The Q1 2016 Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen to Expatriate, as Required by Section 6039G has been placed on public inspection for printing in Thursday’s Federal Register, five days later than required by law. By my count, it has 1,159 names (41 names per full page and 27 full pages, plus 22 names on the first page and 30 on the last page, with no entries taking up two lines this time). Let me know if you get a different count. Correction: As Andrew Mitchel and Haydon Perryman both point out, the actual count is 1,158; there’s an entry on page 7 of the the pre-publication PDF which takes up two lines.
In contrast, the number of renunciant records held by the FBI in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database increased by 1,281 during the same period, from 32,666 at last year’s end to 33,947 as of 31 March (and they added another 860 in April). The NICS renunciant figures have outstripped the Federal Register count of “published expatriates” every year since 2012, with the gap last year growing to more than a thousand — even though NICS only covers 8 USC § 1481(a)(5) renunciants while the Federal Register is supposed to include all relinquishers under any paragraph of 8 USC § 1481(a), as well as some of the estimated five to seven thousand people who file Form I-407 to abandon their green cards each quarter.
All of the people added to NICS definitely paid the US$2,350 State Department fee — twenty times that in other developed countries — which has been in effect for renunciants since September 2014, meaning that Washington D.C. collected at least US$3 million from people seeking to exercise their human right to change their nationality last quarter. The State Department claimed this obscene fee “protects” the right to change nationality — well, that’s one mighty profitable protection racket they’ve got going on there! (And it could have been even more profitable if some consulates weren’t restricting renunciation appointments to an hour a week, leading to ten-month backlogs in Dublin and Toronto.)
Media reports on individual ex-citizens
Here’s a table of nineteen people mentioned by name in media reports as having given up U.S. citizenship since the beginning of 2014; seven of their names are missing from the Federal Register (three out of eleven from 2014 and four out of six from 2015), while for two more — the ones from this year — it’s too early to say whether they’ll show up or not. I’ve also included one person who posted his own CLN on Twitter and later showed up in the list (I haven’t included people who tweeted their own CLNs but didn’t show up in the list).
Names of public figures included in this quarter’s list: South Korean pop singer Alex Kim, who renounced nearly two years ago; and Jonathan Tepper, who said in a New York Times op-ed in December 2014 that his big appointment at the U.S. consulate was scheduled for early the following year. No public figure who spoke to the media about their renunciation in 2016 has yet been included, though this quarter’s list does have one name matching that of a Hong Kong government official who took office recently: Sandra Leung Shuk-bo.
| 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 | Members of Knesset cannot hold foreign citizenships | January 2015 | No | 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) |
| Neil Llamanzares | Businessman | Philippines | Public opinion (his wife is running for President) | April 2015 | No | Rappler (Philippines) |
| Lee Chih-kung | Physicist | Taiwan | Appointed Minister of Economic Affairs by President-elect Tsai Ing-wen | May 2015 | No | Apple Daily (Taiwan) |
Congratulations to all those who made the expat honour roll this term!
Ami Wright, Yes you are re: ” I think the reason we get no sympathy is that people generally believe that anyone born in the US is privileged. “
Ami Wright, it’s even worse than being considered ‘privilged.’ “Americans” are generally speaking, disliked as they represent everything that the world hates and fears about the USA. It’s our fault that we are FATCA’d as from a non-US person perspective, we are part of the system that is doing this to the world.
If USA had FATCA’d some other classification of people other than “Americans”, countries would have been repulsed and rebelled. But, “Americans” deserve it.
@Haydon, because you are a “process guy” I also suspect that you are a “keeper of odd knowledge.”
Let me give you a few tidbits to muddy the waters and add to your growing philosophical understanding.
Whats the process to renounce British Citizenship? One witnessed form in the post and £272.
https://www.gov.uk/renounce-british-nationality/apply
PLUS you can always get the citizenship back with another posted form. 😉
To renounce US Citizenship it costs $2,350, a pile of forms and then you might not be able to get an appointment at all;
https://ie.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/citizenship-services/
The UK signed an IGA, that requires a CLN or “reasonable explanation” except the method and price to get the CLN is controlled solely by the one party!! In case of relinquishment, the price went from zero to $2,350 for a CLN.
