The Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate for Q1 2018 has just been placed on public inspection for printing in Tuesday’s Federal Register, eight days later than required by 26 USC § 6039G(d). This is the seventh quarter in a row in which the IRS has been late with the list.
This quarter’s IRS expat honour roll has the names of 1,100 people who gave up US citizenship, by my count. (Andrew Mitchel counted 1,099. My initial count was 1,102, because I accidentally counted two very long names as four entries.) Meanwhile, the number of records in the “renounced US citizenship” category of the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) increased by precisely 1,100 during the first three months of the year, from 42,693 to 43,793. (The FBI added another 341 records in April, bringing the total to 44,134.)
The IRS list is known to be incomplete. It’s supposed to be much larger than the NICS list, not exactly the same size, let alone smaller. Per regulations, NICS only contains people who terminated their US citizenship by swearing an oath of renunciation at a US embassy or consulate. In contrast, the IRS’ list is supposed to have the names of all people who obtained Certificates of Loss of Nationality from the State Department, either by swearing an oath of renunciation or by reporting any other relinquishing act specified in 8 USC § 1481(a). The preamble of the IRS list even misleadingly implies that it includes some of the tens of thousands of people who give up their green cards every year.
Demonstrating the point, this quarter’s IRS list still failed to include some public figures who gave up US citizenship more than a year ago, including Japanese legislator Kimi Onoda and Ghanaian Deputy Minister of Finance Charles Adu Boahen. However, Homelanders and their chieftains don’t care about that. They’re dissatisfied with NICS instead, so there’s some provisions in the new spending bill imposing penalties on heads of upstream agencies, including the State Department, if they fail to certify semi-annually that they’re providing NICS with all the records they should be. More about that below.
Increases in NICS transparency coming soon?
For the past five years, we’ve been relying on NICS to provide a baseline for comparison to the IRS’ expat honour roll, to try to see if the latter is honestly reporting the names of all ex-citizens. However, the State Department’s reporting of renunciants to NICS hasn’t always been particularly timely either: for example, in October 2012, State added more than three thousand renunciant records to NICS, but when Patrick Cain at Global News asked them about it, they explained that the State Department was clearing a backlog of about 2,900 records (though it wasn’t explained how long the backlog had been running). The FBI spokesman’s explanation of another large jump in the number of records two years later was even terser and less informative: State was “working on updating this file”, he said.
In short, up until now we’ve had no guarantee that NICS statistics are any more reliable than IRS statistics. But that might change, because chief spy diplomat-to-be Mike Pompeo’s bonus is on the line if it doesn’t. Section 602 of the Fix NICS Act of 2018 (Title VI of the FY2018 spending bill that got signed into law in late March) requires State to certify to the Department of Justice every six months, starting from 31 July of this year, the total number of renunciant records they have, the number they’ve submitted to DOJ for inclusion in NICS, and their plan to make sure the second number doesn’t fall too far behind the first number. The DOJ will also be required to make public a “summary of the data, broken down by department or agency, contained in the certifications”.
And, much unlike the toothless 26 USC § 6039G(d), which the “Internal” Revenue Service violates with impunity, there’s some actual penalties for not obeying this new law:
(I) NONCOMPLIANCE PENALTIES.—For each of fiscal years 2019 through 2022, each political appointee of a Federal department or agency that has failed to certify compliance with the record submission requirements under subparagraph (C), and is not in substantial compliance with an implementation plan established under subparagraph (G), shall not be eligible for the receipt of bonus pay, excluding overtime pay, until the department or agency—
(i) certifies compliance with the record submission requirements under subparagraph (C); or
(ii) achieves substantial compliance with an implementation plan established under subparagraph (G).
Conclusion
Formally relinquishing citizenship has become difficult to such an absurd degree that other countries’ legislators have started complaining. But actually complying with the US tax code while living abroad is impossible — and there is no reward for trying, only punishment.
