929 thoughts on “Consulate Report Directory (Brockers describe their Consulate Meetings) Part 1 of 2”

1. Thank you @SophieScholl2012 for collecting and sharing that information. Particularly interested in; “They did say that they have hundreds of applications being processed, where before there were only a handful a month“

   People who are currently able, are extracting themselves from this untenable situation, and voting with their feet.

2. *Hi,
   I am just beginning the process of renouncing my US citizenship. I have the option to use the Marseille consulat or the embassy in Brussels Belgium. I am a dual national but have not lived in the US since I was 18. I am now 62 and retired. Have always worked and paid taxes only in Europe. Have never filed a US tax return, have never voted in US elections. Have spent hours reading material on various websites and am somewhat overwhelmed. My first contact was with the Marseille consulat and not very encouraging. Has anyone been in a similar situation and have any specific concrete advice regarding the renunciation process and the subsequent tax issues?
   Many thanks
   Dunja

3. *When did you become a dual national?  If you have not applied for US passport, voted in elections, or anything else that would indicate a desire to retain US citizenship, you should be able to inform the US that you relinquished your US citizenship many years ago.

4. *thanks for your quick reply. I became a dual national in 1999. Obtained/renewd last US Passport in 2003 which expires next year. Are you suggeting that instead of renunciation I should consider relinquishment? Wouldn’t it be questioned that I renexed my passport after optaining citizenship in another country?
   Many thanks
   Dunja

5. @dunja, when you got your passport in 2003, that’s what makes it difficult to claim that you had the intention of relinquishing your citizenship in 1999.  Renunciation is probably the best route for you.  You can renounce at a consulate, and upon receiving the Certificate of Loss of Nationality, you will then be able to present that to your bank to prove that you are not a US person.

   “Tax expatriation” is the next step.  But you haven’t filed taxes for years.  And presumably your wealth isn’t in the United States.  If you back file five years of taxes and file 8854 there is no telling how much taxes you would owe if you are wealthy.  If it were me, and I had no assets in the United States and I didn’t want to leave an inheritance to anyone in the US nor did I expect any US source income or inheritances, I would simply avoid filing anything to the IRS.  The CLN is all that you need for bank freedom.

6. *Thankyou  for confirming this. This was/is exactly my thought process after reading all the material but wasn’t 100% sure. I am not wealthy and being retired and/or unemployed for the past 5 years have/had limited income and no US assets. Worked most of my career for US companies and was always told that there was a tax treaty between US & Belgium and that I wouldn’t owe US taxes but should file for administrative reasons only.
   Sadly there is only one report each for the Marseille consulat and Brussels embassy with no indication as to how long the whole process took. The Marseille consulat were no accommodating at all and I was considering using the Brussels embassy instead.
   Cheers, Dunja
   ps: what a beautiful cat!

7. @ Dunja… you should hold the companies responsible for compliance if that is what they told you.

8. Thanks, Renunciant E, for sending in your report of your second meeting at Vancouver, which I’ve just added to the Directory to go with your previous first visit report.

   Thanks for providing so many details … and since Vancouver had been very slow to book second appointments this Spring, it’a a very positive sign that you were able to schedule your second appointment within two weeks of the first!

9. Hola, everyone.

   Just back from a month in Spain and France. I followed IBS a little while we were away, but didn’t jump in because I was too busy experiencing siestas.

   Today is my wife’s second appointment at the Vancouver consulate — scheduled for noon. They phoned us while we were away, apparently to try and change the time — but got another phone message yesterday saying time was still good. We’ve got our stuff together, so this shouldn’t take too long. Just have to work on what kind of neutral response to come up with if the topic of taxes is raised.

   I’ll file a full report (I suspect I’ll be excluded from the oath part of this process) either later today or early tomorrow.

   BUT — here’s a thought I’ve been entertaining for a while now. Maybe we could plan some kind of CLN party, festival, seminar — whatever — for January 1 outside the Vancouver consulate. I’ll arrange media coverage. Goal is to get as many CLN holders, applicants, wannabes etc to come for a party — BBQ, whatever. I know January 1 is not a good weather date — but it is the date that FATCA comes into full effect and we could call it a “Celebrate FATCA Freedom” day or something.

