Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship: Discussion thread (Ask your questions) Part Two
Ask your questions about Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship and Certificates of Loss of Nationality.
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NB: This discussion is a continuation of an older discussion that became too large for our software to handle well. See Renunciation and Relinquishment of United States Citizenship: Discussion thread (Ask your questions) Part One
@Gone Soon
There is only one appointment in London to renounce or was the case back in 2016. I got an appointment to renounce within one month of requesting one. This was back in 2016. It will be interesting to see if the wait time remains the same. The embassy staff are well aware of why people are renouncing. I was not asked a single question and the staff were very professional. I was given a letter to show banks that I had sworn the oath too. and my CLN came within 5 weeks.
I renounced in Canada about 3 weeks ago. The consulate staff were very professional and courteous. There were not any questions asked about why I was renouncing. I was told that it would take about 90 days to receive the CLN in the mail.
@trebor
Congratulations. Enjoy your freedom.
Got my appointment, less than a month away. I had forgotten a form, it was dealt with this morning in an exchange of emails. The nightmare (i.e. IRS considering the UK equivalent of a UGMA account as a trust, not to mention the disability savings and risk that rules could get worse, that I could one day become a covered expat, etc.) should be over by the end of summer. Thanks for your support. Maybe I should plan a party for Labor Day weekend. It is my child’s great fortune that unlike, say, his counterpart in Calgary he was not born an American citizen. It would be an interesting case if IRS Ogden sought proof of that. But then why shouldn’t the IRS make the rest of the world into Tax Citizens [sic] with no rights, only an obligation to pay.
$2,350 is outrageous, but at least I didn’t pay any lawyers or accountants anything. Plus at least £15 for courier fee for the CLN.
I wonder how many accidentals are put to such proofs? What do European bankers know except the principle of jus sanguinis? Or, to get more specific, that if you have a Greek name you are almost certainly a Greek citizen.
Meanwhile, on the same day we got approval from PostFinance for an eBanking account to pay our Swiss bills, PostFinance card is on its way. Our old bank, now on the IRS Bad List, wants to be rid of us. Maybe because there’s nothing in it for them to turn us in, we’ve been filing FBARs and SA106s? I don’t know the dynamics of this. I doubt a CLN would change anything; they just want to go back to their origins: Swiss people who actually live and work in Switzerland and who preferably have no other national connection. Well they could regress to the law before Jan. 1, 1992 which, according to Wikipedia, font of all knowledge, didn’t allow dual nationality. Well, what it actually says is different from that: “According to the Federal Office for Migration, there has been no restriction on multiple citizenship in Switzerland since 1 January 1992”
Gone Soon:
Congratulations on the speedy appointment. 🙂
“Maybe I should plan a party for Labor Day weekend. It is my child’s great fortune that … he was not born an American citizen.”
Indeed. An excellent reason for a party, in itself.
“Our old bank, now on the IRS Bad List, wants to be rid of us. ”
Switzerland signed an IGA Model 2. It’s different from the IGA Model 1 that the UK signed. It doesn’t shield the banks from the threat of 30% withholding. Consequently, banks in Model 2 jurisdictions may be more likely to want to shed USC accounts. I don’t know whether a CLN will make them view the account differently.
“Consequently, banks in Model 2 jurisdictions may be more likely to want to shed USC accounts. I don’t know whether a CLN will make them view the account differently.”
That’s what I fear. A poster from France has said that she is ha ing difficulties banking even with a CLN.
Japan T – yes, I found the same, even though all EU Member States signed Model 1. Unfortunately, the situation got (even more) complicated and absurd when the Common Reporting Standard came into force. Countries which adopt the “Wider Approach” to CRS are effectively carrying out double USC-account due diligence – under CRS rules and also under FATCA/IGA rules. And there’s no obligation on the banks to check whether a US-born customer might have renounced.
On the other hand, in my experience, if a former USC creates a big enough scene and complains to every parliamentary representative within reach, it has a wonderful effect on the offending bank’s manners. They haven’t tried again to pry into my affairs.
Not applicable for your case, as Japan is Model 2. I don’t know what effect a CLN would have.
Well PostFinance seem to be okay with it and I’m pretty sure UBS would be fine too. They were happy enough with me when I gave them my CLN – haven’t heard a thing from them since. Most Swiss banks did throw theirUS customers out when news of impending FATCA hit, only the two mentioned above and Credit Suisse are likely to take on new customers.
A Mexican family friend and neighbour in Switzerland said both he and his wife had PostFinance accounts. He wired in a bit of money (knowing his wealth it could have been $100,000) and they closed his account. Now he uses his wife’s account, keeping the balance at CHF 10,000 or less. (Not relevant to the story or the bank is that his 3 children were all born in the USA. He never had a green card, just (I think) an L-1 visa.)
