The folks over at the Federal Register have put the “Internal” Revenue Service’s Q3 2016 Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate up for public inspection. I count 1,379 names of newly-minted ex-U.S. citizens in this list, making it the second-largest list ever published (beaten only by the Q3 2015 list, which had 1,426 names).
The list is scheduled for official publication on 10 November, eleven days later than the 30-day deadline specified by 26 USC § 6039G(d). Obama’s Treasury Secretaries have only managed to meet the list’s deadline eight times out of 31 during his term as president (three so far for Jack Lew, and five for Tim Geithner, assuming we count the late Q4 2012 list as being his fault). However, Bush’s appointees didn’t have a much better track record: Hank Paulson only published one list on time during eleven quarters, while John Snow holds the all-time delay record of 516 days for the Q3 2005 list.
Who are the people in this list?
The latest list was published just after the news broke that Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, but contrary to media hype, there’s very little connection between that news and people who choose to give up U.S. citizenship. After every U.S. election you can find all sorts of hysterical Internet surfers claiming they want to renounce their citizenship and flee the new regime, but for the most part these aren’t the people who actually move abroad, let alone go to a U.S. consulate and pay $2,350 for State Department bureaucrats to push renunciation papers around.
First and foremost, all of the people in the Federal Register list already live in other countries, and have been living there since long before the election. This latest list includes people who are known from media reports to have given up U.S. citizenship as recently as July, though most probably made their final visit to the U.S. consulate late last year or early this year.
Some were self-identifying Americans abroad who saw cutting off their legal ties to Washington, DC (and its coterie of self-serving revolving-door bureaucrats who pretend they don’t know that they’re ruining our lives) as the only way to survive all the damage that previous presidents and Congresses inflicted on the diaspora. They’d reached their breaking points long before anyone knew who’d even be on the ballot in November, let alone how long it would take the next administration to follow through on its promises to make things right.
Others considered themselves primarily as citizens of other countries, and saw U.S. citizenship as a barrier to their lives in the country they considered home. They didn’t have any stake in who’d be U.S. president — but instead of making it easy for these de facto non-Americans to become de jure non-Americans, the U.S. government put all sorts of unnecessary barriers in their way, turning what should have been an amicable split into a bureaucratic nightmare.
Why isn’t my name in there?
In addition to being late, the Federal Register list is widely recognised as being incomplete too. Aside from the IRS, the FBI also maintains a list of renunciants in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System gun control database (NICS), in order to enforce provisions of federal law (18 USC 922(g)(7)) barring renunciants from purchasing firearms. They don’t make the names public, but each month they publish a report on the size of the database; according to those reports, the FBI added 4,240 renunciant records from the beginning of this year until 30 September (growing from 32,666 to 36,906).
In contrast, the Federal Register only gave us 3,046 renunciants and relinquishers over the same period (509 last quarter, and 1,158 in Q1). And that’s not even mentioning the tens of thousands of people who abandon green cards each year, whom the Federal Register list misleadingly implies are included as well (“[f]or purposes of this listing, long-term residents, as defined in section 877(e)(2), are treated as if they were citizens of the United States who lost citizenship”).
As always, after the jump please find an updated table of people who are known from media reports to have given up U.S. citizenship recently, including whether or not their names have appeared in the Federal Register.
Media reports
| 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 | Take office as Member of Knesset | January 2015 | Q2 2016 | 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) |
| KANG Dong-suk | Violinist | South Korea | Restore South Korean citizenship | 2015 (month not specified) | No | News1 (South Korea) |
| Neil (Teodoro) LLAMANZARES | Businessman | Philippines | Public opinion (his wife ran for President, but lost after he renounced) | April 2016 | Q3 2016 | Rappler (Philippines) |
| LEE Chih-kung | Physicist | Taiwan | Appointed Minister of Economic Affairs by President-elect Tsai Ing-wen | May 2016 | Q3 2016 | Apple Daily (Taiwan) |
| Ned MANNOUN | Politician | Australia | Run for Australian parliament | May 2016 or earlier | No | Liverpool Champion (Australia) |
| Yehuda GLICK | Politician | Israel | Take office as Member of Knesset | May 2016 | No | Arutz Sheva (Israel) |
| Judy CHAN Ka-pui | Politician | Hong Kong | Run for Hong Kong Legislative Council | July 2016 | Q3 2016 | Apple Daily (Hong Kong) |
| Kimi ONODA | Politician | Japan | Dual-at-birth, did Japanese-law “choice of nationality” long ago, didn’t know U.S. still considered her a citizen | October 2016? | No | Viewpoint (Japan) |
Regarding the newest addition to the table: Japan, like Jamaica and Pakistan before it, is in the middle of a scandal about lawmakers holding dual citizenship, and so various politicians have been rushing to renounce their other citizenships. Onoda, who was born in Chicago, issued a statement in early October that she is currently undergoing procedures to give up U.S. citizenship according to U.S. law, but didn’t say whether she’d actually made her final visit to the U.S. consulate to sign the paperwork. I do not know whether she will be swearing an oath of renunciation or trying to claim relinquishment under 8 USC § 1481(a)(4).
