Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

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The Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate for Q3 2017 has just been placed on public inspection for publication in Thursday’s Federal Register, three days later than required by law. By my count, this list contains the names of 1,376 people who renounced or otherwise relinquished US citizenship under any paragraph of 8 USC § 1481(a), as compared to 1,004 people who renounced US citizenship (under 1481(a)(5) only) added to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) in July, August, and September.

Following Q3 & Q4 2016, this is only the second time since 2011 that we’ve had two quarters in a row of Federal Register numbers being significantly higher than NICS numbers, the way they should be every quarter. Even then, the Federal Register list is far from complete: contrary to some media reports, it’s basically impossible that the list includes people who give up their green cards, and no one has ever identified a single green card abandoner in the list, despite the message at the top claiming that “long-term residents, as defined in section 877(e)(2), are treated as if they were citizens of the United States who lost citizenship”.

The people named in this list probably completed the State Department’s painfully slow and expensive formalities to apply for a Certificate of Loss of Nationality around mid-year at the latest, but that’s just a guess. I can confirm that one name in this quarter’s list belongs to a man known to have relinquished in April 2016 or earlier. For the US government, that’s positively speedy — last quarter’s list had relinquishers from 2013 and 2014.

As always, after the jump you can find discussion of recent media reports about relinquishers, as well as a table of past NICS and Federal Register statistics.

Table of contents

  1. Recent media reports about relinquishers
  2. Comparison with NICS
  3. Conclusion

Recent media reports about relinquishers

There have been a few recent media reports about public figures who have given up US citizenship, but none of their relinquishments actually seem to have occurred last quarter. Tao Yuequn, founder of contact lens manufacture OrthoK, who restored his Chinese citizenship at the latest by April 2016, is in this quarter’s list. I don’t know when others in the list made their final visits to US consulates to apply for Certificates of Loss of Nationality, because I’m not having much luck matching any of their names to media reports. Last quarter’s list had one name of a man who applied for his CLN as recently as March 2017 or later, so my best guess is that this quarter they might be starting to list the names of Washington-approved relinquishers from around mid-year.

The daughter of South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Kang Kyung-hwa is in the process of applying to get her South Korean citizenship back, but hasn’t yet requested a CLN; according to a report from last month (in Korean), she’s still waiting for a police certificate from the US before the South Korean side formally approves her restoration of citizenship. Once her citizenship is restored, she will have twelve months to give the South Korean government a CLN, or at least proof that she’s applied for one — see our previous post for an explanation of the procedure and a translation of the relevant South Korean regulations.

Jazz drummer Alvin Queen, who showed up in the Q3 2016 list, doesn’t seem to have spoken up last year about his decision to relinquish US citizenship after holding dual citizenship with Switzerland for three decades, but he was in the news last week when the Department of Homeland Security decided to deny him entry to the US over a half-century-old drug arrest which resulted in no charges. Mr. Queen states that he gave up citizenship “to make life simpler at tax time”. Mr. Queen’s manager Jean-Pierre Leduc apparently thought it would be a bright idea to call Senator Chuck Schumer to try resolving the situation, since Mr. Queen was born in Schumer’s state. That must have been a rather awkward phone call: Schumer sponsored the Ex-PATRIOT Act, which would have punished people who gave up citizenship to make life simpler at tax time by banishing them permanently.

Finally, Hermitage Capital founder Bill Browder, who relinquished in 1997 and showed up in the Q3 1998 list alongside Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus and South Korean apple farmer Choi Yongtak, also briefly had his ESTA travel authorisation revoked due to an Interpol diffusion notice filed by Russia. He tweeted later to state that he got it restored; news reports say that someone at DHS manually reviewed the situation in response to the media coverage, suggesting that the original revocation was due to some automated process. Mr. Browder was born in Illinois, but apparently he was savvy enough to know that calling FATCA-natic Dick Durbin wasn’t the best way to get his problem solved.

