The Q1 2016 Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen to Expatriate, as Required by Section 6039G has been placed on public inspection for printing in Thursday’s Federal Register, five days later than required by law. By my count, it has 1,159 names (41 names per full page and 27 full pages, plus 22 names on the first page and 30 on the last page, with no entries taking up two lines this time). Let me know if you get a different count. Correction: As Andrew Mitchel and Haydon Perryman both point out, the actual count is 1,158; there’s an entry on page 7 of the the pre-publication PDF which takes up two lines.
In contrast, the number of renunciant records held by the FBI in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database increased by 1,281 during the same period, from 32,666 at last year’s end to 33,947 as of 31 March (and they added another 860 in April). The NICS renunciant figures have outstripped the Federal Register count of “published expatriates” every year since 2012, with the gap last year growing to more than a thousand — even though NICS only covers 8 USC § 1481(a)(5) renunciants while the Federal Register is supposed to include all relinquishers under any paragraph of 8 USC § 1481(a), as well as some of the estimated five to seven thousand people who file Form I-407 to abandon their green cards each quarter.
All of the people added to NICS definitely paid the US$2,350 State Department fee — twenty times that in other developed countries — which has been in effect for renunciants since September 2014, meaning that Washington D.C. collected at least US$3 million from people seeking to exercise their human right to change their nationality last quarter. The State Department claimed this obscene fee “protects” the right to change nationality — well, that’s one mighty profitable protection racket they’ve got going on there! (And it could have been even more profitable if some consulates weren’t restricting renunciation appointments to an hour a week, leading to ten-month backlogs in Dublin and Toronto.)
Media reports on individual ex-citizens
Here’s a table of nineteen people mentioned by name in media reports as having given up U.S. citizenship since the beginning of 2014; seven of their names are missing from the Federal Register (three out of eleven from 2014 and four out of six from 2015), while for two more — the ones from this year — it’s too early to say whether they’ll show up or not. I’ve also included one person who posted his own CLN on Twitter and later showed up in the list (I haven’t included people who tweeted their own CLNs but didn’t show up in the list).
Names of public figures included in this quarter’s list: South Korean pop singer Alex Kim, who renounced nearly two years ago; and Jonathan Tepper, who said in a New York Times op-ed in December 2014 that his big appointment at the U.S. consulate was scheduled for early the following year. No public figure who spoke to the media about their renunciation in 2016 has yet been included, though this quarter’s list does have one name matching that of a Hong Kong government official who took office recently: Sandra Leung Shuk-bo.
| Name | Occupation | Other citizenship |
Giving up US citizenship | Appeared in Federal Register? |
Source | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reason | Date | |||||
| Lu Shu-hao | Military | Taiwan | Service in Republic of China Army | January 2014 or earlier | No | Taipei Times |
| Sandy Opravil | Housewife | Switzerland | Save her mortgage | February 2014 | Q3 2014 | Newsweek |
| Roger Ver | Bitcoin investor | St. Kitts & Nevis | Libertarian political opinions | February 2014 | No | Bloomberg |
| Sophia Martelly | Politician | Haiti | Run for Senate of Haiti | March 2014 | Q3 2015 | Haiti Press Network |
| Ya’aqov Ben-Yehudah | Writer | Israel | Complicated; see source | March 2014 | Q2 2014 | Times of Israel |
| Sean Cavanaugh | Technology | Canada | FATCA | April 2014 | Q1 2015 | Tweeted own CLN in August 2014 |
| Mona Quartey | Politician | Ghana | Become Deputy Finance Minister of Ghana | July 2014 | No | Graphic News (Ghana) |
| Alex Kim | Singer | South Korea | Obtain South Korean citizenship & serve in military | August 2014 | Q1 2016 | Herald Business (South Korea) |
| Nicole Beaudoin | Unknown | Canada | FATCA | September 2014 | Q3 2014 | La Presse (Canada) |
| Kim Sungkyum | Military | South Korea | Be commissioned an officer in the Republic of Korea Army | December 2014 | Q1 2015 | Kookbang Ilbo (South Korea) |
| Lin Jou-min | Architect | Taiwan | Take position in Taipei city government | December 2014 | Q3 2015 | Central News Agency (Taiwan) |
| Rachel Azaria | Politician | Israel | Members of Knesset cannot hold foreign citizenships | January 2015 | No | Times of Israel |
| Jonathan Tepper | Macroeconomic analyst | United Kingdom | FATCA & other U.S. tax reporting requirements | January 2015 | Q1 2016 | The New York Times |
| David Alward | Politician | Canada | Become Canadian consul-general in Boston | April 2015 or earlier | Q3 2015 | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation |
| Alfred Oko Vanderpuije | Politician | Ghana | Stand for election to Parliament | August 2015 | No | Starr FM (Ghana) |
| Philip Ryu | Singer | South Korea | Serve in South Korean army | September 2015 or earlier | No | Money Today (South Korea) |
| Rachel Heller | Writer | Netherlands | FATCA & other U.S. tax reporting requirements even when no U.S. tax is owed | November 2015 | No | Blog (will be included in TV news programme at a later date) |
| Neil Llamanzares | Businessman | Philippines | Public opinion (his wife is running for President) | April 2015 | No | Rappler (Philippines) |
| Lee Chih-kung | Physicist | Taiwan | Appointed Minister of Economic Affairs by President-elect Tsai Ing-wen | May 2015 | No | Apple Daily (Taiwan) |
Congratulations to all those who made the expat honour roll this term!