If you know of any other recent media reports which have interviewed people giving up U.S. citizenship, for whatever reason, leave a comment and I’ll add them to the table.
From the Huffington post article posted by Canadian Ginny:
“President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that people who burn the American flag should lose their citizenship.”
Now if only we had known this was coming, some of us could have saved the outrageous renunciation fee! We could have had a group flag burning instead. Like the get out of jail free card.
@ All
All kidding aside, I think a reasonable fee should be $100 USD. Inflation, George.
If only it were that easy.
How much does a flag cost? We could probably get a discount ( made in China?) if we order in bulk.
I agree it should be done while in our own countries. I’d send Mr. Trump a dozen gilt leaf roses if he would free us for the price of a flag and a match. He has come up with a reasonable solution. He’s the Man. Now where did I put my thank you stationery.
@Ginny….we need publicity. Now think of people in front of a consulate burning flags but wearing shirts that say We heart Trump
That would be so screwy it would make the news
I also agree that any US flag burning should be done in our own countries to avoid being placed in a US jail. Trump, in his own egocentric way, has strongly suggested jail time for flag burners.
@bc doc brilliant idea but after you send the refusal to your mp.
On the flag burning picture us given our kids for their 18th birthday what joy.
@ George
Brilliant: wearing We heart Trump shirts. Putting in another order asap.
Be careful what you propose. Next thing you know, you’ll only lose your US citizenship by burning an official US-government-issued flag at a cost of US$2350.
You could be right, Barbara. It would have to be government issued flags wouldn’t it?
Always watch what we wish for. But it was a little fun and a diversion to think about the possibility for an afternoon. I don’t know about the rest of you, but man are there days when this mutual nightmare and the absolute joy ( lol) of being a plaintiff wears me down in my old age. A little humour gets me through it.
What also often cheers me up is the consistent support of so many here who have not left us even though they have their CLNs, officially or according to their self identification. Now that’s tenacity in my books.
Speaking of books some day I swear, I will write one about this. It can be so isolating, this experience of ours, when even our friends/family really don’t get it sometimes or think we are batting at windmills. But on we must go.
‘The founding documents of the USA show that the country was founded on the principles of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.’
Yeah they do, but in 1812 they had to fight for it. Read on to see how.
The UK promised freedom to any slave who rose up to fight for the UK. The US boasted that they thwarted the UK’s promised refuge. See for yourself:
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:”
Do you recognize those two lines?
Well, the poet didn’t just contradict himself between stanzas. He contradicted himself even internally to the third stanza alone. Here are the next two lines:
“And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
@Ginny, ten years ago if a “prophet” told you what you would be doing in 2016/2017…….astonishment I think would be an understatement.
You SHOULD be “worried about” the occasional legal job to give you some holiday money!! Instead you are a plaintiff of a possible case that will set future precedent.
Keith Redmond just did a youtube interview thats on the facebook page and its real good. I just wish people would STOP referring to us as USC!!! That is the trap that there is some kind of benefit.
As innocente and others noted on other threads, as of 31 December 2016 there were 38,003 renunciant records in NICS. +430 for the month of December, and +5,337 for the whole of 2016.
