The Q1 2014 Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate has been placed on public inspection for printing in the Federal Register for 2 May 2014, two days later than required by 26 USC § 6039G(d). This is the seventh quarter in a row in which the Internal Revenue Service has failed to publish their list of certain ex-Americans by the legally-mandated deadline, bringing their all-time compliance rate to a dismal 27.5%.
One famous name did appear: “Tina Turner”, in precisely that form — rather surprising, since as far as I know that’s not her civil name in the first place. However, contrary to my prediction last time, the overall rate of missing names does not seem to have come down as much as expected. We still have not seen one-quarter of the famous people known to have renounced in 2013: the names of Cuban intelligence officer René González, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines’ former U.N. Representative Camillo Gonsalves, and Pakistani politician Fauzia Kasuri are absent.
The IRS’ utter inability to publish a simple list of names in a complete and timely fashion just fills you with confidence that they’re going to be able handle all that FATCA data fairly and competently, right?
As always, congratulations to Canadian anthropologists and insurance agents, Thai schoolteachers, fresh Singaporean university graduates, and every other ordinary emigrant and accidental American whose name was included in a list which delusional politicians think covers only “a handful of the wealthiest of the wealthy”, and my sympathies to those who for whatever reason did not have their names included.
Son’s Name is on it but the last name missed
I wonder if the names included are only the ones who perform a ‘clean’ exit, filing form 8854.
That might explain it, if a lot of people just get their CLN, but don’t file that form. I don’t know if the IRS does the extra work of contacting the state department to get the full list of renunciants to contact them if they haven’t filed form 8854.
@noone: I wonder if the names included are only the ones who perform a ‘clean’ exit, filing form 8854. — monalisa1776 and others have mentioned that their names showed up before they filed Form 8854, so probably not.
If we dare to project, this year will break last year’s record by at least 30%.
We have Pfizer toing an inversion to escape the 35% US corporate tax rate. Obama asked the IRS to try and tighten the rules. The IRS says they are as tight as they can get them. Still they want to pursue blocking companies leaving rather than addressing that high tax rate.
Given that people renouncing is just a problem with the rules being too lax. We should have tighter rules maybe. Maybe they should pass a rule that you don’t get social security if you renounce. Not sure if that’s allowed in the tax treaties but hell America just ignores them anyway.
I’ll drop a note to Chuck Schumer saying he should consider this option. He will be up for it.
We are all about punishment and denying reality now.
Just in case :-).
@Neill, if you are going to write to Schumer about revising US tax law, then you need to be more aggressive. I mean really, everyone talks about the thousands/tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands of US residents hiding assets offshore and the ca. 7m Americans offshore who may or may not be compliant. That is laughable. The reality is there are almost 7 billion people worldwide who are not reporting income or paying taxes in the US. With a few small tweaks to the definition of US person and a little strengthening of FATCA, he can remedy that problem. Taxing the world would be a convenient way to plug the US tax gap and leave plenty left over for a wide variety of discretionary spending (presumably on the military to help with all the new enforcement initiatives).
@uscitizenshipnightmare, I think you’re onto something. All those Chinese merchants shipping cheap products into the US at rock bottom shipping rates. Their shipping rates are cheaper than mine and I’m in Canada. They’re the real problem! If you can find a way to make all Chinese people US persons, that would help alot.
Forget FATCA, all you need is to control Paypal. They all use Paypal.
As the satire FATCA video said, the US is the police of the world. It is time the rest of the world pay for US protection 🙂
Still not on it after May 2013 renunciation. I noticed the date is April 23, 2014 that they sent it, but the top says the register published it on May 2. Maybe the tardiness it the federal register publication and not the IRS.
@noone: I know people who appeared before they have a chance to file an 8854, and I filed and still haven’t shown up.
@Eric. How many Section 5’s are in the FBI’s numbers from January – March?
This is better than the satire, because it ain’t!
http://youtu.be/appsjRuXwZs
@USCitizenshipnightmare – now you are on to something. Go big or go home. The Romans used to make bloc grants of citizenship as a handy fund-raising tool. The Roman world learned fairly quickly that it was a two-edged sword and the emperor was the one holding the hilt! The US is able to derive far more value from its reserve currency status and all the perqs that go with it (including practically free funding of massive borrowing) than it would ever be able to raise going after its tiny diaspora. Yet the tools it employs to bulldoze what little goodwill remains in their favour in going after “foreign tax evaders” is hastening the demise of the US dollar’s status. Penny wise, pound foolish. It has been pointed out elsewhere that the US has more non-compliant non-filers among the 11 million strong illegal immigrant community within its own borders that it will be able to surface with a hundred years of FATCA. No point in looking for logic or consistency in a dysfunctional republic.
I’m finally a somebody!
Even if it took over a year from the renunciation. LOL. Name published pre-8854, for those wondering.
@BenPloni:
“@Eric. How many Section 5′s are in the FBI’s numbers from January – March?”
The FBI NICS running count for “9. Renounced U.S. Citizenship” follows:
Dec 31, 2013: 23,807
Jan 31, 2014: 24,127
Feb 28, 2014: 24,222
Mar 31, 2014: 24,220 (repeat, 24,220)
Number of Renunciations for Jan 1, 2014 to Mar 31, 2014: 413
@nightmare & @Anne Frank
Couldn’t international cachet be kept by properly re-naming it the External Revenue Service?