Lesson learned, by me too. But there’s another lesson: substantial wealth allow somebody to find alternatives, and expensive professional advisors can resolve problems. Of course I would say that: I’m just reading Peter Schweitzer’s cynical portrayal of “Secret Empires”, corruption in the Presidency. True, since after Truman and incredible, insufferable greed more lately, since G.W. Bushes. He says. Maybe over the top, his defending payday loans and for-profit colleges.
My embassy appointment is a few weeks away and I have a question: can my US credit union account and driver license survive renunciation? I’ve made my 2018 contribution to my Roth IRA and that will be my last: from now on I can have an ISA. Our Canadian and UK banks never asked me my nationality so nothing changes there but an end to the embarrassment of filing FBARs (without telling them) for company accounts that I sign for but don’t belong to me.
@GoneSoon
It depends on the US credit union. One of mine cancelled my account but the other didn’t after I told them I was no longer a citizen and furnished them with W8Ben.
My US driver’s license survived til it expired but I saw no reason to renew it. I guess if you have a US address you could renew it online but then you might be in danger of being called for jury duty!
Why keep the US license anyway? Just exchange it for one from the country you’re living in now.
Thanks @Heidi
Trouble is Florida has passive voter registration based on driver licence. Unless you tell them you are a felon (as guy in front of me in the queue did). Think my licence has 5 or 6 years t run, address is friend’s house. Wonder if I need to tell CU anything or file W8-BEN at all? When my grandmother died last year the same CU blocked her account: I assume SSA put her on the SS Death List and that’s no longer public (perhaps because of Tom Alciere’s antics). As English (but not presumably American) law allows we used balance of her accounts for funeral expenses and plan to abandon the small amount in her CU account. We didn’t file probate anywhere, no need. Just a U.K. IHT return.
I keep watching all threads, here & in AU— I’m so glad I elected to leave. I hope I can convince my kids.
Wow, it seems to be getting worse, not better. 🙁
@GoneSoon
Upside,
If you don’t tell them, they will issue you and the IRS a 1099 each year, the credit union will not issue a 1042-s to the HMRC, so HMRC will not know of the existance of the account and how much interest you have earned.
There will be no risk of closure.
Downside,
The IRS after receiving a 1099 may look for a 1040 and write you a letter.
Any money in the US is at risk.
@GoneSoon PS
Just remembered that I did look online into renewing my US licence using my son’s address. I believe I had to check ‘I am a US citizen’. The alternative was that I had to appear at the DMV in person. I decided against both, with the added risk of subsequently being called for jury duty! Each State has different rules re renewal, so check online if you are considering it.
Why bother renewing a US Driver’s License? IF you go back for a visit and want to drive, just get an international Driver’s License.
@JapanT
Or use your European one which I do now if/when I rent a car.
I guess in the absence of an American passport, a US driver’s licence would serve for ID in the case needed, (if dealing with banks etc.)
Ah, well then, just having an address in the US should work. Foreign students get DLs in the States all the time.
@JapanT
I believe if you are not a citizen you have to show right to live/study in the US, ie a visa to take the drivers test. I seem to remember I had to back in 1976!
Lots of illegal immigrants are being issued DLs, those that would depend on the state though.
@JapanT
I wondered about those guys, I guess times have changed in many ways. I begin to sound like my grandma did!
I have been going through old postings on this thread finding great help and reassurance, expecially in what to expect at the Embassy in a few weeks’ tine and how to deal with 1040 & 1040NR (I would have done it all wrong. I plan to use TurboTax as before but tell the software I died on the day before expatriation, which will then correctly pro-rate such things as depreciation (I have a rental flat, no tenant just now but still “depreciating”). I am stuck with FBAR and 8938 because of my employer’s escrow (!) account. It wasn’t mainly that unfairness and intrusiveness but the way IRS Ogden is treating my son’s disability trust (“vulnerable person trust” = foreign special needs trust as far as Ogden is concerned) and his JISA, a gift from his late grandmother. Even though if asked McCarthy-wise “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the United States of America” he could answer truthfully, “no”. Assuming he even knew what the USA is. Which is not because he’s not smart (he’s bilingual, numeric, vocal, gregarious), but he’s also autistic and has trouble paying attention.