@barbara Thanks for your points. Naturally, I completely agree.
@EmBee I’m neither for, nor against FATCA. I try to do what I can to manage the damage that FATCA has done, is doing and continues to do.
A few really obvious comments from me:
1) FATCA never caught the tax evaders who matter – it was passed in 2010 and effective in mid-2014. The true tax evaders had more than 4 years for move their money.
2) Because America has:
i) not enforced FATCA on itself,
ii) Promulgated FATCA via Intergovernmental Agreements with other countries predicated on reciprocity. (Reciprocity, in this case, being asymmetric i.e. America not sharing the same level data as it recieves.)
iii) not signed up to the OECD Common Reporting Standard, and
iv) is a secrecy jurisdiction in its own right
it may well be that many tax evaders have moved their money to the USA (non-Americans anyway). America has given itself a huge competitive advantage when is comes to attracting capital flight away from the Countries it inflicted FATCA upon.
3) The people FATCA has hurt are US Expats and Accidental Americans. Court cases have failed, ostensibly because, it is not FATCA but how the Banks have interpreted it and implemented it. If that is so, why doesn’t the IRS and US Treasury explictly say so and work with its IGA partners so that they don’t make life harded for US ex-pats and Accidental Americans? Why not write into the IGAs a prohibition against offboarding US expats and Accidental Americans, that Governments have to write into local law?
4) America started it, America can do something about it, but America won’t until Americans in America feel the pain. Hence, I believe that FATCA should be enforced on Americans in America. Specifically, the Common Reporting Standard. Once, this happens the land of the free will be motivated to mitigate the damage it has done inter-alia to US expats and Accidental Americans.
Whilst, I’m neither for nor against FATCA, FATCA has hurt very few people who it seems it was written to target and has done enormous damage in Accidental Americans and US ex-pats.
I don’t think anything will change until the US is brought to the table and made to eat from the same plate is has forced others to eat from.
@Haydon
“Why doesn’t the US work with its IGA partners”
One doesn’t treat a partner with a 30% blackmail withold . one works with a partner through the CRS .
“Why not write a prohibition into the IRA’s to prevent banks rejecting US persons”
In a free market economy banks should be
able to protect themselves against risk. Americans are a toxic risk.
Why on earth should one bad agreement be written on top of another just to satisfy American hedgemony.
Why doesn’t the US fix all this simply by adopting RBT like the rest of the world?
Because it is a bully and thinks it will profit from this, just as I suspect you are profiting.
That is why you are trying to justify the unjustifiable.
You said it yourself, Haydon.
Other countries are not “partners” in the true sense of the word.
@Haydon, the mere fact that you lurk and hang out at IBS is good on its own right because you are showing that you too are a human being subscribing to that teaching to treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated.
Let me make a comment about FATCA in the UK. There are some FI’s that boldly and directly ask the place of birth question which many believe is raw cold discrimination. But there are others that do not ask place of birth such as the largest building society who only ask Are you a US Citizen?
Its one thing to ask Are you a USC and another thing to ask Place of Birth.
