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!
“I’m saying the CRS is your friend because it will put all these issues onto the world stage.”
@Haydon. There’s already been a UN complaint submitted. It’s had about as much help from the UN as immediate help and comfort for a child with communicable Ebola. The sympathy is there but people want to stay as far away from you as possible. So no help from the international court of appeal. They only want to hear from you if your country suffers overt acts of military violence ie: anyone other than the USA bombing the shit out of you.
The FATCA apparatus in the UK varies a lot from bank to bank. With some, even after paying the exorbitant fee for a CLN, a US birthplace continues to mark you as American forever. Having renounced a couple of years ago, I thought opening a new bank account would be relatively straightforward. How wrong I was!
For instance, earlier this year I opened a current account online with TSB. The online form asks for your nationality, whether you have any other nationalities, your country of birth and whether you are a US citizen for tax purposes. Because my country of birth was the USA, all of my other answers (which showed that I was solely British) were disregarded and I received a message saying based on the information I had provided that TSB believed I was a US citizen. I was then asked to provide my US tax information number, although I was told this was optional. I spent two months trying to get TSB to acknowledge that I am British. Unfortunately their staff know very little about FATCA and the few that do know anything have inaccurate information. I proactively provided a copy of my CLN and my British passport and they had no idea what to do with it. Eventually I had to take my complaint to the chief executive (who does in fact read his own emails, although he obviously has a team to then handle the actual mechanics of sorting out a complaint). It was a ridiculously long winded and painful process and it was clear that TSB has no procedure for dealing with those caught up in the FATCA apparatus who aren’t actually American.
The Halifax is even worse. If you are a solely British citizen with a US birthplace and you attempt to open an account online, you get a message saying “Based on the information you’ve provided, we note that you’re a national, resident or tax resident of the United States of America (USA). If you know your US Tax Information Number (TIN), please enter it here (optional)”. At least TSB had the courtesy to merely believe I was an American. Halifax labels you as American there and then, based solely on place of birth. And, like TSB, there’s no simple way to get them to remove the false designation from your account during the process of opening it.
But if you want to open an ISA with Nationwide and use a paper form, they only ask you for your nationality. No other questions about place of birth, tax residency, etc.
So the moral is to choose your bank and the way you apply for a new account with care – even if you have a CLN.
~dripping sarcasm~ of course they have to undercount the exodus. Wouldn’t want to alarm the delusional Uncle Tom Slaves and give them ideas to flee now, would they?
Better to keep em dumb n’happy and whistling Zippidy Do Dah. Zippidy Yay.
My oh my what a wonderful day.
@Verity is absolutely right. The opening sentence summarises the situation precisely.
This is why court cases won’t work, nor appeals to the UN.
It’s a matter of finding Banks that are applying FATCA correctly.
In my opinion sharing experiences that reveal which FIs are getting this right is heading in the right direction and collectively you can move from those Banks who are doing it wrong to those who are doing it right.
I’ve been trying to confirm for months now whether CRA has my banking info, and if it’s been sent to the IRS.
Not only does Canada lack the ability to automatically notify Canadians that it’s been sent (as recently recommended by or Privacy Commissioner), the CRA lacks the means to even search it’s data base.
Perhaps they won’t do so because of privacy concerns.
This was a country that was one of the first to jump on the FATCA bandwagon.
We are finally seeing the intended consequences of CBT, after years of lack of enforcement. It’s unintended consequences have been the work-arounds the US government has created to reduce double taxation – something many of the Americans I’ve talked to seem to find fundamentally wrong to impose on its citizens.
Yet you can’t have CBT without double taxation, whether there are exemptions or not. Americans are only given relief by the USG after the harm has been done (look at RRSP’s, and now TFSA’s, RDSP’s, etc). They’re always having to playing catch-up to the rest of the world’s citizens because of CBT, and the US would have to so completely de-tooth CBT in order to prevent double-taxation that they may as well get rid of it.
@haydon. Just so you hear it. Thank you for your understanding.
@George. You are welcome.
@Haydon Quislingman
Doing FATCA right is a contradiction in terms.
““No legislative body ever intended to impose a restraint of trade on any American born person wanting to practice Law.”
…
“If you can tell me what part of Title V if the Hire Act aka FATCA does as you suggest I will try to respond.”
