
I renounced my US citizenship - su_yuen
https://medium.com/@RachelHeller/https-medium-com-rachelheller-why-i-renounced-my-us-citizenship-e1f77b1969ce#.ml4ags1ed
======
letitleak
Charging for renunciation is the most ridiculous part. You are paying for a
process that:

is expensive only since they want to investigate you as a presumed criminal or
tax dodger (the movie Brazil comes to mind)

is a result of their non-compliance with international norms

is the result of the US declaring you have a status that was never requested

As an expat I consider all US citizens to be indentured servants due to this
requirement to buy independence from the US and whatever it chooses to enact
next. Effectively, these changes are not noticed by the US' domestics, but
those who think they "can flee to Canada" when they have ethical problems with
the US are now deluding themselves. "If you don't like it, then leave" may
have been sarcastic BS, but at least it was a real choice that many people
made in the Vietnam era, etc. If you don't like us leave us money (which we
will use in the ways you probably object to)" is something else.

I will find it both funny and sad that when the people who supported the two
party system are pissed by someone like Trump implementing fascist policies
they will finally realize that their own willingness to destroy our basic
civil rights makes it impossible for them to avoid helping a system they find
morally repugnent and criminal.

~~~
skywhopper
I'm curious, what is stopping expats with foreign citizenship and an objection
to the paperwork from just letting their US passports expire (or for the
"accidental americans" not ever establishing one) and just not complying with
all the annoying rules?

~~~
arcanus
You could find yourself having a great deal of trouble coming back across the
border.

So kiss vacations or business travel to the USA goodbye.

If you can live without that, I suspect you are fine.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Nope, if you are in Canada for example they'll just take your assets. They
strongarmed the Canadian banks into forcing disclosure of all US citizens bank
account contents.

And there are plenty of people around the world who have discovered they have
US citizenship without knowing it before. And now they have to file with the
IRS.

Glad I never got dual citizenship through my grandmother. In the past having
USian citizenship would be nice. Now it would just be a pain.

------
kilroy123
As someone living abroad, I agree there is a lot of bull shit now, involving
banking.

I only have bank accounts in the US because of the complicated laws. That's
not a big deal.

What REALLY pisses me off, is that banks in the US are declining service
because you live abroad. For example, holding investment accounts back in the
US. If they find out I'm living abroad they will promptly close my accounts. I
can't have a retirement accounts because I live abroad!?

What do I do? Maintain a mailing address back in the US, in a state that
collects no income tax. Use a VPN to login to retirement accounts. Insane.

Edit: I don't even mind paying taxes over 100k. Why? I can still go home
whenever I want. I can go to one of the many embassies around the world and
get a new passport. Ask for help, etc. I'll still get social security later.
(Huge maybe)

[http://thunfinancial.com/us-brokerage-accounts-american-
expa...](http://thunfinancial.com/us-brokerage-accounts-american-expats-
closed-2015/) [http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2015/09/20/american-expats-
scramb...](http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2015/09/20/american-expats-scramble-to-
keep-u-s-investment-accounts/)

~~~
dalke
When you say "living abroad", do you mean you have a local job, get paid in
the local currency, pay rent and bills in the local currency, etc.? Which you
do all through a US bank? If so, what are you paying for international
transaction fees? Surely much more than using a local debit card.

> I can still go home whenever I want. I can go to one of the many embassies
> around the world and get a new passport.

There's nothing special about the US in that regard. A citizen of Germany can
do the same at any German embassy, even when not a resident in Germany and
therefore not paying German income taxes, and also has the right to return to
Germany.

------
protomyth
This is one of those things that should be repealed. I've frankly gotten tired
of the punishing of normal people by dumb privacy invading laws[1], or
frankly, taxing them when they are not in the US. There are easier ways of
going after people and companies (looking at you Monster Cable) that play fast
an lose with our tax laws. I am all for only taxing income / revenue earned in
the US.

1) we can get rid of all the BS $10,000 stuff in deposits in the US.