View online (valid only until next month): https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-index.pdf/view
Download: https://web.archive.org/web/20170105032302/https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-index.pdf
A few of those records are suspect, however. According to the latest annual “Active Records in the NICS Index by State” report, the government of Illinois submitted 16 records to the “Renounced U.S. Citizenship” category during 2016. (They’re the only U.S. state government who added any records that year.) These could be duplicates of records already entered by the State Department, or more likely they are people who don’t meet the category definition in the first place (e.g. “freeman on the land” types who claim to be citizens of their state only and tried to renounce federal citizenship at the post office or by public notice in a newspaper or something).
View online (valid only until next year): https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-records-in-the-nics-index-by-state.pdf/view
Download (archived): https://web.archive.org/web/20170119084323/https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-records-in-the-nics-index-by-state.pdf
2015 report: https://web.archive.org/web/20160402083353/https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/active-records-in-the-nics-index-by-state
https://medium.com/@fdbetancor/repeal-fatca-87543f6a219
This guy’s heart is in the right place (he argues FATCA should be repealed), but his information about the Federal Register list is woefully inaccurate. Perhaps someone has time to provide him with some facts in the comments?
“but his information about the Federal Register list is woefully inaccurate.”
He starts out right:
‘The data source is of questionable integrity and has numerous problems associated with it that could lead to a large variance in the results. Most importantly, the Federal Register gets its information from the IRS,’
But yeah, I wonder where he got his subsequent stuff from.
But then he gets it right again:
‘The worst flaw in FATCA (and FBAR) is that they completely and utterly fail to do away with the real tax evaders, who are not going to stupidly fly to Britain to hide their millions by opening a savings account in the Royal Bank of Scotland. Those with assets enough worth hiding are going to find cleverer means of hiding them, as the Panama Papers have revealed in great detail. Why, you don’t even have to go outside of the United States: Delaware and Nevada make the creation of shell-corporations an easy matter and there is has been no effort to increase transparency in that area.’
And here:
‘The United States is one of the few nations on earth that does not use residency-based taxation. In other words, Americans are liable to Uncle Sam wherever they go: even Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert got a visit from the taxman for failing to file an extension on his way to the moon[1]. ‘
The Trump Era’s first list of published expatriates will be late. No sign of it yet on public inspection:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%5Bterm%5D=expatriate&order=newest#
https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2017/01/27#regular-filing-internal-revenue-service
https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2017/01/30#regular-filing-internal-revenue-service
Anyway, I doubt the lists will be any more honest or complete under Trump than they were under Bush II or Obama. More interested to see if/how the media coverage will change.
Still nothing
https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2017/02/03#regular-filing-internal-revenue-service
I.e. the list will be a minimum of one week late
Thanks, Eric.
“I.e. the list will be a minimum of one week late”
A corrupt, meaningless list will be a minimum of one week late. An accurate list, required by law, is at least five years late.
As of 31 January 2017 there’s 38,380 renunciant records in NICS (+377 in January)
https://web.archive.org/web/20170204043322/https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-index.pdf
I count 2,375 (might be a bit of an overcount). 59 pages, 41 names per full page, 22 on the first page, 16 on the last page. 66% bigger than any previous list.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/09/2017-02699/quarterly-publication-of-individuals-who-have-chosen-to-expatriate
Will post once I figure out the time frame of these renunciations. I recognised one name right of the bat (Perfecto Yasay, Duterte’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs) but last I heard he was claiming he’d never been a citizen in the first place so I dunno when he renounced.
I’m on the list. Husband and daughter who renounced at the same time are not. (CLNs were approved on 3 different dates)
Also listed is one “Alexander Boris Johnson”. Finally!
Boris has finally made it.
Samuel Ross Bryson, Author Bill Bryson’s son?
Two other interesting names:
1) Maytag-Madeley Alexandra: great-great granddaughter of the founder of the Maytag Company, a former American appliance company.
2) von Hohenzollern, Alexander: Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern, a German dynasty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander,_Hereditary_Prince_of_Hohenzollern
If this list is for one quarter (4Q 2016), it contains about 66% more renunciants than the previous longest list, which was 1,426 in 3Q 2015.
The Andrew Mitchel tax firm’s blog has a write-up on this quarter’s expatriation list:
http://intltax.typepad.com/intltax_blog/2017/02/2016-fourth-quarter-published-expatriates-new-annual-record.html