I have the feeling Ogden doesn’t not want to believe my child is not an American citizen. But once I have my CLN that will be their problem, not mine. My small Roth IRA might be held hostage, but that’s all I have there. I am not mentioning my child at my renunciation hearing: it isn’t relevant. The IRS keeps saying that the “owner” of the trust — assuming s/he is a U.S. Person — has a 3520-A obligation and every other word in their letters are “$10,000 or 35%”. A hundred hours of research has not made clear what an “owner” is, and AFAIK can tell reading 26 CFR 1.674(a)-1 and underlying law, the child is the only “owner” and there is no “non-adverse party” risk for a disability trust where he is the only possible beneficiary during his lifetime. (I am not going to pay a fancy lawyer for an opinion on this when it’s obvious.)
When done drafting the 1040 I will make pen-and-ink corrections to show I’m not dead and fill in a 1040NR the way this thread suggests (and not sign the 1040 but mark it as an attachment and draft a summary sheet. I’ll still have to attach Schedules (incuding a Sch. C & SET for $5040 earnings which will get me another 4 quarters of coverage, and all the other annoying forms.
In going through past messages it occurred to me that I had better answers on a few points from personal experience constantly renewed. Here goes:
Heidi says
March 22, 2018 at 4:14 am
PS
“Perhaps US credit card companies make an exception for a Canadian address?
I live in Europe and was not permitted to keep a US dollar Credit card unless I had a US address. Many expats use a US relative’s address to keep a US credit card.”
My Dad has (but no longer uses, read on) a USAA and a SDFCU credit card that he opened with a UK address and used for years. He now uses a Chase VISA card because the benefits are much better, especially when he rents a car (they provide *primary* CDW for free. He uses my brother’s USA address for that and his credit file shows “60 years” of credit history because he got an Amex card when he was 16. Somehow. That card has my brother’s address, and I have a family-member card on the same account that he got for when I travel to the USA, which is not much. I never lived in the USA. He also has a UK Amex card (Costco: they use different cards in US, UK, Canada, Australia; Amex here). His credit file (and all those Internet ancestry and people-locater sites connect his voting and driver licence address (a friend’s in Florida) and my late grandmother’s address in NYS and my sister’s address from a decade ago in NYS. (If they can do it, so can the IRS, which scares me and makes me glad to be getting out.) “The Points Guy” Web site is very good; that’s the place to go with questions on credit cards.
UnforgivenToo says
April 12, 2018 at 10:11 am
“With a sprinkling of: my citizenship papers had to be false, because the Germans would never give me citizenship without me renouncing my US citizenship first without the US government’s permission.”
As everybody knows, that is idiocy. Never mind Art. 116 of the Basic Law, look at the other law — Allied Kommandatura Law No. 1 written by the Occupation Forces: http://www.uniset.ca/nold/all_kom.pdf It is particularly easy for any Russian Jew or any Holocaust survivor or any child or grandchild of a WW II political refugee or DP from Germany, Poland or Austria to acquire or re-acquire ancestral citizenship whatever the normal rules on multiple nationality. (I was talking with a Polish-English woman last week: she’d renounced her Polish citizenship in Communist days and was offered it back. Brexit or no, she doesn’t want to pay: they nade her pay to renounce in order to let her visit her family back in the day and it bothers her still. (I feel her pain.))
Helen says
October 19, 2017 at 3:35 am
“I would like to return to the US to live for long term so he can attend an appropriate middle school and high school.”
Like Helen I am a single mum. The UK has provided for my child in ways that certainly could not be exceeded in the USA. But it matters where you live. In Central London — a high rent district — the borough councils, however much they skimp on safety (Grenfell), fulfil the law’s demand that they provide my child with 20 hours of a (bilingual; he goes to a French primary school my family pays for) teaching assistant @ £16 am hour. I did have to badger them for months and months to get his care plan written and approved: it involved the NHS and the Council, the Great Ormond Street Hospital, child psychologists, vocational therapists, speech therapists, Social Services and more. It’s why I can only work part-time myself. In the course of his therapy and appraisals I saw so many cases far worse than his — I am confident he will grow up fine thanks to the care he is getting, and the reason we live in the UK and not Switzerland is that he wouildn’t get this kind of care and support in Switzerland. At least fighting for your rights works in the UK, as it often does in the USA. I think it could have the opposite result in Switzerland.
Fred (B) says
May 24, 2018 at 3:35 am
“I would just get a French address and say I reside in France. I could myself be subject to this one day because I am also French, but live in Belgium.”
