m losing my edge — AnonAnon wins the prize for being the first to notice the Q1 2013 Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who have Chosen to Expatriate, which has been placed on public inspection for printing in tomorrow’s Federal Register. Grammar and spelling aficionados will note that the list’s title no longer contains the awkwardly-placed relative clause “As Required by Section 6039G”; unfortunately, the misspelling of HIPAA as “HIPPA” has now entered its eighteenth year.
This quarter’s list appears a mere eight days later than required by law, and with about 680 names — a far larger number than most of us would have expected, though well short of the 850 people renouncing under INA § 349(5) whom the FBI entered into their NICS gun control database during the same quarter. And that’s not even mentioning the people who relinquished citizenship under INA § 349(1)–(4), who are not subject to gun control and so don’t show up in NICS but do belong in the Federal Register — or the backlog of thousands of others who renounced last year and also showed up in NICS but never had their names added to Treasury’s list.
Analysis
The first thing that’s noticeable about the list: there are quite a few more Arab names than in previous quarters, probably meaning that Kuwait’s push to enforce their laws against dual citizenship has resulted in many people choosing the Gulf over the United States.
My usual voyeuristic habit of running the Cantonese names against Hong Kong public databases finds that an increasing proportion are lawyers rather than financiers or company directors (they show up not in Securities and Futures Commission filings but in the Government Gazette list of legal practitioners), and some don’t show up at all. This suggests that by the middle of last year, the trend of turning in blue passports had gone well beyond the rentier class and began reaching down into the salaried class — people who owe little U.S. tax but are sick of the dozens of pages of red tape, threatened life-altering fines, and other restrictions which only the U.S. and no other country places on its citizens abroad.
Late and missing names
I say “middle of last year” because that seems to be the rough time frame of the renunciations and relinquishments which show up in this quarter’s list. (This is also when the news about Kuwait came out.) Unfortunately we have only a single concrete name on which we can base that guess: Kenneth R. Fox of Fox v. Clinton fame, an olim whose acquisition of Israeli citizenship was ruled after a court battle to be a valid relinquishment — his name appears at page 6. At page 9 there’s also Mahmood Karzai, who actually renounced in January 2013, precisely the period allegedly covered by this list — but then politicians tend to get rushed through, when they are important enough to appear at all.
However, not a single other political candidate who has given up citizenship since February 2012 appears in this quarter’s list: Yolanda Schakron (Belize, February 2012), Nicholas Yang and Erica Yuen (Hong Kong, May 2012), Victor Okaikoi (Ghana, August 2012), Akierra Missick (Turks & Caicos, October 2012), Corine Mauch (Switzerland, late 2012 or early 2013), Naftali Bennett and Dov Lipman (Israel, January 2013), Bernard Chan (Hong Kong, February 2013), Sharon Roulstone (Cayman Islands, March 2013), and Fauzia Kasuri (Pakistan, March 2013) are all missing. Japan scholar Donald Keene, who is also known to have relinquished — in his case, by naturalising in Japan in March 2012 — fails to appear either. In other words, that’s twelve out of fourteen public figures during the period in question.
@calgary –
Do you want to be on it? I have mixed feelings, but there it is.
I don’t know if it’s better to be on it or not.
Its like being on the honor roll for expats.
@broken man,
Yes, I have determined that I do want to be on it. I hope there is no way I am deemed a “covered expatriate” but it appears that others are on “The List” as well. It will really be for me what I need, that finality of US citizenship (after all the mistakes I made getting me back into that mess, thinking and living as if I was no longer a US citizen when I became a Canadian citizen in 1975).
I agree with Joe Blow — perhaps an honour roll for expats.
The key issue isn’t when you renounced or had your relinquishment interview, it’s when you got your CLN (or maybe when it was approved, there can be a delay of a few weeks depending on the post office). The list is supposed to contain the names of all persons for whom IRS got copies of CLNs during the given quarter; State can’t send a CLN to IRS until the CLN has actually been issued.