If you look at the recent UK Census, there are approximately 50,000 British Citizens who were born in the USA but do not have a US Passport and do not self identify as US Citizens. These folks are going to get entangled into something that is deadly. I have little doubt that there will be suicides of our fellow British Citizen neighbors because of this web.
Also lets look at the greatest hypocrite being HM Government through NS&I which is rejecting US Persons for most products. How can HM Government justify banning British Citizens in Hull, Newcastle, Preston who do not carry a US Passport nor identify themselves as Americans the right to have a NS&I income bond because they were born in the USA?
I know quite a few so called “Americans” who live in very deprived areas, many of them older and many of the older ones with a little more than $10,000 in savings, how on earth do you tell them to get into compliance?
This is not a rant against you rather this is a rant with you.
Cheers, George S.
@Haydon, something else to ponder……
When the UK IGA was signed there was no fee for a relinquishing CLN and a renouncing fee was cheap.
But the IGA implies that a CLN is needed to have a normal financial life.
I have kids that will be going to Uni and we both know they will be borrowing £9,000 a year for that.
Who should be paying their CLN fees?
Why should my kids who have only known the United Kingdom as home, who speak with a British accent, have to borrow even more money to pay a foreign government to get rid of something they do not want?
Are my kids less British than your kids because they were born on the other side of the pond?
@ George. I didn’t realise NS & I is shut to Americans. That is disgusting.
@Heidi. Even in a free market, no company should ever discriminate based solely on nationality (unless, of course, there are sanctions).
@Bubblebustin. Too right: other countries are not equal partners. We (other countries) have been outmanoeuvred.
@Haydon
I take it that you are in the USA…the freest country in the world…so I was told….often.
You are a financially successful person I believe, you may want to buy a holiday home in the Caribbean, or Paris, or Mexico, or Switzerland, or even retire abroad one day. Surprise, you are NOT welcome. The banks do not want you. They will accept just about any other nationality except yours. How do you feel? You are a prisoner of the USA. It affects homelanders too.
@George. Interesting point about the kids and University. I need to understand. Your kids can’t open accounts in the UK because they are American citizens? Banks are refusing to open accounts for them, even if they supply a W-9?
@Heidi. I take your point. Fortunately, at least in this context, I am a Brit living and working near London. Nonetheless, I do take your point.
@Haydon, at least HSBC requires more than the regulations
After receiving a 9 page document stating that I had US indicia for my account (I’ve never had an HSBC account), I rang the number provided in the letter and asked why I had received the letter. I was told that they did not know and that I should take the letter to my local branch. I insisted they look to see if anyone was trying to open an account in my name because I was concerned about identity theft. They confirmed that HSBC had no accounts in my name. FYI, I’ve lived in the UK for over 25 years, and renounced in 2013 because I needed to finally share a joint bank account with my UK spouse. After ignoring the letter, I got a follow up letter of nine pages, which included First Direct in the potential accounts affected. Having banked with First Direct for over 25 years, I decided to ring them and ask if the letter concerned my account with them. They told me to just send them a copy of my CLN and a self declaration and that would satisfy their requirements. After doing so, I received a letter from First Direct saying that was not good enough because they wanted a W-8BEN signed as well. I sent them a copy of the regulations on the HMRC website indicating that a CLN, proof of other citizenship, and Written Declaration were the requirement; an not a W-8BEN. I also sent them a copy of the page of the Federal Register where I am listed as a renunciant. I told them I did not want to complete any US tax forms because I don’t have any US investments and that a W-8BEN should not be required for a simple current account in the UK. They sent back a letter insisting that if I did not complete a W-8BEN that they would consider my account recalcitrant.
To make a long story short, I switched to Santander and when I got their short FATCA letter (due to my place of birth), all I had to do was send them certified copies of my passport and CLN and sign a declaration. They sent me a nice letter back confirming the receipt of my documents and that they would require no further action from me.
So, if you’re advising the banks, you might want to suggest to them that they shouldn’t treat people with EU citizenship in possession of a CLN as if they are a criminal. W-8BENs make no sense for non-US accounts. FBARs made me feel like a criminal and I’m very relieved to be free of them. The day I renounced I felt free at last.
@Ami Wright. Yes, a CLN is enough to “cure” US indicia. (I’m using “cure” not to be pejorative, but rather, the way the word is used in the regulations.) Given this fact pattern insisting on a W-8 BEN was over zealous.