Name Occupation Other
citizenship		 Giving up US citizenship Appeared in
Federal
Register?		 Source
Reason Date
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 US 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
YANG Chen-ning Physicist China Restore Chinese citizenship April 2015 Q3 2015 Xinhua (China)
Andrew YAO Chi-chih Computer scientist China Restore Chinese citizenship Unclear Q3 2015 Xinhua (China)
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)
Pedro Pablo KUCZYNSKI Politician Peru Run for president November 2015 Q1 2017 El Comercio (Peru)
Rachel HELLER Writer Netherlands FATCA & other US tax reporting requirements even when no US tax is owed November 2015 Q4 2016 Blog (will be in TV news programme at a later date)
Susan WOOD Unknown Canada FATCA & other compliance issues November 2015 Q3 2016 Vancouver Sun
KANG Dong-suk Violinist South Korea Restore South Korean citizenship 2015 (month not specified) No News1 (South Korea)
Pavel BURE Ice hockey player Russia “US passport was no longer needed” Early 2016 (month not specified) Q4 2016 Sputnik News; Pravda Report
Alvin QUEEN Jazz drummer Switzerland “To make life simpler at tax time” 2016 (month not specified) Q3 2016 Billboard (US)
Neil (Teodoro) LLAMANZARES Businessman Philippines Public opinion (his wife ran for President, but lost after he renounced) April 2016 Q3 2016 Rappler (Philippines)
TAO Yuequn Businessman China Unknown April 2016 or earlier Q3 2017 Sina Finance
LEE Chih-kung Physicist Taiwan Appointed Minister of Economic Affairs by President-elect Tsai Ing-wen May 2016 Q3 2016 Apple Daily (Taiwan)
Ned (Nader) MANNOUN Politician Australia Run for Australian parliament May 2016 or earlier Q4 2016 Liverpool Champion (Australia)
Yehuda GLICK Politician Israel Take office as Member of Knesset May 2016 Q2 2017 Arutz Sheva (Israel)
Karen ALPERT Academic Australia FATCA & other compliance issues June 2016 Q4 2016 Sydney Morning Herald
Frank ALPERT Academic Australia FATCA & other compliance issues June 2016 Q1 2017 Sydney Morning Herald
Judy CHAN Ka-pui Politician Hong Kong Run for Hong Kong Legislative Council July 2016 Q3 2016 Apple Daily (Hong Kong)
Boris JOHNSON Politician United Kingdom Taxes or politics or whatever July 2016 or earlier Q4 2016 Daily Mail
Kimi ONODA Politician Japan Dual-at-birth, did Japanese-law “choice of nationality”, didn’t know US still considered her a citizen October 2016? No Viewpoint (Japan)
Charles Adu BOAHEN Politician Ghana Become Deputy Minister of Finance Early 2017 No Ghana Guardian
Chris HART Musician Japan Naturalise in Japan March 2017 or later Q2 2017 Sports Hochi (Japan)

Back to table of contents

Comparison with NICS

The below table lists the yearly additions to NICS from 2006 to 2010, and monthly additions for 2011 up through the present, compared with the quarterly lists in the Federal Register.

The FBI has the bad habit of uploading the new NICS report each month at the same URL as the old one; the only way to keep a verifiable collection of old reports is to save old ones in some archiving service each month, and unfortunately we didn’t remember to do this for all months, though we’ve had a good track record over the past year. If the month is set in upright type, the link goes to an actual Internet Archive copy of the FBI NICS report for that month. If the month is in bold type (for December), the link goes to the NICS annual operations report for the appropriate year. Finally, for months in italics, the link goes to a Brock post or comment.