That being said, I personally know of about half a dozen people who have had CLNs for more than six months now and whose names are not on this new list and weren’t on any of the preceding ones either. Make of that what you will. (None of these persons are anywhere near the “whale” category; they’re all minnows, and my “check-for” list includes both current renunciations and relinquishments from decades ago.)
Andrew Mitchel’s explanation of the rise: “For the 8 quarters prior to the fourth quarter of 2012, the average number of names listed per quarter was 383. The average of the two quarters (Q4 2012 and Q1 2013) is 362. It appears that the government forgot to include some of the names in the Q4 2012 list, and that they have now included those names in the Q1 2013 list.”
http://intltax.typepad.com/intltax_blog/2013/05/q1-2013-highest-quarterly-number-of-expatriates-ever-but-.html
Of course he was the one Laura Saunders quoted last time as stating that “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” 🙂
For all the people showing up on this list did you file completed tax returns for 2012 already?
I have been trying to parse the Federal Register notice and have the following comments on it:
1. There are two problems with title “Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate”:
a. The list is a publication of names, not of individuals. This is important because many names do not uniquely identify individuals. So “innocent” individuals may be mistakenly identified.
b. The comma makes the relative clause a non-restrictive clause (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_clause>😉 when it should be a restrictive clause. If a non-restrictive clause were appropriate, then a more accurate title might be “Quarterly Publication of Names, Which Belong to Some People Who Have Reportedly Chosen to Expatriate”.
2. The key sentence which describes the criteria for inclusion of names in the list is:
“This listing contains the name of each individual losing United States citizenship (within the meaning of section 877(a) or 877A) with respect to whom the Secretary received information during the quarter ending March 31, 2013” There are two problems with it:
a. I defy anyone to propose a generally acceptable interpretation of the parenthetical phrase “(within the meaning of section 877(a) or 877A)” which makes clear which individuals’ names are to appear in the list. The text of Section 877(a) is quoted below..
b. The clause “with respect to whom the Secretary received information” could apply to any kind of information that the Secretary received about the individual. Could that account for some of the duplication of names in the lists in different quarters? A duplicate name could identify two different individuals or it could indicate receipt by the Secretary of information about the same individual more than once.
It is clear that the criteria for, preparation of, and publication of the quarterly list are so seriously flawed that no one should lend the list any credence other than as a bureaucratic curiosity or a propaganda piece. Until the State Department, not the Treasury Department, reports the actual numbers of CLNs they are issuing, with details regarding how many are for renunciations and how many are for relinquishments, we are just being fed B.S. and people in the press are eating it.
Section 877(a) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 reads as follows:
“(a) Treatment of expatriates
(1) In general
Every nonresident alien individual to whom this section applies and who, within the 10-year period immediately preceding the close of the taxable year, lost United States citizenship shall be taxable for such taxable year in the manner provided in subsection (b) if the tax imposed pursuant to such subsection (after any reduction in such tax under the last sentence of such subsection) exceeds the tax which, without regard to this section, is imposed pursuant to section 871.
(2) Individuals subject to this section
This section shall apply to any individual if—
(A) the average annual net income tax (as defined in section 38(c)(1)) of such individual for the period of 5 taxable years ending before the date of the loss of United States citizenship is greater than $124,000,
(B) the net worth of the individual as of such date is $2,000,000 or more, or
(C) such individual fails to certify under penalty of perjury that he has met the requirements of this title for the 5 preceding taxable years or fails to submit such evidence of such compliance as the Secretary may require.
In the case of the loss of United States citizenship in any calendar year after 2004, such $124,000 amount shall be increased by an amount equal to such dollar amount multiplied by the cost-of-living adjustment determined under section 1 (f)(3) for such calendar year by substituting “2003” for “1992” in subparagraph (B) thereof. Any increase under the preceding sentence shall be rounded to the nearest multiple of $1,000.”
@AnonAnon
We all know it, but how do you get the Journalist that regurgitate Treasury Press releases without any thought process to know it? Think I will save your comments to send to the next reporter I see writing about the subject. Thanks..