I guess you’re asking about this statement:
‘Yes they did. They intended to impose a restraint of trade on any American born person wanting to eat, sleep, or pracitce any profession at all, in any location outside of US borders. Furthermore they intended to impose such a restraint on any foreign born person outside of US borders if they had parent(s) who had immigrated after living too long in the US.’
Congress knew what they were doing when they approved treaties with gaps and when they set draconian penalties for mistakes by all members of the US’s diaspora including Canadian grandmas. The IRS’s taxpayer advocate didn’t even have to ask “Did Congress know they’re tormenting these people” when she asked “WHY”. This situation already existed before FATCA; FATCA only increases the chances of grandma getting caught.
@Haydon, “This is why court cases won’t work, nor appeals to the UN. It’s a matter of finding Banks that are applying FATCA correctly.”
On this we partly disagree so let me explain. I learned some lessons in the civil partnership/marriage debate that we had in our country and how the Tory party grasped and acted on an issue that was not in their manifesto!! It makes no difference if you support or reject same sex marriage, the events are what is illustrative.
With respect to British Citizens clearly resident in the UK, the UK/US Fatca IGA is clearly and morally wrong. It is discriminatory which is why it needed to be passed because existing UK law knew it was already unlawful under existing law. UK Law rightly branded such actions under FATCA as being unlawful discrimination.
As I have said before there are @50,000 British Citizens on our island who solely identify as British, carry solely a British Passport and have only the most tenuous connection to the USA.
Stomewall won their battle in the UK by shaming people. They were in your face.
One of the ways that FATCA IGA shall be defeated and it will be defeated is by shaming front desk personal at FIs, back office types at FIs, compliance people (consultants and otherwise), politicians, everyone involved in the chain of enforcing and enabling the IGA.
It starts by demanding I am not called an American.
Very often I am asked “Are you on holiday, where are you from?” to which I quickly reply “If my skin was black would you ask what tribe I was from in Africa? I am as British as you are, maybe more so.”
Racism is NEVER cute, nor should it ever be brushed under the rug. Racism has its own distinct odor and it can be smelled a mile away.
My MP has been shamed and is now very contrite on the whole IGA matter.
Having said all that, I have grasped your theory that CRS will help shed light on FATCA and sunshine does kill all bacteria and viruses.
You as a compliance person are part of the process in making this right because I suspect that your very heart has opened up and your mind has accepted that the UK/US FATCA was indeed a bridge too far. If your heart had not been receptive and open, you would not visit IBS.
@George. Interesting points.
I have reservations about giving front line staff at FIs a hard time about FATCA. I was say that is analogous to giving the ticket staff at the train station a hard time for trains running late.
You’d have to take your compaign to the top brass. One risk risk all FIs fear is reputational damage.
I’d recommend targeting, for example, BBC Radio 4’s consumer affairs program “You and Yours”. In such a way you’d be hitting the right people where it hurts. You need a few examples, IBS has lots of them.
I would advise you do it that way and take the moral high crowd. If you give low level staff at FIs a hard time – you’ll achieve nothing and look like a pub brawler.
Got to hurt the right people where it hurts most – brand reputation.
@George. Regarding the British Inter Governmental Agreement. We were the first to sign up (right or wrong) – we signed In December 2012. We Brits have a particularly nasty problem when it comes to what our Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories do. If you look at the Panama Papers leak you’ll see it should have been called the BVI papers. I believe we Brits got on the band wagon before we considered the consequences.
Hence, targeting the Inter Governmental Agreement and the Legal Instrument that made it law would not get you anywhere. Neither is the real cause of the problem.
The truth is offboarding those born in the US has nothing to do with FATCA or the IGAs and those banks who successfully hide behind the camouflage of FATCA know very well that people’s anger is directed in the wrong place.
Very few Brits are aware about the trouble FATCA has caused Americans. I know that stinks but as a nation we are unaware. When I talk about it to my peers they think I’m mistaken.
To make matters worse, I can tell you as someone who knows these regs inside and out, it was not these regs that caused the problem. The problem is genuine, however, FIs have gotten away with blaming FATCA for closing their doors to those born in the US. Some banks wanted to do this anyway, look at some of the fines the US has imposed on the Swiss Banks. It’s also known that other countries are being targeted by the US.
But these fines not caused by FATCA – not one USD.
However, Banks have been allowed to blame their activities on FATCA and the complexity of FATCA affords them plausible deniability.