Your example demonstrates how differently the banks are interpreting the regs.
When/if I ever get the pleasure of seeing my name on that illustrious list, I’m framing it!
I’ve yet to be asked by my banks about citizenship…maybe we’re just a little behind in WA, AU? The joke being that “WA” means, “wait awhile”. I don’t know now what I provided for ID when I opened the current accounts, actually– I would have had a Medicare & driver’s license but even now I have no AU passport so I might’ve used my US one then (this is now seven years ago). I do know that new accounts being opened at ANZ do have the notation on the paperwork that you have indicated you are not of US taint.
If I do get a letter, I’ll post here.
@Haydon
Well we will soon see if a Government will uphold their people’s rights against the threat to their country’s banks and economy…I sincerely hope my fear is proved wrong.
@Hayden ” Interesting point about the kids and University. I need to understand. Your kids can’t open accounts in the UK because they are American citizens? Banks are refusing to open accounts for them, even if they supply a W-9?”
1.) NS&I will not allow my British by birth children to even have an account because of their place of birth. They have been refused.
2.) One of my kids may study law or accounting and went to a uni open day recently. They were flatly told that they would not be able to be a signature on any fiduciary accounts if they wanted to enter those careers because of their US Taint. Why? Said account would no longer be confidential being inspectable by a foreign government.
But there is something deeper that you might not get or be able to appreciate. My kids are in no manner Americans, they have no memory of America. Their accent is very local. They are British Citizens and I would like to think that they are equal British Citizens to you or your kids. They had a childs US Passport to leave the USA.
How do you tell a young person approaching 18, they need to cough up $2,350 to buy a piece of paper called a CLN from what is to them a foreign government? Thats on top of the £9,000 per year in uni fees.
That piece of paper is being required by banks because HM Government signed a law stating so.
My kids will not be treated equal to yourself or your kids until they cough up whatever increasing fee a foreign government demands of them because of an action they had no control over.
Marriage laws were reformed in our country because our Parliament saw that people were treated differently. But this same Parliament created a law that deems my children are not so equal to other British Citizens and are not equal to you and your children.
My children are British at birth, their parents were British at birth, our parents were British at birth and back it goes in history to the beginning.
If one British Citizen has to fill out one additional piece of paper than another British Citizen, then they are not equal in law. Just as same sex civil partnerships was not deemed equal to marriage.
Personally I could not see how civil partnerships was not equal to marriage but our government said it was different and thereby discrimination. If that was discrimination then so is the UK FATCA IGA with respect to any British Citizen resident on our island nation.
And again my children will not be treated exactly equal to you or your children until they buy an expensive piece of paper from a foreign power.
@Haydon…….not ranting at you……
At Gatwick is there a single security corridor or are there different security corridors?
What if we had one line that said “British Citizens who have an Iranian Parent” and another line for “British Citizens.”
Two different lines for airport security that separate out supposedly equal British Citizens. Would you support that in the “interest of security?” After all it is only a minor inconvenience.
That is what is now happening everyday at banks across our country, except for the named country.
@George. As one father to another I have to say I appreciate the gravity of the situation you describe. I have aspirations for my children to go to University too.
I would keep a very careful log of any attempts to open accounts in the UK where access is denied due to US PoB. As long as a W-9 is supplied there *should not* be a problem. A W-9 is a fairly simple form.
I’m not saying I agree with the process, just that it be navigated.
The bank has an argument if your child doesn’t complete a W-9. If your child is refused purely for a US PoB despite offering a completed W-9 then that would seem to me to be racism, pure and simple, nothing whatever to do with the regs.
Whilst a PoB would require either a W-9 or a written explanation of how the US PoB did not make the child a US citizen, once either is supplied and accepted then the is no reason not to open an account (all things being equal).
Note – naturally the written explanation would also require a W-8 BEN.
Also note – not all front line staff will now about the “written explanation” route.
I cannot over emphasise IBS members should keep records of accounts refused when a W-9 was offered. I say this because refusing accounts to Americans, accidental or not, where a W-9 is offered goes way beyond the regulations and to my mind might be a form of racism.
I’m not a lawyer though so please get a legal opinion.
To the second point – “US taint”. Total BS, now that the CRS is underway every nation’s citizen would be tainted if one were to follow that logic.