First quarter Second quarter Third quarter Fourth quarter
FR
citation		 Addi-
tions		 FR
citation		 Addi-
tions		 FR
citation		 Addi-
tions		 FR
citation		 Addi-
tions		 Year-end
total
71 FR 25648 100 71 FR 50993 31 71 FR 63857 41 72 FR 5103 106
Annual totals for 2006 Fed. Reg. 278 NICS 48 12,651
72 FR 26687 107 72 FR 44228 114 72 FR 63237 105 73 FR 7631 144
Annual totals for 2007 Fed. Reg. 470 NICS 317 12,968
73 FR 26190 123 73 FR 43285 23 73 FR 65036 22 74 FR 6219 63
Annual totals for 2008 Fed. Reg. 231 NICS 655 13,623
74 FR 20105 67 74 FR 35199 15 74 FR 60039 158 75 FR 9028 503
Annual totals for 2009 Fed. Reg. 743 NICS 714 14,337
75 FR 28853 179 75 FR 69160 560 75 FR 69158 397 76 FR 7907 398
Annual totals for 2010 Fed. Reg. 1,534 NICS 1,009 15,346
First quarter Second quarter Third quarter Fourth quarter
Month,
year		 Addi-
tions		 Month-end
total		 Month,
year		 Addi-
tions		 Month-end
total		 Month,
year		 Addi-
tions		 Month-end
total		 Month,
year		 Addi-
tions		 Month-end
total
Apr 2011 41 15,387 Jul 2011 89 15,705 Oct 2011 118 15,930
May 2011 98 15,445 Aug 2011 54 15,759 Nov 2011 40 15,970
Jun 2011 131 15,616 Sep 2011 53 15,812 Dec 2011 34 16,004
Q2 total 270 Q3 total 196 Q4 total 192
76 FR 27175 499 76 FR 46898 519 76 FR 66361 403 77 FR 5308 360
Annual totals for 2011 Fed. Reg. 1,781 NICS 656 16,004
Jan 2012 265 16,269 Apr 2012 204 16,662 Jul 2012 22 17,188 Oct 2012 3,106 20,577
Feb 2012 98 16,367 May 2012 Missing Aug 2012 149 17,337 Nov 2012 97 20,654
Mar 2012 89 16,458 Jun 2012 504 17,166 Sep 2012 114 17,451 Dec 2012 0 20,654
Q1 total 452 Q2 total 708 Q3 total 285 Q4 total 3,203
77 FR 25538 460 77 FR 44310 189 77 FR 66084 238 78 FR 10692 45
Annual totals for 2012 Fed. Reg. 932 NICS *4,648 W/o backlog:
~1,700
Jan 2013 176 20,830 Apr 2013 319 21,823 Jul 2013 298 22,908 Oct 2013 302 23,557
Feb 2013 478 21,308 May 2013 374 22,197 Aug 2013 278 23,186 Nov 2013 118 23,675
Mar 2013 196 21,504 Jun 2013 413 22,610 Sep 2013 69 23,255 Dec 2013 132 23,807
Q1 total 850 Q2 total 1,106 Q3 total 645 Q4 total 552
78 FR 26867 679 78 FR 48773 1,130 78 FR 68151 560 79 FR 7504 631
Annual totals for 2013 Fed. Reg. 3,000 NICS 3,153 23,807
Jan 2014 320 24,127 Apr 2014 382 24,602 Jul 2014 577 26,000 Oct 2014 426 26,916
Feb 2014 95 24,222 May 2014 205 24,807 Aug 2014 180 26,180 Nov 2014 187 27,103
Mar 2014 -2 24,220 Jun 2014 616 25,423 Sep 2014 300 26,480 Dec 2014 137 27,240
Q1 total 413 Q2 total 1,203 Q3 total 1,057 Q4 total 750
79 FR 25176 1,001 79 FR 46306 576 79 FR 64031 776 80 FR 7685 1,062
Annual totals for 2014 Fed. Reg. 3,415 NICS 3,423 27,240
Jan 2015 271 27,511 Apr 2015 767 29,413 Jul 2015 856 30,973 Oct 2015 194 31,869
Feb 2015 105 27,616 May 2015 543 29,956 Aug 2015 552 31,525 Nov 2015 318 32,187
Mar 2015 1,030 28,646 Jun 2015 161 30,117 Sep 2015 150 31,675 Dec 2015 479 32,666
Q1 total 1,406 Q2 total 1,471 Q3 total 1,568 Q4 total 989
80 FR 26618 1,335 80 FR 45709 460 80 FR 65851 1,426 81 FR 6598 1,058
Annual totals for 2015 Fed. Reg. 4,279 NICS (-10) 5,416 32,666
Jan 2016 253 32,919 Apr 2016 860 34,807 Jul 2016 350 36,378 Oct 2016 440 37,346
Feb 2016 539 33,458 May 2016 765 35,572 Aug 2016 252 36,630 Nov 2016 227 37,573
Mar 2016 489 33,947 Jun 2016 456 36,028 Sep 2016 276 36,906 Dec 2016 430 38,003
Q1 total 1,281 Q2 total 2,081 Q3 total 878 Q4 total 1,097
81 FR 27198 1,158 81 FR 50058 509 81 FR 79098 1,379 82 FR 10185 2,365
Annual totals for 2016 Fed. Reg. 5,411 NICS (-16) 5,321 38,003
Jan 2017 377 38,380 Apr 2017 460 39,947 Jul 2017 329 41,001 Oct 2017 284 41,960
Feb 2017 344 38,724 May 2017 381 40,328 Aug 2017 326 41,327 Nov 2017    
Mar 2017 763 39,487 Jun 2017 344 40,672 Sep 2017 349 41,676 Dec 2017    
Q1 total 1,484 Q2 total 1,185 Q3 total 1,004 Q4 total  
82 FR 21877 1,313   82 FR 36188 1,759 82 FR 50xxx 1,376    
Totals so far for 2017 Fed. Reg. 4,448 NICS 3,957 41,960