Haydon: RE: “This is why court cases won’t work, nor appeals to the UN.
It’s a matter of finding Banks that are applying FATCA correctly.
In my opinion sharing experiences that reveal which FIs are getting this right is heading in the right direction and collectively you can move from those Banks who are doing it wrong to those who are doing it right.”
Why should *anyone*, after banking for years in a financial institution that they have found to serve them well, have to pound the pavement to find another bank simply because some foreign country has dumped incomprehensible regulations upon the financial sector such that this particular bank decided to respond to it in a particular way?
Your argument that it is simply up to us customers to find our way out of this mess by changing banks is very similar to the recent court decision in the United States that declared our problems to be either self-inflicted or the fault of the banks. Well, the banks (and all the rest of us) were doing just fine before the US passed FATCA and all our home countries began signing IGAs.
To be fair to your position, the IGAs (the Canadian one at least) certainly leave the banks some discretion with regards to reporting certain accounts but it should not be up to law-abiding folk, whose only crime is having been born in the United States, to have to run the gauntlet of trying to figure out if their bank is going to rat them out to a foreign government.
This whole thing is just simply WRONG and it’s got to stop.
@Muzzled, Exactly. How can banks ‘do FATCA the right way’ when FATCA enforced birth place taxation is wrong to begin with?
Reminds me of when the Candian politician talk about the importance of keeping our financial data ‘private’ while ignoring the fact that they have no business sending it outside of the country to begin with.
It’s like everyone is looking at the trees, but ignoring the forest. Birth place taxation is wrong, no matter how you enforce it.
If birthplace based taxation is wrong this is an argument that wasn’t made effectively in 2010. The genie is out of the bottle now.
It is true the FATCA and the IGAs did indeed drive it – but in 2010 and the years that followed too few spoke up.
Those born in the US should not have to search for Banks that still welcome them.
All true and I was saying the same back then.
But paying now for court cases won’t work either.
We all allowed this to happen and now we have to deal with it.
@Haydon
It’s an argument not made by whom?!
Nobody knew anything about it except the US.
Not banks, not politicians and certainly not the poor sods whom it affected!
@heidi. It was well known, worldwide, in the Tax, Compliance, AML community way back in 2010.
In truth tax is too boring for most and as a result very few where watching.
Those of making the point back then were seen as “Chicken Littles” saying the sky is falling in.
Most people simply did not believe this could happen and found researching it too boring.
Very few politicians knew about this and when it came for them to play a role, they did not know enough to realise they had to stop this from being railroaded through. As railroaded at high speed it was.
Haydon
Of course it was known in the industry but even if they could have gotten their warning across, who would have listened? The banks can pass on their costs to the customer. The only real cost is to the few ‘americans’ caught up in this and they are expendable. Important US persons like Boris Johnson, who could have spoken out and acted as advocates have kept quiet for reasons only known to themselves. The day of the US expat is over.
@Heidi. Thankfully Boris was his usual vociferous self about FATCA. He most certainly did speak out on this issue in a very big way.
It is true that he did reverse his position by paying “taxes due to the IRS” and then renouncing his US citizenship.
As for the cost. The cost of FATCA compliance is extremely expensive, it’s way too expensive to pass onto US born customers.
@haydon
Not US born customers, but ALL bank customers.
Boris spoke out once, when he was ambushed during an interview. Boris spoke out because Boris wss outraged for HIMSELF.
He could have become a spokesperson for all his fellow British citizens who were likewise affected, but all we heard was that he would not address the subject further, then silence. We do not even know if he paid up or got a pass for his silence. We do not know if he as even renounced. Do you have evidence to that fact?
Boris would not get my vote.
“As for the cost. The cost of FATCA compliance is extremely expensive, it’s way too expensive to pass onto US born customers.”
Haydon, it’s not just US born customers having to pay the costs of FATCA compliance: it’s ANYONE that is even remotely connected biologically to anyone of US birth regardless of their location of birth simply because their mother happened to be a US citizen.
@Heidi. Yes Boris has renounced and paid any taxes the US Internal Revenue Service believes he owes.
@Animal1970. That is true. I would say it’s worse than that because even those without US indicia or any nexus to anyone who does, have had to self certify that they are not American.
@Heidi. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11413801/Boris-Johnson-clears-way-to-Number-10-by-renouncing-US-passport.html