   Anyway — just an early thought. I was trying to think of a way to channel all this renounce/relinquish energy into something positive and public. No flag burning, though.

   More later.

10. Arrow, planning events like that require their own threads.  Otherwise they just get buried in the 25K comments that we have.

11. petros

    Yeah — I understand that. I didn’t want to go full bore with the idea until today’s events are past. Just thought I’d throw it out there. I’ll think it through some more and create a separate thread.*

12. Arrow;

    Enjoyed the thought of your CLN event – even vicariously, since I’m not nearby.

13. Free at last, free at last …  well, not quite, but the formal oath has now been sworn, the documents are winging their way to Washington for DOS approval, and we wait.

    Got to the Vancouver consulate at 11:25 am for a 12 noon appointment — and there was not a soul at the door. Security was quick and we were upstairs by 11:30. We got a number sand unfortunately waited nearly an hour before being called up to the counter.

    Saw the same guy at the counter as the first appointment 5 months ago. He took all the pertinent documents again to make copies (They made copies of all these documents at the first meeting, too … go figure). He did his bureaucratic stamp-the-universe routine, and sent us back to wait.

    After 10 minutes my wife is called back up for a session with the vice consul (I was asked to leave, but I stayed within earshot). He went over the same stuff as in the first interview, got her to swear an oath, and it was done. He indicated that the CLN could take anywhere from a few months to a year — but indicated that they’d thrown some more resources at this in Washington and it might not take that long.

    Back to the clerk, who went over the logistics, and then  said my wife would get, along with her CLN, a copy of IRS Form 8854 so she could get whole with her taxes. He indicated that as far as the IRS is concerned, the date she notified the state department of her expatriating act is the one that counts for them — not the 1974 date on the CLN. We made no response to this. He said he could give her the form now, but that the IRS has a habit of changing forms all the time and he didn’t want her to walk out with a form that was already out of date.

    That was it. From arrival to departure took a little over 1.5 hours.

    Personally, I don’t think they can make their demand for Form 8854 stick. The original relinquishment was well before any of those requirements existed, and I can’t see us deliberately putting ourselves on the IRS radar by submitting it. I know the IRS gets notified of the CLN approval, but I can’t see them suddenly chasing her down.

    Anyway — bottom line, that CLN will be a very useful document to present to any bank manager who starts to ask questions. That’s its main value. I’m still not sure it will be “safe” to cross into the US in the future. Probably OK for a few more months, but as they put those two data bases together the risk will grow exponentially.*

14. Arrow –

    He indicated that as far as the IRS is concerned, the date she notified
    the state department of her expatriating act is the one that counts for
    them — not the 1974 date on the CLN.

    That to me stands out as the singularity in your interesting and timely reportback. And the fact that the CLN package will include 8854 – evidence that DoS is starting to carry water for IRS. Great grist for the neverending saga of 8854.

15. @Arrow

    Thanks for the update re your wife’s formal ‘relinquishment’ and the 2nd CLN appointment. Rather alarming news regarding form 8854. Certainly different information than Michael Miller reported on this site a couple of months ago. He basically said that if you ‘relinquished’ prior to 2004, it was not necessary to file tax returns and forms to exit out of the IRS system. Let us hope that he is correct and the clerk is wrong. Certainly someone ‘renouncing’ in 2012 would be required to file tax forms to exit the IRS system.

16. *No flag-burning???  Darn…as a born as a birthright Canadian Citizen…you take all the fun out of it…But then again, my father-in-law would not be impressed since he fought in the U.S. Army in Burma.

17. Hi, Arrow, Congratulations to both of you!  Thanks very much for sharing the information about your wife’s expatriation meeting at Vancouver.  I’ll add it to the Consulate Report Directory this evening.