The IRS and the State Department know a bit about foreign status, civil registration, and documentation: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country.html One can be dual-resident although how that affects treaty rights “depends”. There are 2 or 3 categories of cases relating to exemption of “covered expatriate” status and tax treaty benefits that are open to question (the Court of Justice of the European Union, only occasionally willing to take on nationality, should really rule on EU/EEA/Swiss freedom of movement rights as it relates to this): Irish citizens who are not “aliens” in the United Kingdom (and is a non-alien a quasi-citizen? An Irish citizen could legally be Prime Minister (OK, Callaghan was dual). Then there are the enclaves and exclaves of Europe: Think Büsingen am Hochrhein, Campione d’Italia abd Baarle-Nassau (Wikipedia has a list) that are sovereign in one country but in some ways part of the other. Or think of those houses which like the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, Derby Line VT/Stansted QC, straddle the border and Grandma has to sleep on the Canadian side to get her OAS. (The USG likes to buy such houses and tear them down, I am told: there can’t be many left. But we drove on Rte 247 in Beebe Plain QC and noticed that a number of American houses had part of their lawns and their driveway in Canada. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Stanstead,+QC,+Canada/@44.9948229,-72.1373471,14z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4cb668cd34b4c39d:0x5040cadae4d3930!8m2!3d45.0126146!4d-72.0957682 )
Northern Ireland is a special case: the Good Friday Agreement and the Ireland Act say so. And it is clear that to avoid re-starting the Troubles, further concessions will have to be made for the rights of EU citizens both there and in the rest of the UK. The promise has been made that any EU/EEA/Swiss citizen legally resident in the UK at Brexit (if indeed Brexit happens) can stay and will be allowed to stay long enough to acquire the right of residence “at modest cost”, neaning not the many thousands of pounds it costs for a U.S. or other third-country national.
It is much harder to trace someone (and someone’s assets) online in the UK than in the USA. If you know what you are looking for, the Land Registry Web site will tell you who owns property, unless there is a “trust of land” (formerly a “trust for sale”) in which case you won’t, and it’s not a 3520 Trust in our opinion because it is simply a nominee title, as if (in the USA) you titled property in a check-the-box pass-through LLC. (You can’t record property in more than four joint names in the UK, so for this and other reasons this kind of titling is very common. Also, it avoids having to justify exemption from Stamp Duty Land Tax (of up to 18% marginal rate) when there is a change in family or co-investor circumstances.)
Helen does not have to worry about it, but if it were the son who was the EU citizen and she was not, then the Chen/Zhu case would give her rights https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62002CJ0200 There is also the Surinder Singh solution which sometimes resolves hard spousal cases (spend 6 months working in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU). Or, like my aunt refused a British work visa: get an Irish one, live in Ireland 5 years, get a passport, move to England and live happily ever after. (I add this paragraph for the benefit of lurkers.)
I am grateful for the advice I’ve found on this site and wanted to give back. The value of those who take the trouble to answer questions (and I see some of the same names on englishforum.ch ) is beyond calculation. And apologies for the digressions. I get into stuff that I think interesting but may possibly bore others.
@GoneSoon
I expect USAA and SDFCU have US personnel stationed all over the world and that is why they permit a non US address credit card. When I spoke to my credit card companies before leaving the US and retiring back home to Europe, I asked them “if I move abroad, can I keep my CC?” They all replied that I had to have a US address, so I use my son’s. I found that Capital One give the best $ exchange rate when using the card outside the USA but paying from a US bank account, it is only 1% over the interbank rate (the rate banks lend to each other) with no foreign exchange fee and no yearly charge.
Another piece of advice is when offered by a merchant, always choose to be charged in the countries’ own currency where you make the transaction, NEVER in dollars. You have a contract with the credit card company to control the rate, you have no contract with the merchant who can set the exchange rate much higher and always do. In this way the merchant recoups their cost using the credit card company from you! I have often seen unsuspecting US tourists offered this choice at airports and they invariably pick to be charged in dollars, to their cost.
@Heidi
“with no foreign exchange fee and no yearly charge.”
I think USAA used to impose 1% charge but when they switched from MC to VISA they stopped. It’s explained on their forum. SDFCU never charged. USAA’s interest rate is 11%, SDFCU’s is (for us anyway) 6% (maybe with 0.99% added, I can’t remember) but we always paid off the bill.
The point of Chase is that they also have no forex load but their benefits tend to be better. The top of the line Chase Sapphire Reserve came out with 100,000 free points for signup (Worth $2,000 or something ridiculous like that) it’s now 50,000.) We get free use of Priority Pass lounges at airports, a ridiculous number of points for travel, and $300 rebate on the outrageous $450 annual charge against — travel, including Uber, hotels, etc. The Points Guy recommends the free Chase cards for most people. It’s my stockbroker brother who got us into this elite stuff. And now he’s got Swiss passports for himself and kids he’s thinking of retiring to Europe. Renunciation probably not. People in the middle — not poor and not seriously rich but still “covered expats” — have an expatriation tax dilemma. And he was born in the USA before our parents figured out comparative nationality law and tax and saw to it that the rest of us were born in the UK.