CRS is about all nations – not just Americans. So whoever told your child that……sorry, I just feel to strongly to complete this sentence except to say it isn’t good advice.
@Haydon, “I didn’t realise NS & I is shut to Americans.”
You fell into the ugly hole of racism and it is hard for us to see it, I stand guilty as well.
When you see a person whose skin is black do you think of them as African? Is “black British” equal to “white British?”
To be honest, I suppose I could buy into FATCA IGA and NS&I shutting down accounts to American expats who are over here on Limited/Indefinite Leave to Remain.
NS&I has been shut to fellow British Citizens…..because of place of birth.
NS&I has been shut to fellow British Citizens who have lived 99.99% of their life on this planet in the United Kingdom, who hold solely a British Passport, who have no memory of the USA.
The FATCA IGA “equally” requires the 18 year old student borrow $2,350 to get a piece of paper from a foreign government to give to a bank as it requires the 73 year old OAP on a fixed income to go without food or heat to buy a $2,350 piece of paper from a foreign government to give to a bank.
@Haydon….if a solicitor or accountant is a signatory on a fiduciary client trust account, that account information will be handed over to a foreign government if said solicitor/accountant even though a British Citizen by birth was born in the USA. That action alone of client information handed over to a foreign government is a breach of client confidentiality and closes off career routes for a young person. Hence young person needs to borrow more money to pay whatever fee it costs then to buy a piece of paper to appease said banks.
That is not treating British Citizens equal under the law.
@George. Have you investigated the written explanation route?
@Haydon….do not get me wrong, I am thankful that there are men like you doing what you are doing. I bear no resentment to you.
@George. I completely understand. I’m not taking any of it personally.
@George. The point about “US taint” is that even if genuine – it is temporary and would not be the case once your child graduates unless it is also true of citizens of every other nation that has signed up to the CRS.
@geoge. Child not chord – predictive text is a pain!
@Haydon, ultimately my kids are going to have to cough up money to what is a foreign government to them. They are going to be extremely bitter to said foreign government, to their own government and to the banks. Think of the corrosive effect on that?
Up until last fall they had the no fee relinquishing route option by getting a temp job with a MP, but that route was closed when the fee was imposed.
Who knows what it will cost to buy a CLN in five years? Under the current foreign government it went from zero to $450 to $2,350.
If the foreign government raises the fee to $50,000 do we still shrug our shoulders and say it is what it is?
My kids do not consider themselves to be anything other than British yet the place of birth is a tattoo.
Mind you there are UK FIs that do not ask POB and ask solely citizenship and tax residency. I honestly think they are attempting to soften the blow to their fellow Brits out of compassion.
Mind you, according the last census there are @50,000 British Citizens with a US place of birth who do not have a US Passport and do not self identify as american. Those are 50,000 problems that will start growing over the years. And yes, some of them are going to commit suicide over this.
Most of the blame rests with said foreign government but it was our UK Government that enacted legislation which treats British Citizens who have been tax resident in the UK solely and fully all their lives in the UK differently from other British Citizens.
If FATCA had been passed by China or maybe Uganda, would the British people have tolerated their countrymen being singled out differently?
I do believe that once was accepted in our country and that was all British Citizens on this island are equal in all respects regardless of accent, skin colour or origin.
Again, I fully understand “FATCA” with respect to the person who lives in America and for some stupid reason picked the UK as an offshore tax haven. I can maybe understand FATCA for the passport carrying American who is over here on some sort of leave to remain before going home, the proverbial American Citizen Abroad.
@Haydon, “unless it is also true of citizens of every other nation that has signed up to the CRS.”
I am also Irish by descent and Canadian by descent. This transmits from me to my children, though I have no active passport with said nations nor do my kids.
Under CRS, because they are British Citizens and resident in the UK, there is zero risk of any account information being handed over to the Republic of Ireland or Canada. They could disclose they are Irish or Canadian by descent and employer or fiduciary account bank information would not be handed over to those two foreign governments.
The professor/advisor who spoke with my eldest on career choices was blunt. If there are two otherwise equal candidates for a job which one will be hired by an accounting firm or solicitors, the one who will get the firms banking account information handed over to a foreign government or the one who will not get the firms banking account information handed over to a foreign government?
So in order for my kids to be equal to their British peers they have to hand over what remains an unknown sum to buy a piece of paper.