Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

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Tag Archives: Federal Register

South Korean foreign ministry: 1,991 of our citizens gave up U.S. citizenship or green cards last year

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Today, in honour of Liberation Day, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) published the 2013 edition of its annual Diplomatic Whitebook. Among other facts and figures, it revealed that 1,991 “reverse migrants” from the U.S. restored their South Korean resident registration and provided proof that they had given up U.S. green cards or citizenship in 2012, slightly down from 2,128 the year before.

This number contrasts sharply with the lists provided by the U.S.’ Internal Revenue Service last year, which contained only 932 names of people of any nationality who gave up U.S. citizenship or green cards. Among those 932, only sixty-three had Korean-language given names — itself the highest total since 1997, but still far below the true number hinted at in other sources. (Ex-green-card holders are only supposed to show up in the IRS’ lists if they held their status “long term”, i.e. for at least eight years; as I discuss later in this post, the IRS seems to think that at least half of ex-green-card-holders meet this criteria.)

Fortunately, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act Request by Shadow Raider, we have another number to which we can compare this: the number of people reported by U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services to have filed Form I-407 to abandon their U.S. lawful permanent residence status. The MFA’s count of South Korean reverse migrants from the U.S. has generally been 9–13% of USCIS’ count of ex-green-card-holders of all nationalities, and 2012 was no exception. The agreement between these two sources coming from bureaucracies on opposite sides of the globe speaking two different languages — and their common disagreement with the data published by the IRS — is yet another indication that the IRS data is wildly inaccurate.

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Five more Korean celebrities who gave up U.S. passports or green cards (none showed up in the Federal Register)

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After the jump I’ve translated an old article from Money Today that I came across recently. It was written in 2009, right around the time that MC the Max bassist Yoon Jae-woong renounced his U.S. citizenship, and mentioned a number of other South Korean celebrities — comprising both native-born U.S. citizens as well as naturalised and unnaturalised immigrants — who decided to stop being U.S. Persons.

With the release of the latest Federal Register “published expatriates” list, the demagogues in the U.S. media are coming out in force to spread their typical lies about how we U.S. Persons abroad are all mink-swathed Benedict Arnolds skipping out on our tax bills after enjoying the benefits of U.S. citizenship. So once again I repeat the simple truth which is illustrated by every non-U.S. media story about renunciants: those of us who give up U.S. citizenship have been contributing members of society in other countries for years. We are not fugitives from the U.S. who snuck out on the night of 14 April. Even before the recent U.S. crackdown on non-U.S. bank accounts, celebrities and ordinary people living ordinary lives outside of the U.S. were happy to give up a U.S. passport from which they derived little or no concrete benefit, so that they could step forward to further success in the countries where they actually lived.

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Huge jump in number of “published expatriates” in Federal Register — but the list still isn’t complete

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The Department of the Treasury has finally placed the latest Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who have Chosen to Expatriate on public inspection for printing in tomorrow’s Federal Register, ten days late. Congratulations to Innocente for being the first to post the news at 9 AM right on the dot. There’s about 1,130 names of people who have permanently cut off their legal ties to the U.S. government, making this a record-breaking quarter; more names have appeared in the first half of this year than in all of the previous record high year of 2011.

The number of names in Treasury’s list roughly matches the 1,106 entries the FBI added to NICS in the same quarter. However, this still doesn’t mean their list is complete: the FBI only records people who renounced U.S. citizenship under 8 USC § 1481(a)(5), whereas Treasury is supposed to record renunciants, relinquishers (8 USC § 1481(a)(1)–(4)), and theoretically even some of the nearly twenty thousand people who give up green cards each year (though in fact there’s evidence that they do not include the latter). Projecting from the FBI’s data, the total number of people who gave up U.S. citizenship last quarter in one way or another is probably two thousand; I’d guess during the same period there’s a similar number of people giving up green cards they’ve held for at least eight of the past fifteen years (the alleged standard for inclusion in Treasury’s list), though this is harder to estimate. And while some famous ex-citizens appear in Treasury’s list, others do not.

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Confirmed case of former long-term green card holder not appearing in Federal Register

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As we’ve reported previously, since around 2006 or so there have been dozens of newspaper reports and many more internet comments about people who renounced U.S. citizenship but never showed up in the Federal Register. However, the Federal Register is not supposed to include just ex-citizens, but certain ex-permanent residents as well: those who held their green cards for eight out of the past fifteen years.

Up until now, the only ex-green card holders I’d heard of weren’t within the scope of the “name-and-shame list”, either because they’d given up their green cards before the list existed (like Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou) or didn’t hold them for long enough (e.g. Constitutional Court judge Chen Be-yue). However, in early 2010, Korea.com reported that 2PM member Ok Taec-yeon had given up a long-held U.S. green card so that he could serve in the South Korean army.

Another Korean-language report states that Ok, who was born in Busan, immigrated to Massachusetts with his family at age 12, which would be some time around 2000; it also has a picture of an old yearbook confirming that “Ok Taec-yeon” is his real name and the same spelling he’s been using all his life, so there’s not much possibility he slipped through in the Federal Register list under a different name — no one surnamed “Ok” has ever appeared in the “name-and-shame list”.

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Judicially-denaturalised ex-Americans are subject to exit tax but do not have names published in Federal Register

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Here’s a small extra piece of the puzzle for those of us trying to figure out exactly who gets listed in the expat honour roll Federal Register “name-and-shame” list of ex-citizens. There are indeed some people who have to pay the exit tax but don’t have to have their names published: naturalised citizens who are stripped of their citizenship by U.S. courts, usually for naturalisation fraud or war crimes committed prior to naturalisation.

