Just want to congratulate Tomasino on his former citizenship [0]. As
a US expat for eight years now, I can confirm that the US's tax on
worldwide income is a pain. Not that it results in double-taxation,
if you live in one of the countries that has a tax agreement with
the US (Canada does), but you still have to do your taxes every
year, along with an FBAR, which details all of your bank accounts
and their balance. Further, the US managed to impose requirements on
foreign banks to report your foreign income to the IRS, and as a
result, those banks ask about your foreign citizenship, and require
your US social security number before they will open an account.
Some banks refuse to give US citizens an account due to the
reporting requirements.
The various expat tax laws' stated goal is to prevent tax avoidance,
however this doesn't affect the wealthy, who clearly have ways of
hiding money in foreign bank accounts. It just affects the regular
expat who would rather not have to pay a tax preparer every year to
handle the onerous paperwork. It also affects a class of citizens,
who by an accident of birth are American, but moved to another
country as infants and have never lived in the US, and in some cases
never even knew they were US citizens until they had some
interaction with the US government and discovered a lifetime of tax
penalties and fines waiting for them.
So yeah, a lot of those who renounce US citizenship do it just to
get away from the US taxation regime.
That said, I agree with the other reasons Tomasino mentions for his
renunciation, and I admire his principled stand. I've considered
renouncing my US citizenship as well, but for now that isn't an
option. Perhaps someday...
[0]:
gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20240203-renunciation