Most self-identifying Americans abroad just pretend to comply by skipping the hardest forms and filing only the easy ones, which have the wrong numbers on them as a result. Some of these people will get very angry if you even inform them of the existence of those harder forms, and accuse you of lying about how hard it is to comply. The only way for them to preserve their faith in their civic religion is to ignore its more absurd doctrines.
And the other US tax subjects who don’t identify as “Americans abroad” — people who never realised they might be US citizens in the first place, and people who thought they’d stopped being US citizens long ago — are just doing their best to hide.
This quarter we have 1,102 names of people who couldn’t hide and couldn’t pretend to comply. Nearly $2.6 million of fee revenue for the State Department. But that $2.6 million is dwarfed by what accountants and lawyers — the privatised Inquisition of the Homeland’s civic religion — are earning from this whole mess.
Does anybody know if the proposal on p.254 in General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2017 Revenue Proposals is valid for tax filing or its just some wishful thinking? Thank you.
@Silver Surfer: Unfortunately no. The proposal never became law. No one in either party ever even introduced a bill trying to get it made into law. Its appearance in the Green Book appears to have been merely a public relations exercise.
We discussed an earlier version of that proposal here:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2015/02/03/obama-fy2016-budget-proposes-limited-relief-for-accidental-duals-at-birth-who-give-up-u-s-citizenship/
@Eric: Thanks. It is very unfortunate since it could have been a stepping stone to create relief legislation to help AAs and AEs suffering from CBT and FATCA.
Thanks for your usual good work on this, Eric. The list compilers seem to be cleaning up their act a bit, in that there are fewer duplicate names recently. I have only found one this time, beginning with VE. And once again there is a name on the list that I recognize, but there is no way to know whether it corresponds to the person I know with that name. As other commenters have mentioned, even the number of names on the list seems to be manipulated. And as others have noted, many names never appear on the list at all.
Publication of the list is a quarterly example of absurd bureaucratic inertia. It’s mildly interesting and amusing to read, but what useful purpose does the list serve? And what are the chances for real change from US citizenship-based taxation to residence-based taxation, when the US government can’t even decide to save money by ending publication of this almost meaningless quarterly list?
Finally, rather than publishing this ridiculous list, why doesn’t the US disclose a simple, meaningful number, the number of Certificates of Loss of Nationality it produces each quarter?
@AnonAnon
“Finally, rather than publishing this ridiculous list, why doesn’t the US disclose a simple, meaningful number, the number of Certificates of Loss of Nationality it produces each quarter?”
I remember reading somewhere that these certificates are not numbered. In fact, the State Department may not be counting them in any concerted way. Someone should enlighten us about this.
Can US border control look you up on their computer system and see if you’ve gotten a CLN? Or alternatively, if you claim to have received a CLN, can they confirm it on their computer system?
Doesn’t answer the specific question, Zla’od, but related:
https://www.maplesandbox.ca/2012/crossing-the-us-border-on-a-canadian-passport-showing-a-us-birthplace/
@Zla’od
According to the DOS FAM CLNs are sent to
USCIS, IRS and the FBI.
https://fam.state.gov/fam/07fam/07fam1240.html
I will have to look but I seem to recall being told ( way back in 2011) that once you have renounced at a consulate/ embassy, that information is available to CBP. I always have suspected that was true given I have never been asked to show my CLN (driving or flying) and that US place of birth shows up nice and clearly on my CDN passport.
I also experienced a rather unpleasant/perplexing questioning when I drove down for a nephew’s wedding. The border guard kept pressing me for details about my nephew- what did he do; where exactly did he work, where he was going to live after the wedding and so on. At first, I thought he was simply trying to make sure that was why I was going (the wedding) but that didn’t seem quite it. My sister suggested that it sounded more like he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to try and remain. I know that is not proof he could see I was renounced but it made a lot more sense than giving me the third degree about a relative’s wedding. I seem to recall offering to show him my CLN as well as the invitation but he declined to see either….
In theory, someone could renounce, get into the USA somehow, then quietly resume their American life without anyone knowing. They’d probably already have an SS number. The only way they’d be caught is if they left the country.
My son made the list. About 2 quarters late.
