The Department of the Treasury has finally placed the latest Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who have Chosen to Expatriate on public inspection for printing in tomorrow’s Federal Register, ten days late. Congratulations to Innocente for being the first to post the news at 9 AM right on the dot. There’s about 1,130 names of people who have permanently cut off their legal ties to the U.S. government, making this a record-breaking quarter; more names have appeared in the first half of this year than in all of the previous record high year of 2011.
The number of names in Treasury’s list roughly matches the 1,106 entries the FBI added to NICS in the same quarter. However, this still doesn’t mean their list is complete: the FBI only records people who renounced U.S. citizenship under 8 USC § 1481(a)(5), whereas Treasury is supposed to record renunciants, relinquishers (8 USC § 1481(a)(1)–(4)), and theoretically even some of the nearly twenty thousand people who give up green cards each year (though in fact there’s evidence that they do not include the latter). Projecting from the FBI’s data, the total number of people who gave up U.S. citizenship last quarter in one way or another is probably two thousand; I’d guess during the same period there’s a similar number of people giving up green cards they’ve held for at least eight of the past fifteen years (the alleged standard for inclusion in Treasury’s list), though this is harder to estimate. And while some famous ex-citizens appear in Treasury’s list, others do not.
Public figures in this quarter’s list include Hong Kong Commerce & Economic Development Bureau official Bernard Chan who renounced in February, businesswoman & political candidate Erica Yuen (a bit late, as she renounced last summer), and Israeli legislators Naftali Bennett and Dov Lipman who both gave up U.S. citizenship in January after they were elected. A colleague of mine who renounced over a year ago also finally showed up in the list. Congratulations to all friends of Isaac Brock who made the expat honour roll!
However, famous ex-citizens of recent vintage who are included find themselves outnumbered by ex-citizens who turned in their blue passports in the past four quarters but are not included: legislators & legislative candidates Fauzia Kasuri of Pakistan, Sharon Roulstone of the Cayman Islands, Akierra Missick of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Victor Okaikoi of Ghana, as well as Zurich mayor Corine Mauch. That’s not including the dozens more who gave up citizenship between 2006 and early 2012 and aren’t included either.
And unsurprisingly, neither State nor Treasury worked fast enough this time to print the names of any of the public figures known to have renounced citizenship during the last quarter, among them Hong Kong banker Marshall Nicholson, Cuban spy René González, and Taiwanese basketball player Quincy Davis. Also I don’t think Tina Turner appears, though I’m not really sure under what name she’d appear, or whether she has even started the procedures for relinquishment after naturalising as a Swiss citizen earlier this year. I guess they and the rest of us ordinary folks are not as important as Afghan leader Hamid Karzai’s brother, who was rushed through the system to show up in the list in record time, making him one of the few to receive the honour of showing up during the same quarter in which he renounced.
Shadow Raider (to whom we owe thanks for getting the above-mentioned data on green card abandonments) has another FOIA request pending with United States Citizenship & Immigration Services asking for the number of Certificates of Loss of Nationality they receive from the State Department each year. It’ll be interesting to see if their figures match up either with the FBI’s or with Treasury’s; perhaps all these missing names are due to State not forwarding some CLNs, for whatever reason?
I wish that her name could be on it, but it would financially destroy us with penalties etc etc, to stick heads up.
Son’s name NOT on list????? He Renounced Dec.2012
Renounced April 2012 and still not on the list.
I just spotted two entries in the new list for
GARCIA-SOSA ANDREA C
What are the chances that those two entries represent different people?
@Benedict Arnold be me
I hope the process goes smoothly for you, but if you need to use the letter as backup, it states the USG position at that time quite clearly. Good luck!
Rather to my surprise, I noticed that both my partner’s name and my name were on the list this time. We renounced 3rd quarter 2012, are of meagre means and definitely aren’t “covered” expatriates; at the start of this year we sent off our final tax paperwork. Doesn’t seem to be any consistent logic as to when and why people are ending up listed finally. Yet it’s an honour of sorts to be listed there. Thanks to all the Brockers on this site whose wonderful information and compelling stories helped us gather the courage to take that step.