Conclusion

Tomorrow we may get some good news about the US’ treatment of its diaspora, or we may not. Even if we do, there’s still a long, hard road ahead for US persons in other countries trying to live normal lives like their neighbours. Territorial Taxation for Individuals faces opposition from Democrats, and it’s unclear how valiantly House Republicans will defend it if their Homeland base, fed on a diet of mendacious coverage like this, objects to “expats getting huge tax breaks” while they suffer attempted repeal of the state and local tax deduction or the mortgage interest deduction. Also, any proposal offering even a hint of sanity for the diaspora, whether that proposal come from Republicans Overseas, American Citizens Abroad, or Democrats Abroad, will likely face bipartisan opposition from diaspora-hating Senate Finance Committee members such as Chuck Grassley, Bob Casey, and Bill Nelson.

Furthermore, as USCitizenAbroad points out in a comment, FBAR repeal does not appear to be under consideration. FATCA IGAs and all the bank machinery to enforce them will remain in place until someone explicitly burns them all to the ground. No one knows what will happen to things like the Section 2801 inheritance tax on US heirs of non-compliant expatriates (which House Republicans explicitly chose to retain during their unanimous vote two years to repeal the estate tax, and which unlike the estate tax does not have any $5.5 million exemption). The Reed Amendment lurks in the background, unenforced but also unrepealed.

It’s been eight years since the 2009 “Offshore” Voluntary Disclosure Program started the painful and intimidating audits which ultimately led to five-figure fines against minnows who had missed two figures per year of US taxes, and the FATCA hammer slamming every bank in sight in alleged pursuit of tax evaders. Some people have exhausted their reserves of energy, and don’t have the wherewithal to hang on for another year or however long this all takes. Some people have lost all faith in the US government, and don’t trust it not to yank the rug back out from under them once they’ve gotten comfortable. Non-Americans will continue to be wary of doing business with Americans abroad, after seeing how easily the US government used those Americans as Trojan horses to breach other countries’ sovereignty and invade their privacy.