I bring this up as I doubt many in your circle understand the cost and difficulty of shedding US Citizenship. Hmm, this is probably something that governments should pressure the USA on for the renegotiation.
What is another way to fix FATCA? Much of the world signed on to the Master Nationality Rule. The UK Home Office has some great material on it. Under UK law can a British Citizen in the UK be anything other than British? No;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Nationality_Rule
Naturally, the exceptional states of America did not sign on to the convention……but FATCA represents a conflict in Nationality Laws between two nations, that is a major root of one problem.
The USA requires so called dual nationals to enter the USA on a US Passport, do you know why? That act confirms said person is entering as a US Citizen and not as something else.
FATCA upends the long standing relationship between the citizen and the state because it forces a nation like the UK to declare that British Citizens on its shores are in fact US Citizens and are treated as US Citizens.
Now lets add one more FATCA complexity to make your head ache. A child born in London to two accidental Americans born in the USA is in fact a US Citizen under US Law. It is not an opt in citizenship rather it is you have it or are stuck with it. That is US Law. Shouldn’t due diligence require asking information on the citizenship of parents, regardless if that point is not specifically mentioned in the IGA? Under US Law said persons are automatically US Citizens and are covered under the Internal Revenue Code. I actually know of a student that got caught up by a FI when he presented a long form birth certificate being under 18 and it showed two US Parents and said FI knew what that meant.
Cheers,
@Heidi Yes, that is right.
If you bank with any of those mentioned here:
https://haydonperryman.com/fines/
or any part of their group there is a good chance they’ll offboard anyone with US indicia – but this should not be confused with FATCA.
@WhiteKat True, but law is law.
@Ami Wright That particular Bank has a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the DoJ.
@George “A process guy’? Not sure I would agree. Watch this, let me know if you still think that:
Re: “@WhiteKat True, but law is law. ”
Huh? I thought there was an intelligent conversation happening. I guess not.
@haydon. I banked with the swiss post office bank. I am also an EU citizen.
@Haydon
I’m assuming then that the banks that you work with don’t offer securities accounts such as a plain old brokerage account or a stocks and shares ISA. The ISA, as you know, is, by law, available to every resident in the UK. It is also a non-reportable account under FATCA. Theoretically, there should be no issue in offering such an account to a US person. However, a very significant number of operators in the UK online trading area explicitly ban any of the approximately 200,000 UK residents who have US citizenship including the approximately 66,000 (ONS data) who are also British citizens. Amongst those who, the last time I checked, ban US citizens: Fidelity International, TD Direct, Abbey National (Santander), AJ Bell Youinvest, Alliance Trust, Interactive Investor, Neptune, Nutmeg, RBS, Redmayne Bentley, Saga Share Direct, Saxo Bank, Share Centre, Brewin Dolphin and Sippdeal.
You also have Jarvis Securities which owns X-O.co.uk and Sharedeal Active and provides white label share dealing to a whole host of third parties like building societies, investment trusts, IFAs and stockbrokers. The X-O ISA account opening asks you to tick a box that says: “I confirm that I am not a US person for the purposes of United States of America (‘US’) federal income tax, and that I am not acting for, or on behalf of, a US person. Please note, should information come to our attention which gives us reasonable cause to believe you are a US person, we will give you notice and close your Account.” So, if Jarvis bans US citizens, I imagine all of their third party clients will also.
Maybe I didn’t read the relevant part of the thread but did I read correctly that you don’t attribute this new found desire to ban US citizens to FATCA? TD Direct was the first, that I am aware of, to ban US citizens in the UK. I know because I was a customer and they kicked me out in 2004. The next was Fidelity in December 2012. I just happened to read their email with their new terms and conditions which highlighted the changes they had made. All of a sudden it became a breach of the terms and conditions to be a US citizen. It scared me lifeless at the time since I was both a Fidelity International customer and a US citizen at the time. I contacted Fidelity through chat since I was too scared to call them for fear of discovery (my accent). They said that discovery of a US citizen client would lead to account closure and a possible forced liquidation. That would have been financially devastating.