In 2014, I helped two elderly people get relinquishment CLNs (both left the U.S. in 1966 and naturalized to Canada in 1972 with intent to lose U.S, citizenship). I’ve seen firsthand the CLNs they received.
But what about the Liberty List? Until now I’d never looked.
Today I searched every Quarterly Liberty List from late 2013 up to the current one. Their names are not (yet) published.
Figures they’d be late with the lists.
To the State Department:
Here’s a joke to lighten up the mood.
Why we know that Obama was full of shit…
Obama is a last name of African heritage
Aboma is ALSO a last name of African heritage
You can get Obama from Aboma, just by switching two letters.
A cow’s fourth stomach is called the Abomasum. (it’s the last stomach that a cow’s food goes through before it comes out the back-end)
So now you know how Obama was so full of shit.
List doesn’t seem to be generating much coverage this quarter. Only thing I’ve seen all month is Robert Wood’s article in Forbes a couple of weeks ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2018/05/14/fewer-americans-renounce-citizenship-but-taxes-still-drive-them/
Also, an odd report from Sri Lanka; not sure whether true or just a political hit job:
https://lankanewsweb.net/news/item/8576-us-to-reject-gota-s-application-to-renounce-nationalityus-to-reject-gota-s-application-to-renounce-nationality
Precisely 300 renunciant records added to NICS in May (1,741 in first five months of the year; total now at 44,434)
View online (valid only until next month): https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-indices.pdf/view
Download: https://web.archive.org/web/20180605030339/https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-indices.pdf
A bit slow. I think they are accumulating a backlog. For about the past two-and-a-half years they’ve had the same pattern of adding 250-400 records per month in most months and then 700-800 at once in a few months. Nothing as dramatic as the October 2012 backlog of 3,000 records, though.
Thank you Eric. So funny that these compilations that are supposed to create transparency eventually do the opposite for political reasons.
There is the however the adage, “Never attibute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. Maybe a lot of both at play here?
Confirmed: neuroscientist Poo Mu-ming gave up US citizenship last year
https://udn.com/news/story/7332/3221388
His Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu-ming_Poo
I saw the name in the Q1 2018 list but wasn’t sure it was him. Incidentally, it’s quite possible he’s a covered expatriate (not sure exactly his level of assets), and his kids are still in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai-jen_Poo
A lawyer on quora has requested the numbers of CLN that have been issued which will hopefully give a truer picture of the numbers renouncing. He’s keeping me posted.
We need a separate list of people who have been coerced to expatriate, separate from the existing list of people who have chosen to expatriate.
211 renunciant records added to NICS in June (1,962 in first five months of the year; total now at 44,645)
View online: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-indices.pdf/view
Haven’t been able to get the Internet Archive to save the file yet, keeps giving me weird errors. I’ll try saving it in archive.is but it doesn’t do PDF files directly; instead you gotta wait for Google’s cache of the file to get updated, but right now Google hasn’t crawled the new report yet so the cache still has last month’s report https://archive.fo/KLD0i
It’s playing hard-to-get. How’s this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180703011223/https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-indices.pdf
Thanks, that link works. Guess something was wrong on my end.
Thanks for continuing to keep up with and compile this for all of us. Archiving this information is and will continue to be invaluable @Eric.
archive.org has made it more difficult to intentionally archive a page than it used to be.
South Korean newspapers are reporting (based on a notice in the Official Gazette) that foreign minister Kang Kyung-hwa’s eldest daughter was granted permission to restore South Korean citizenship and will now start on the process of giving up US citizenship. They say this will take six months to a year. They’re refraining from reporting her daughter’s full name, just her surname Lee.
http://news.hankyung.com/article/2018070329217 (in Korean)
Less detailed report in English:
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2018/07/03/0200000000AEN20180703003700315.html
Previously discussed her case here:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2017/08/02/1759-published-expatriates-in-q2-2017-federal-register-list/comment-page-3/#comment-8035327
Public inspection for next Monday’s Federal Register. No surprise, they’re breaking the law again:
https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2018/07/27#regular-filing-internal-revenue-service