A solution would be welcome, but the US has already done irreversible damage to its diaspora, shattering good will and taxpayer morale. The names in this list are a reminder of that.

93 thoughts on “1,376 published expatriates in Q3 2017 Federal Register list of people giving up US citizenship”

  1. Thanks Karen. Not a ban, then – just that he would get taxed as US resident. That makes sense, in the US worldview. They seem to be paranoid about US citizens renouncing in order to sneak back and live tax-free in the US.

  2. @plaxy
    I met him at a wedding and I believe he said he can only officially work there for 29 days/year He needs this arrangement to stay involved in the movie business.

  4. @karen
    I guess he had to condense his work into those 28 days, but is under the same rules as us now. I also heard the sob’s audited him on the 10th year!

  6. @plaxy
    Yes, I was on same table as him, he was not particularly funny but very smart and quick witted.
    Close friends of mine were at med school with Graham Chapman, so we would get tickets to all the Monty python live recordings. Ah those swinging 60’s……

  9. @getout

    If I were you, I’d call the consulate and ask what the hold up is. It might be something innocuous such as the responsible clerk being out with the flu.

    I just relinquished in Vienna in August and they told me the CLN would take about 5 weeks, but it only took 3! Austria is the same as Germany in that they don’t issue citizenship without the CLN. Having also been “stateless” from 9 August to 27 October, I can sympathise with your wife’s situation. I experienced a delay on the Austrian side when trying to get a “Staatsbürgerschaftnachweis” for a passport application because the town clerk was on holiday for two weeks and no one else felt competent enough to print one out for me.

    Best wishes to you and your wife. Hope it works out soon!

  11. @George (GB)
    Although I remain hopeful that a territorial based tax system will be put into place for individuals, elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) would be a big step forward for Americans abroad who file using a foreign tax credit rather than an income exclusion. This would mean that many of these individuals could complete a US tax filing themselves instead of relying on a CPA.

  13. @Moderators, It is now time to take the gloves off and call Presidenet Trump and the promises made by the GOP to be exactly what they were L-I-E-S.

    Trump owns FATCA today.

    Trump owns every single renunciation, today.

    Ditto on the GOP.

    We did not get a scrap, not a single stinking scrap.

    We were told by Trump and the GOP to eat cake.

  14. @ Stephen Kish
    Skimmed it but so far I’ve come up with a “nothin’ burger” for overseas US-persons. I can’t find anything that looks like TTFI. 🙁 Have you or anyone else found anything postive? RO’s FB has not posted anything yet and I think they would have if the news was good.

  15. Reading the comments on the raw story and I am upset at how the compliance industry and Homelanders are painting a negative picture of American expats overseas. What benefits do we get living overseas from USA besides compliance nightmares and paying the compliance industry for forms only and some of us with no tax to pay ? What wealth we have made from USA? Most if of us made money overseas or making ends meet to survive, This is purely BS.

  16. @getout
    My son renounced in late September in Frankfurt.
    His paperwork and canceled passport came last week in the self-addressed envelope (we had to pay for), BUT unfortunately there was someone else’s CLN in the package. That person also renounced late September (different day).
    Still waiting for the fuckup to be cleared away.
    Can’t expect good service for that extremely cheap price they’re asking now days, can you?

  17. @UnforgivenToo and @getout

    Frankfurt is the hub for all of the German-speaking consulates, I believe, and encompasses social security and IRS, too. Maybe it’s so chaotic due to its size? Vienna seems like just a tiny outpost operation and has referred me to Frankfurt in the past, for example, when trying to figure out where to get a certificate of health insurance coverage.