18. Arrow wrote: 

    Back to the clerk, who went over the logistics, and then  said my wife would get, along with her CLN, a copy of IRS Form 8854 so she could get whole with her taxes. He indicated that as far as the IRS is concerned, the date she notified the state department of her expatriating act is the one that counts for them — not the 1974 date on the CLN. We made no response to this. He said he could give her the form now, but that the IRS has a habit of changing forms all the time and he didn’t want her to walk out with a form that was already out of date.

    That was it. From arrival to departure took a little over 1.5 hours.

    Personally, I don’t think they can make their demand for Form 8854 stick. The original relinquishment was well before any of those requirements existed, and I can’t see us deliberately putting ourselves on the IRS radar by submitting it. I know the IRS gets notified of the CLN approval, but I can’t see them suddenly chasing her down.

    This is in my view a serious problem. The CLN is an acknowledgement that a person has not been a citizen since the time of dated on the CLN.  The IRS would never be able to enforce a IRC law, written after the date on the CLN–in any real court of law.  First of all the IRC contradicts itself.  Only US persons, defined as citizens and residents of the United States, are covered under the code.  Secondly, we have documents showing that the IRS only applied the rule that your tax expatriation was the date you inform the consulate of your expatriating act to those who expatriated after the law was changed (circa 1994-95).  Thus, the IRS could not win a case.  But that doesn’t stop the Obama administration from hoping that you will pay them something voluntarily that you should be obliged to pay.

    So any way, I would want to make sure that you remember this post, your get out of jail free card.

    The stupidity of the US border guards and consulate officials is growing at an alarming rate.  But I think we often chalk up to incompetence what should be considered fraud and crime:  take a look at MF Global for an example of this.
    

19. @Pacifica, Arrow and others

    After a sleepless night of uncertainty regarding what is best to do, I went on to the U.S. consulate’s at Vancouver website and booked my first appointment. They must have either had some cancellations for September as I was able to get an appointment for September 21st. They show no appointments for October and several available in November.

    I must admit that I am terrified and I am already ‘second guessing’ myself. I am just not sure if this is the correct thing to do but one thing I do know is I am having trouble living my life normally. Perhaps doing this will help alleviate some of this stress.

    I do try to remind myself that if my hubbie were still alive, he would have already marched me down to the consulate. One of the deciding factors in finally making this decision was that I just don’t trust that they could come along and make this process more difficult for cases like mine, where the individual relinquished decades ago but just did not file for a CLN. I became a Canadian in 1972, swore both an oath of allegiance and an oath renouncing allegiance to the U.S.. I have done absolutely nothing in the interim to show that I really had not intended to relinquish my U.S. citizenship – no U.S. passport, no U.S. voting, no U.S. tax returns etc.

    Hopefully, I do not ‘chicken out’ and cancel the appointment. Will keep everyone posted.

20. Go get ’em Tiger! You’ve got Brockers and Sandboxers behind you. But most of all you have the right of moral indignation behind you because the system you face is without care on conscience. You deserve peace of mind and I know it’s very difficult but try to walk in there with your head high, a polite Canadian smile and the conviction that you are doing what is best for you.

21. @tiger

    I understand what you are feeling — this is not an easy step for anyone. Fortunately, the DOJ and IRS combined treat expats so badly that any sense of innate loyalty to the motherland goes out the window pretty fast.

    Consider this:

    1. You’ve only booked an appointment for September, and you’ve got a few more weeks to decide whether or not to go through with it. You can still change your mind.

    2. If you go to the first appointment, you’ll still have weeks (my wife waited 5 months) for the second appointment — and you can still change your mind.  I know — now you’re on their radar screen, that’s the downside risk. But it isn’t irrevocable until you swear the oath at that 2nd session.

    Now — Here’s my view on your options (and I really do think you are making the right move):

    1. You are in as strong a legal position as anyone to argue that you pulled the plug irrevocably in 1972. The lawyer I talked to believes that anyone who did it prior to 1973 has an ironclad case that they ditched their US citizenship. She wasn’t as sure about my wife’s 1974 exit — but I’ve since come to believe that hers is at least copper-clad if not iron clad. You will get your CLN and it will be back-dated to 1972.

