cross-posted from citizenshipsolutions
Update January 2018: This post has been updated with some new links and discussion.
Part I is here.
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We are witnessing what McGill law professor Allison Christians once referred to as the “Story of The Century“. To borrow from Professor Christian’s post:
The US is right now imposing enormous penalties and unleashing general chaos on people living in other countries with US citizenship, both by newly enforcing long-ignored rules and by layering on top of these rules a new and more draconian layer of enforcement. The chaos comes in the form of fear-inducing, devilishly complicated and duplicative paperwork, and penalties, most of all penalties, and it is being piled on to millions of people around the world, many of whom, like Cruz, are very possibly only beginning to understanding that citizenship status is mostly conferred upon rather than chosen by individuals.
Ted Cruz should consider himself very lucky. The Canadian citizenship he claims he didn’t realize he had, doesn’t carry any punishment IN CANADA for his failure to recognize it. Moreover renouncing Canadian citizenship, if he really intends to follow through on that promise, will be relatively simple, cheap, and painless other than any damage (if any) to his US political career. (Interestingly Australian Green Party Senator Larissa Waters was forced to resign because she was born in Canada and still (although she was unaware of it) held Canadian citizenship.
Not so if Mr. Cruz he had lived his life in Canada with his current apparent dual status. US citizens abroad now understand that discovering ties to the US means discovering a world of obligations and consequences flowing from citizenship that one was expected to know and obey. Ignorance of the law being no excuse, the punishments range from the merely ridiculous–many times any tax that would have ever been due–to the infuriating: life savings wiped out and many future tax savings sponsored by your home government, such as in education or health savings plans, treated as offshore trusts and therefore confiscated by the US. Moreover there is no ready escape hatch for the newly discovered and unwanted US citizenship: five years of full tax reporting compliance must be documented, appointments must be made with officials, fees must be remitted, interviews must be conducted, and in some cases exit taxes must be paid. If some in Congress get their way, renunciation could even mean life-time banishment from the US someday soon.
In the grand scheme of things Ted Cruz’s citizenship is a non-story. But for what it illustrates about citizenship-based taxation, it could be the story of the century.
The Debate – Taxation Based On The “immutable Characteristic of Place of Birth”
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