  18. +284 renunciants in NICS during October. NICS actually running kinda slow this year.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20171103183818/https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-indices.pdf

    Decent article by Joe Palazzolo at WSJ: “Americans on Pace for Record Year in Renouncing Citizenship “. No false claim of the list containing green card holders, and he found an actual normal renunciant to interview (a history professor in Germany)
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-on-pace-for-record-year-in-renouncing-citizenship-1509661341

    Too bad there’s also this scientifically-inaccurate and unhelpful comparison:

    Compared with the roughly 320 million people who live in the U.S., the expatriations amount to a water molecule in the bucket

    For the record, 18 cc of water contains about six hundred sextillion molecules. A 5.4 litre bucket would have 180 septillion.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit)

    National Post and Lebanon Daily Star are just running the Bloomberg article, with the same stupid joke about John Quitter’s name. National Post added another unrelated blurb about survey of things Homelanders worry about and tries to imply that stuff is the reason
    http://nationalpost.com/news/world/a-record-number-of-americans-are-renouncing-their-citizenship
    https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2017/Nov-03/424965-americans-renouncing-citizenship-at-record-pace.ashx

    “Simon Black” writes about the list and is unimpressed by even the domestic aspects of the tax reform bill. Zero Hedge seems to have stopped reposting his articles.
    https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/thousands-of-americans-renounced-their-citizenship-again-22579/
    http://investmentwatchblog.com/thousands-of-americans-renounced-their-citizenship-again/

  19. Zerohedge would have done better sticking to reposting International Man articles, instead “Tyler Durden” wrote a typical blinkered Homelander article
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-01/record-number-americans-expected-renounce-citizenship-2017

    So even if you spend all of your adult, wage-earning years on a remote tropical island with a 0% tax rate, if you were born in the United States, you still owe Uncle Sam your “fair share.” So, when all those sunbathing tax evaders had their Swiss bank accounts exposed in 2010 they started to renounce their citizenship in record numbers.

    China Times (Taiwanese paper) running translation of WSJ article but they cut the interview with an actual renunciant
    http://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20171104000063-260202

    They translated the “molecules” bit as “one hair on nine cows”
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9D%E7%89%9B%E4%B8%80%E6%AF%9B

  20. Another article re the latest ‘name and shame’ numbers, https://www.angloinfo.com/blogs/global/us-tax/expatriation-update-following-boris-johnson-john-quitter-quits-the-usa/ but I’m getting soooooo tired of the negative associations. The title is catchy, but unfortunate. We know that the author knows that those on the list have more than sufficient good cause to officially sever ties to the US (as has been said here at IBS, and I paraphrase USCitizenAbroad we didn’t leave the US, the US left us…..).

  21. Playing cutesy with something that causes so much angst and pain does not become her. I’ll not be giving that particular article a second hit.

  23. From a look at their website, it looks like they’re trying to position DA and the Democratic Party as champions of RBT. The “FATCA Action Task Force” is no longer mentioned – instead there’s a “2017 Taxation Task Force”. If no relief for expats in the final GOP bill, the Dems will perhaps seek to use it against them in the coming election campaign.

  24. Just landed on the list. I must say that the US consulate in Marseille was extremely efficient and polite when I went in to renounce about a year and a half ago.

    I can’t say enough about the US consulate in Bern Switzerland. I went here for my visa. They were some of the most polite and efficient US government workers I have ever come across. I’m half tempted to give them 5 stars on Trip Advisor. I went to the Bern consulate at the recommendation of my lawyers and they were spot on. Bern itself is quite boring but the swiss people themselves were incredibly polite. It felt like a wonderland out of some fairy tale.

    Overall I must admit that my experience with the US government was both cheery and efficient.

  25. @UnforgivenToo
    Mixing up two people’s CLN’s is pretty ridiculous and you just wonder whether it’s malicious on their part.
    What irks me, obviously, is that your son’s case has been closed already, even though he expatriated after my wife. Not to be jealous or anything, but we do have some travel plans for next year and the German side of things is going to take a few months after getting the CLN.
    An email to the consulate inquiring about an updated timeline obviously went unanswered…

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