I would attribute the desire to ban US citizens to the “black swan” effect that idiotic governments have imposed upon all of their financial intermediaries. They have given the US the right and the means to bankrupt any just about any financial institution in their jurisdiction by placing them on a list. If they appear on that list, the rest of the FFIs will shun them and any assets that produce US source income whether held by them directly or beneficially on behalf of their customers are instantly worth 30% less. The only way to avoid this risk is not to have US citizen customers. Or you can seek to minimise the risk with foolproof compliance processes. The fact is that US citizens will only represent about 0.3% of the customer base (200k out of 65m). The risk/reward balance is heavily skewed towards banishment.
@Edelweiss, “I contacted Fidelity through chat since I was too scared to call them for fear of discovery (my accent).”
That says it all, what a horrid situation has been dumped upon us.
Along that line before I started drinking, I thought about getting one of those teletype phones for the deaf because of the accent issue.
@WhiteKat. I guess I don’t really understand. Are you saying this should not be the law? I would agree it shouldn’t be, but it is. What is your argument?
@Edelweiss I’m saying that the institutions, if they say that are doing this because FATCA says they must – are incorrect.
@Haydon, I guess I am suffering from a bit of PTSD. Since the shock of living half a century clueless that I have been a US tax slave the whole time, and with no relatively painless way out of the compliance maze, and no possibility of going back in time to renounce the curse, every time I hear the phrase, “but law is law” or something to that effect, I feel a pit in the bottom of my stomach. All thought of rational argument goes out the window, because at that point I realize no matter how good my arguments against being so, reality is I am a caged animal.
@Heidi. I don’t deny that you are an EU citizen.
I’m not sure what I’m being asked here. Yes, Citizenship Based Taxation is wrong. But isn’t it here to stay until the US reverses it?
Is the argument that because the law is wrong that no-one should assist in compliance? I just want to be sure I’ve understood this correctly.
@WhiteKat Yes, that I certainly can understand.
@Haydon, And yet you participate in the FATCA hunt.
@haydon
re Swiss bank closure
“This shouldn’t be confused with Fatca”
I received a letter from swiss postfinance directly attributing the closure of my account to Fatca. This was my sole, basic account I used only to pay utilities for my apartment while working in the US.
How can anyone function in that scenario?
Or more accurately, the ‘US Person hunt’ as facilitated through FATCA and those who participate in its enforcement.
Haydon, if FATCA is a small part of your business, and you really don’t need to FATCA US persons to survive, why not just say no to the abuse of so-called ‘US persons’?
@haydon
What I am saying is that even if you play by the US rules you still get f***ed. I had no way of even paying my electricity bill without a bank account. I had no hidden investments just a plain old checking account that was closed and you still persist in saying it isn’t directly a consequence of Fatca.
I’ll have to think about this and get back to you.
People working on FATCA and CRS don’t think of this as a “hunt”, we don’t, for the most part, aim to harm Americans in any way, just to get a W-9 and report to the US as the regulation demands.
Under CRS, following the same logic, everyone in the world is being hunted.
@Heidi – that said – I fully accept that no one should be in that situation. Regarding, the letter you got from Swiss Post Finance citing FATCA as the reason, the content of the letter is incorrect. I assume that Swiss Post Finance is now going out of business because of the CRS??
The Swiss banks did this because of https://haydonperryman.com/fines/
not FATCA.
@Haydon, I agree. It is obvious you don’t think of the US person hunt as a hunt.
Re: “Under CRS, following the same logic, everyone in the world is being hunted ” Ummmm. NOOOOO! No other countries tax people based on mere place of birth!
@WhiteKat The CRS really isn’t that different.
https://haydonperryman.com/supporting-documents/curing-us-indicia-under-a-inter-governmental-agreement/
Whilst PoB is not indicia under the CRS, it is asked for and it is reported.