    2. That CLN is what will give you peace in Canada, especially with your bank manager. That is a key benefit. It may or may not give you peace at the border. The IRS, frankly, cares nothing for DOS rules, and won’t cut you any slack until you’ve filed that Form 8854.  I don’t think they have a snowballs chance of making that stick in court for someone like you — but unfortunately some brave soul will have to go to court in the US to get them to stop trying to enforce it. That’s not a very happy prospect. We will not file the 8854, as to do so, in my opinion, simply grants the IRS the jurisdiction that it does not have and weakens your legal case.

    3. I believe the “do nothing” option has a very short shelf-life now — maybe a year, but no longer. As soon as the IRS and DOS put their data bases together, the risk of being stopped at the border rises significantly, and the serious unknown in that will be do they simply turn you back, or do they arrest you for tax evasion. I wouldn’t want to front up to the border with that uncertainty out there. If you are traveling with a Canadian passport that has a US birthplace, expect to be questioned and checked out.

    4. Nothing is going to change in the US. It will not get better, and it may get worse. Get out while the getting is semi-good (where did I read that?).

    Tiger, no one can tell you what to do on this, it really is a very personal decision. And much of what I’ve said, and what others have said here, is educated opinion sometimes bordering on guesswork. Even the lawyers can’t give you much in the way of definitive advice. They’ll tell you you have to comply with the law because to do otherwise would get them disbarred — but they can’t define that law themselves.

    Good luck — keep reading.

22. It sounds like the people you’ll actually deal with at Vancouver are fine to deal with, so that should go well.  The facts of your situation sound completely cut-and-dried that you terminated your citizenship in 1972, so that should be crystal clear to them. 

    As far as deciding to do it or stay under the radar, one thing is you never know if the process will be made more difficult and complicated in the future or if they will do something that would make staying under the radar really problematic or impossible.  I sure don’t know.

    I really think wrapping this up now will relieve the stress and bring back life as you always knew it prior to this awful episode.  I think with a CLN in your hand, they can never go back on their word, it’s in writing officially, so hopefully this will bring closure to
    this upsetting situation.  I know when the consul said I hadn’t been a USC since 1979, I felt such relief, a sense of regaining my identity and my life, I felt my spirit lifting right there at the consulate.  I felt like I was me again.  Everything felt right again.  I hope you’ll feel the same way right then and there.

23. *@tiger
    Okay, we’ll go together.  I just this morning  made an appointment in Calgary for Oct. 17 and I know what you mean.  I’m not at all sure this is going to solve all the problems or just create new ones but like you, even scared to death,  I feel I have to do something. I’ve been in Canada since 1954 (I was 7 years old and my only income at that time was 25 cents a week allowance ).  Became a Canadian in 1967 and was told, like everyone, that American citizenship was lost. In the meantime, no passport, no SSN, no voting, no US property etc. etc.  It is so ludicrous that something that was a done deal so long ago can come back and haunt us at this  point in our lives. 

    @ Arrow, Pacifica, Em, and all
    Thanks for the encouraging words.  It means a lot.

24. @hijacked, and @tiger;

    Good luck to you and best wishes. Will be rooting for you.  Am certain that there are many others who hope to follow in your footsteps when circumstances of this meaningless chaos allow.

25. @ hijacked212

    “I feel I have to do something.”

    I think that’s the key. Even when we’re not sure we’re taking the right step, in the right direction, at the right time, it can be a relief just to take the step. Standing still can sometimes feel like we are standing in quicksand. I wasn’t sure about sending off my I-407 (nobody wants to put themselves in the IRS’s line of sight) but I also knew it was unbearable to do nothing. Of course, my situation was not quite the same as ditching a citizenship, I had just discovered the consequences of being in possession of a green card which I would have surrendered years ago if I had known the proper ditching procedure or even that there was such a thing. It had seemed perfectly logical to me that the darn thing was expired so it must be null and void. I treated it like an expired driver’s license — of no benefit and not worthy of a penalty unless you try to drive with it. Good stepping to you in October and Tiger in September.

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