@Benedict Arnold: I just want to thank you for providing that July 25th,1980 letter as it contained information that contradicted the statements issued to me recently by the Calgary US Consulate while confirming my own contentions, and I will use it as a “time-stamped” evidence should they cause me any grief…
Reminds me of backpacking around post-Soviet Central Asia in the late 90s. In hostels and on buses we’d all pass around sixth-generation photocopies of an alleged transit visa exemption treaty, and when border guards tried to shake us down (either upon entry, or more commonly upon exit when they tried to argue we stayed too long for “transit”) we’d wave it in their faces like a protective charm, and they’d slightly lower the amount of bribe they were demanding.
Anyway, Simon Black (over on Zerohedge) posted his comments about The List, which is getting bits & pieces of reaction on social media:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-08/americans-renouncing-citizenship-surge-66
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1jzfta/americans_renouncing_citizenship_surge_66/
http://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/1jz8sl/americans_renouncing_citizenship_surge_66/
@WhiteKat both of my banks required a Apostilled copy of my original CLN as they told me they have received fake CLN’s in the past, it’s a crazy time we live in where U.S. citizens fake they have given up citizenship (a crime I would guess).
Still not on the list. Renunciation more than one year in the past. But two other renouncers at same consulate (one month after, four months after) are on the list.
@usxcanada, I guess your name isn’t ANDREA C GARCIA-SOSA, then, but maybe that’s the name of other two renouncers you mentioned. 🙂
statelessman,
Apostilled — is that the same as notarized to be a true copy?
(Will business opportunities abound?)
saddened123,
Since there is no rhyme nor reason as to who is on the list or when their name may appear, your son’s name may be on the next quarterly ‘Name and Shame’ list. It’s positive that the expatriation numbers (however lame they may be) are trending larger.
The absurdity of the Federal Register list is probably what keeps me most amused here at the Isaac Brock Society. I relinquished in the 1970s by becoming a Canadian citizen, applied for my CLN in spring 2012 and finally received it last January. I haven’t appeared on the list yet and don’t know if I ever will. A couple of other people I know who renounced last year haven’t appeared yet, either.
It would be an honour for me to be on it, but maybe it’s better in the long run if the Secretary of the Treasury just ignores me. Anyway, I will continue to follow what I will be calling the quarterly “RidicuList” — a more appropriate name, I think, than Name and Shame List — while awaiting revelation of the actual numbers of CLNs that the State Department is issuing — still a closely guarded State secret.
.
Sorry, that should be the quarterly “RidicuList”.
Maybe all of your renunciation records went in the same black hole my OVDI submission went in to.
@ bubblebustin
… and my I-407 application. 🙁 Your OVDI must have been pages and pages long — too big to slip behind a desk. My application was only 5 pages but the big brown, self-addressed, stamped envelope I attached would prevent it from slipping behind a desk. (BTW, it’s not easy finding US postage in Canada.) So yes, there has to be a very convenient black hole across the border and here I though only CERN could produce those things. Seriously though, your wait for OVDI resolution is beyond all ken and reason.
I renounced one year ago and am still not on the list.
What I can’t determine though is whether it’s actually better to be on the list or not. Obviously, being named on the list brings further official closure, but am concerned that it could raise risks of being audited, interrogated at border, refused extended visas, etc.
If you want to check for Tina Turner, don’t forget that her real name will be Anna Mae Bullock or Anna Mae Turner. I don’t think she’s changed her name by deed poll to her stage name. Can’t find her on the current list, but she might be on previous ones somewhere.
Shadow Raider will probably never receive his FOI request for the number of CLNs. Such information is probably classified under some kind of obscure national security order.
Let us hope that I am wrong but the Obama administration doesn’t exactly have a good track record on its promise for transparency.
@FromTheWilderness:
An FOI for the expatriation/relinquishment data which the US refuses or stonewalls is also quite valuable. Remember that they are aware of the general trend towards expatriation because retired IRS Senior Counsel Bill Yates alludes to *anecdotal reports here:
‘Residence Based Taxation? Interview with Bill Yates – Former Attorney, Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International), IRS’
July 22, 2013
“….causing many Americans and green cardholders to expatriate. Did you know about that?
Yates: Oh, yes. We knew. We even received a letter from a U.S. taxpayer who’s foreign bank account had been closed without an explanation from the bank. The taxpayer wanted to know why. Eventually, a response went out to the effect that we simply didn’t know why the bank closed the individual’s account. Politically, that’s all we could say.