Lynnley Browning wrote about the list too. No mention of missing names, people getting kicked out of banks because of FATCA, or five-digit OVDP fines on two-digit tax deficiencies. She focuses mostly on the two big names in the list: Karzai & the Getty girl. On the bright side, at least her tone is far more neutral than when she reported on the Denise Rich case last year. Not sure whether that’s her own doing or the effect of the editors at CNN (who, for all their faults, do not have a FATCA compliance consulting division the way the folks at Thomson-Reuters do):
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/08/citizenship-taxes-irs/
Fox News has a fairly short article, focusing mostly on tax issues, and mentions the cases of Eduardo Saverin and Denise Rich. Interestingly enough, they include an actual picture of the page from the Federal Register and also reproduce the complete list. Of course they don’t mention the fact that these people already live abroad, so when it gets reposted around the usual right-wing statist sites the commenters immediately start chanting “deport the traitors!”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/08/67-people-renounced-their-us-citizenship-in-1st-quarter-year-irs-says/
Nothing from the WSJ or Bloomberg yet.
Eric, you beat me to it, I was just going to post the link. You gotta love the comments. They are just hilarious!
Ok, there’s many more, but I’ll stop here. From this, I can conclude that Fox News readers are nor better or worse than Huffingtonpost.
@Eric..
https://twitter.com/FATCA_Fallout/status/332351345946394627
I see both Phil Hogden and Jeffery Neiman were quoted, so she is doing her homework in terms of trying to explain why. I am sending her an email and enclosing your work on the FBI list. I have corresponded with her before, so will see what happens.
Only Chinese reports I’ve seen so far are straight translations of Browning’s CNN piece.
http://finance.sina.com.hk/news/-3-5840614/1.html
No mention of all the other famous people in the Chinese speaking world who renounced their citizenship, like Lee Kai-fu, or for that matter the not-so-famous professors like Jin Li or Shi Yigong. Apparently the translators don’t bother to do any research to give the story a local angle.
@SwissPinoy,
Thanks for those. Too funny!
My Fox News fans rewarded me with a new identity: “Pop Tart”,
So, I looked up its meaning:
A female who will have sex with anyone to become more popular in their social network.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pop-Tart
I feel so loved!
@Swisspinoy, Bloody cheek! Write back pointing out that you’re a 50 year old male with a beer belly and bad breath. (wink)
In some future quarter when Cuban spy Rene Gonzalez’s name appears in the Federal Register list – he renounced on Monday – the US news media can call him a traitor and then perhaps broad-brush all renunciants as traitors:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/06/world/americas/cuba-spy-citizenship/index.html
@Eric: Lynnley Browning’s CNN Money report on Q1’s expatriation list is indeed somewhat more objective, although still sensationalistic, than the biased rubbish she used to write for Reuters.
@Medea Fleecestealer, how did you know that? Now, it’s public. 🙂
Forbes: “Trending Now: Giving Up U.S. Citizenship”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/05/09/trending-now-giving-up-u-s-citizenship/
An interesting article about ex-pats’ good friend Chuckie Schumer:
NYP: “Supply-side Schumer”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/supply_side_schumer_gcYvdQCEShhOCpzu377eHP
“Schumer has been talking to business leaders about a plan to lure multinational corporate profits parked in offshore accounts back to this country. His proposal: Declare a tax holiday in which the tax rate for repatriating money would be lowered from 35 percent to just 8 percent.”
“Whatever the reason for Schumer’s move, it’s a big improvement over the approach he took last year when he introduced a bill to penalize Americans who renounce their US citizenship for tax reasons.”
This provokes the question, what can America do to lure Americans who expatriated back to becoming citizens?
Answer: ???
@FromTheWilderness, they can do nothing. I will never trust the United States again.
There’s no hope for many stateside Americans. I explained that Americans abroad are often not wealthy and that it is wrong to deny Americans living abroad financial services. The response:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/rand-paul-fatca-repeal-offshore-tax-evasion#comment-891250654
Sigh. There’s no hope. The witch hunt will continue burning Americans abroad.
I just picked up my paper work from the US Consulate having renounced in November 2012 but dont see my name on the list.
CNN /Fortune/ Money Mag are covering this story in a reasonable article.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/08/citizenship-taxes-irs/