This post is not particularly useful to most Isaac Brock Society readers contemplating relinquishment or renunciation — unless you’re in need of some comic relief and would like to read about a mildly amusing drafting error in the exit tax statute.

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Q1 2013 Federal Register list of ex-citizens published; numerous names missing

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Looks like I’m losing my edge — AnonAnon wins the prize for being the first to notice the Q1 2013 Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who have Chosen to Expatriate, which has been placed on public inspection for printing in tomorrow’s Federal Register. Grammar and spelling aficionados will note that the list’s title no longer contains the awkwardly-placed relative clause “As Required by Section 6039G”; unfortunately, the misspelling of HIPAA as “HIPPA” has now entered its eighteenth year.

This quarter’s list appears a mere eight days later than required by law, and with about 680 names — a far larger number than most of us would have expected, though well short of the 850 people renouncing under INA § 349(5) whom the FBI entered into their NICS gun control database during the same quarter. And that’s not even mentioning the people who relinquished citizenship under INA § 349(1)–(4), who are not subject to gun control and so don’t show up in NICS but do belong in the Federal Register — or the backlog of thousands of others who renounced last year and also showed up in NICS but never had their names added to Treasury’s list.

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Jack Lew continues Timmy Geithner’s tradition: gross violations of 26 USC § 6039G

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Notwithstanding any other provision of law, not later than 30 days after the close of each calendar quarter, the Secretary shall publish in the Federal Register the name of each individual losing United States citizenship (within the meaning of section 877 (a) or 877A) with respect to whom the Secretary receives information under the preceding sentence during such quarter.

The Federal Register for 30 April 2013 contains no Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen to Expatriate, as Required by Section 6039G. Perhaps Lew got confused by the badly-punctuated title and thought that Section 6039G required these individuals to expatriate, rather than requiring him to publish their names. (In reality, it is other invasive sections of 26 USC — such as Section 1297 and Section 1471 — that require individuals to give up U.S. citizenship if they want to lead normal lives abroad.)

On the bright side, this means Lew also has not yet told any bald-faced lies about the number of people giving up U.S. citizenship since he was officially confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury. The FBI received information from the State Department about 850 people who renounced U.S. citizenship in the first quarter of 2013; Lew is supposed to publish not only their names but also the names of individuals who relinquished U.S. citizenship by any of the other five methods specified in 8 USC § 1481(a) — of whom there should be roughly three or four for every five renunciants — as well as the names of individuals who turned in long-held green cards.

Therefore, if Lew belatedly decides to set the unusual precedent that the Secretary of the Treasury actually follows the nation’s tax laws, the list should have thousands of names, rather than the few dozen it has contained in recent quarters.

Response from Swiss State Secretariat for International Financial Matters, Swiss Parliamentary Vote on FATCA IGA to Take Place Next Summer, Proposed Swiss Federal Law to Apply FATCA

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Further to my post last Sunday here at IBS, SWAT–Switzerland IGA: Still not enough information available in Switzerland, I received a reply email from the Swiss State Secretariat for International Financial Matters (SIF) yesterday. I stand corrected: it seems that I didn’t search hard enough on the Swiss Federal Authorities site (admin.ch) and that not only the agreement text is now available in Swiss national languages, but also a “law of application” has been drafted to enforce the agreement. From what I understand, Parliament will be formally informed of the package to vote on by 15 March 2013, but is not expected to vote on the issue until next summer. It would appear that the Cantons, Communes, Political Parties, etc. are expected to provide feedback by 15 March and this feedback will go to Parliament in some formal fashion, but of course this does not preclude lobbying directly to deputies outside of the formal consultation procedure between now and the vote next summer.
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Sharp uptick in names missing from Federal Register “published expatriates” list after 2006

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Wikipedia’s list of public figures who gave up U.S. citizenship from the 1930s to the present day has reached nearly 100 entries. This list is far from complete — hopefully friends of Isaac Brock from around the world can suggest some additions, as right now it’s heavily weighted towards entries from the Caribbean and from East Asia. However, it is large and diverse enough for us to make some interesting observations.

From 1994 to 2006, I can confirm only a single report that a public figure in Wikipedia’s list gave up U.S. citizenship but did not appear in the Federal Register or the 1995 Joint Committee on Taxation report before it: South Korean actress Han Ye-seul. After 2006, however, the reports of public figures who gave up U.S. citizenship without ever appearing in the Federal Register start expanding rapidly. 2006 was an interesting year in other respects as well: it was the first year in which the number of “published expatriates” ever showed a significant decrease.

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FBI says three thousand renounced US citizenship last quarter, but IRS claims it was just 45

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After a lengthy (and illegal) delay, the latest Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate, as Required By Section 6039G will be printed in the Federal Register for Thursday, 14 February 2013.

It contains forty five names. This brings 2012’s total number of “published expatriates” to 932, or little more than half of the number seen in 2011.

Journalists who may write about this list in the next few days should be warned against misinterpreting it as a complete list of people who turned in their U.S. passports last year. The Federal Bureau of Investigation tells us that 4,385 Americans renounced citizenship in 2012, and another 167 in January 2013 alone — and that number does not even include people relinquishing citizenship or abandoning long-held green cards, both acts which should result in one’s name appearing in the Federal Register. I am aware of more than a dozen public figures who have given up U.S. citizenship in the past year, almost all for the purpose of running in non-U.S. elections, but only four of their names have been published. South Korea recorded 2,158 of their citizens giving up U.S. passports or green cards in 2011, and numerous anecdotal reports from Washington and from Seoul suggest that this “reverse migration” accelerated rather than slowed in 2012.