As for *expatriations, I received lots of calls from practitioner friends of mine all over the world telling me that Americans are getting out. We even heard that the wait list to make an appointment to expatriate at some U.S. consulates was over one-year long….”
from http://blogs.angloinfo.com/us-tax/2013/07/22/residence-based-taxation-interview-with-bill-yates-former-attorney-office-of-associate-chief-counsel-international-irs-2/
excerpted from;
“…second of a two-part interview that provides valuable insight from Willard (Bill) Yates, who recently retired from the Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International), Internal Revenue Service after 31 years of service. During his tenure as a Chief Counsel Attorney, Bill was the recipient of 10 awards, including the Albert Gallatin Award, Treasury’s highest career service award. The Gallatin is awarded only to select federal employees who served twenty or more years in the Department and whose record reflects fidelity to duty. Bill received the Gallatin award for his work throughout his IRS career, including his work on implementation of some of the compliance requirements of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).”
Another valuable FOI denied is that of the ratio of the much publicized revenues in the OVD programs raised via FBAR and other financial reporting form penalties vs. revenues from actual US taxes assessed and recovered – particularly from non-filers or ‘benign actors’ living and filing from outside the US.
And,
The proportion of those much publicized revenues adjusted downwards after any reconsiderations of the 2009 and other OVD cases after the Streamlined program came into effect. It will be a year in September since that was instituted. It is totally opaque. No further information available. No sense of what the backlog is, or how long the process – particularly for those minnows, krill and others who entered via OVD because no Streamlined process existed, and because the IRS kept threatening that ‘quiet disclosures’ or just filing going forward was unacceptable (though still legal, and apparently, a common practice for decades up until recently). I hope the Taxpayer Advocate is on to those issues and the telling statistics.
@badger,
Bill Yates stated: «Politically, that’s all we could say.»
Technically, the US government could make a simple, free and harmless political apology to expats & expatriots, but it has sadly become far too big and corrupt to make simple, free, realistic and politically correct statements. Honesty and transparency is no longer the government’s friend.
@Em
Our OVDI submission (now 20 months old) filled a bankers box and certainly would not have fallen behind a desk. Perhaps it’s being used AS a desk somewhere?
@badger
I keep thinking about Bill Yates referring to the renunciations as “getting out”. Is that like getting out of Dodge, getting out of jail, getting out to save ourselves, or getting out of our responsibilities? Anyone care to speculate?
In reiterating his response to an email I sent him concerning my wait in OVDI: “Yes, I think that the IRS is way underfunded and, in addition, has many other problems that I will not put in print. (You didn’t ask about IRS funding, but your email gave me an opportunity to tell the truth about IRS funding.) Why do you think it is taking IRS so long to get back to you?”
Apparently a lot could be revealed about the IRS if current and former IRS employees would only speak about what they know. What can be more Orwellian than the POTUS going on Jay Leno in a show of transparency to discuss US relations with Russia while all of this is going on? I see nothing but more continued stonewalling of the NTA, I’m afraid.
“War is peace, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery”.
I’m pretty sure that Obama’s read Orwell’s “1984”. What could be more Orwellian than the possibility that it would be used as a handbook by any government? Even Orwell could not have predicted that what he wrote as a warning would be used to accomplish what he warned against.
@ Eric: thank you for the fine post. Another ex-American whose name has not appeared is Arthur Budovsky, founder of the bitcoin company, Liberty Reserve. The US indictment indicates that he renounced his citizenship several years ago but his name has not appeared to-date.
@ AnonAnon: only with your help on how to preview Federal Register entries was I able to post before you did. I may have a time-zone advantage as well. Also, thanks for recounting the names.
General comment: I have gone through the 1,130 names several times and, aside from several minor nobles who renounced, the list appears to contain rather ordinary people based on my internet searches. As an observation, there are many British and Germanic surnames and comparatively few Far Eastern surnames this time.
Bloomberg carries an article today on the jump in number of USC renunciations this quarter. A quote from a Zurich-based tax attorney: “With increased U.S. tax reporting, U.S. accounting costs alone are around $2,000 per year for a U.S. citizen residing abroad,” the tax lawyer said. “Adding factors, such as difficulty in finding a bank to accept a U.S. citizen as a client, it is difficult to justify keeping the U.S. citizenship for those who reside permanently abroad.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-09/americans-giving-up-passports-jump-sixfold-as-tougher-rules-loom.html