@Innocente sounds like this list is a backlog and/or there were a lot of S1-S4s and LPR .abandonments
@Anne Frank, I suspect the level of FBAR and even maybe tax non-compliance with respect to foreign accounts is extremely high among LEGAL immigrants as well. And those might be smoked out and highly penalized when and if their names are transferred. Canada should be concerned about their expats in the US as well, and what’s going to happen to them if CRA transfers their names. All these foreign countries who signed IGAs were dumb not to include a clause to allow people to reasonably come compliant, or a clause saying that the US would not ruin the people they give the names with FBAR penalties.
Heck, FBAR was unknown to many accountants until a couple years ago (and still is), and it is only recently that tax software like TurboTax made it quite obvious with many foreign account questions, with the introduction of form 8938. Consulates and immigration lawyers don’t mention the requirement. US Immigration doesn’t even mention it when you get your H1-B visa or green card.
If FFIs do their due diligence in identifying expats in the US (i.e. US residents green card and Visa holders), I think that great financial harm can be done to the community of high skilled foreign workers in the US. Some will stay undetected, because they might have changed their local address at their financial institution to a local address. But the address might not be good enough. For example I had a dormant account in my country of origin, with very little in there. The address the bank had on file was my parents’. Still, they asked me for my US pay stub as part of their KYC rules (and I never transferred anything from the US to that account!). I don’t really care anyway, because I am compliant and I since closed the account. With the crazy penalties associated to foreign accounts and the red flag they raise, immigrants would have to be crazy to keep them, unless they need them for a good reason (to collect rent for example, or diversify from US investments and save millions abroad). Unlucky me, I am a simple middle class guy with not that kind of money. The risk of keeping one is not worth the credit card fees I was avoiding by using my local account instead of my US credit card when travelling to visit family.
But again, the US doesn’t even need FATCA to go after this class of people if they wanted to: by cross referencing their tax database with immigration database, they can easily locate legal immigrants, then they could easily look for bank transfers between their bank account in the US and FFIs. Immigrants regularly transfer money in and out of the US. Then among those who made transfers, check which ones are compliant and which ones you can milk / scare into OVDI / deport etc.
This is actually a huge problem with the Indian community in the US, since they transfer money to support family back home. They tried to talk to the IRS/treasury to allow their US immigrants to become compliant without using OVDI, but it fell on death ears. The answer from the IRS still is that it is the only method for US residents and that they can opt out if they find the penalty unjust (and risk a lot more by opting out). Just disgusting. I don’t understand how there hasn’t been any diplomatic issue over this yet.
Thanks Eric for the fine write-up. As always, the list is interesting but probably incomplete.
At the risk of being gossipy, there are at least two noble family names on the expatriation list:
1) Schenk von Stauffenberg, Waltraud Ingeborg
The colonel executed for leading the assassination plot against Adolph Hitler in 1944 was Graf Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg.
Wiki background: “The titles “Graf” and “Gräfin” mean count and countess, respectively. Schenk (i.e., cupbearer/butler) was an additional hereditary noble title. The ancestral castle of the nobility was the last part of the title, which would be Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and used as part of the name. The Stauffenberg family is one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic Catholic families of southern Germany.”
It is possible that the person listed in the Federal Register is a relative of the leader of the failed assassination plot against Hitler, sometimes known as Operation Valkyrie.
2) von Faber-Castell, Katharina Elizabeth
The German pencil company, Faber-Castell, is run by Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell. He is married to an American and had a daughter born in New York in 1980 named Katharina. Possibly this is the same person as listed on the Federal Register’s expatriation list.
Congratulations to nobles, commoners and rock stars who made this quarter’s list.
@BenPloni:
I have doubts about the accuracy of classification of several of the figures on the FBI NICS index for Mar 31, 2014. Following is a previous comment on this possible issue:
“Innocente says
April 4, 2014 at 3:51 am
@Eric:
1) The FBI NICS indices for Dec 31, 2013 to Mar 31, 2014 show several anomalies:
10. State Prohibitor:
Dec 2013: 10,072
Jan 2014: 10,271
Feb 2014: 10,353
Mar 2014: 15,567 !
12. Protection/ Restraining Order Domestic Violence:
Dec 2013: 5,321
Jan 2014: 5,262
Feb 2014: 5,352
Mar 2014: 10,371 !
As a hypothesis, which cannot be readily tested, it is possible that the March 2014 input for category “9. Renounced US Citizenship” has been misclassified to categories 10. and 12.”
Son’s name is on this May 2014 list (he renounced August 2013)
Daughter’s name was on the August 2013 list (she renounced August 2012)
However, hubby’s name has not been on any of these lists yet (he renounced October 2012 & got his CLN in May 2013). So this list is not 100% complete…..
Still not on the list, so the bank will probably continue asking for another copy of that CLN.
I AM ON IT. But I renounced last Sept. Kermit
@noone, I filed 8854 about two months ago. I doubt if the IRS is that efficient. I need to find a beer!
@Shovel
Rather than ‘External’, why change the acronym? The IRS is just simply the “International” Revenue Service now, or at least that is how I always refer to them.