~~~
british_india
Really FATCA is one of the most excellent laws that has been passed. Prior to
this, you had expats who had milked the US and then they wanted to waltz off
with their proceeds.

Americans gain huge benefits from the taxes paid by prior generations. The
entire US system is the envy of much of the world--and how did it get that
way? Americans paying their taxes. Whether or not you have kids--you must pay
property taxes that fund your local schools. Unfair? Hardly. Those schools
don't come out of thin air--taxpayers who came before you paid for them. Stop
your whining. If you were born in the US, then you benefitted. If you are a US
citizen and you get in trouble somewhere on earth, the US government will come
to your aid. That's what you're paying for, in addition to paying for the next
generation of Americans to have schools, roads, public utilities and the like.

Really, whining about having to pay your share--no matter where you have run
off to--is ridiculous.

~~~
danudey
As someone who lives outside of the US: your political and economic system is
at best illogical, and at worst incomprehensibly clueless.

Your government spends billions of dollars on wildly unsuccessful defense
projects while at the same time arguing the there's no way to deal with
poverty, access to education, homelessness, etc. By cutting back on defence
spending, the US could still remain the most powerful military nation in the
world and guarantee that every citizen gets a quality education and spends
their lives healthy and well maintained. Instead, you insist on going
trillions of dollars in debt and then complaining that the poor aren't paying
their fair share while the people with so much wealth that it's literally
impossible to comprehend use every loophole in the book to avoid paying
anything at all. Warren Buffet himself has commented on how he pays less tax
than his secretary does.

Meanwhile, your entire government is bought and run by corporations and lobby
groups; because money runs the campaigns and the person with the most money
wins, elected officials spend a huge portion of their time "in office" not
serving their country, their electorate, or even their benefactors, in favour
of travelling around, having meetings and dinners and fundraisers, so that
they can ensure they get elected again. If you court the right interests then
not only will they help pay for you to get re-elected over and over, when
you're done with public life they'll offer you a consultancy position where
you can make further millions for years convincing your old friends who are
still in office to vote the way you want them to because you're old friends.

The entire US system, is, to much of the rest of the world, a farce made
manifest. Many of us fail to understand how your populace even got into such
ridiculous circumstances, let alone continues to tolerate them year after
year.

To claim that someone overseas should pay thousands of euros to tell the US
government that they owe no tax while millionaires are using fully legal
loopholes that their rich congressional friends refuse to close to shirk
millions of dollars of taxes is patently ridiculous.

Fix your system to stop exploiting the poor and giving rights, privileges, and
power to the rich elite and you can claim that your system is the envy of the
world.

And as for 'how it got that way'? Years and years of economic growth on the
backs of slaves imported from Africa certainly helped. Being able to bootstrap
your economy by cutting out the business owner's largest expense is certainly
an effective way of getting ahead.

~~~
peyton
I'm sorry, I have to comment.

I don't think your characterization of the US is fair.

It is insulting and doesn't seem topical to the current post, which is about
the paperwork burden of living abroad.

Suggesting slavery is "how it got that way" is uniquely tasteless. A lot of
people gave their lives to abolish slavery. Many of us have relatives who were
slaves or died fighting for its end.

~~~
Retric
Proceeds from 245 years of slavery is not a small thing.

However, everyone involved is dead and the speration on who is alive now that
benefited or suffered from slavery is not clear cut.

------
2muchcoffeeman
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_American](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_American)

Yep, looks like that's true. Seems like US hospitals need lawyers and
accountants on staff to explain the liabilities a new born will have later in
life and you guys need to have a law that allows parents to officially reject
citizenship on behalf of a new born.

------
tn13
Congratulations.

I think some small country should negotiate a deal with all other nations and
come up with a citizenship program that gives good value for their passport
and then allow Americans (or any other highly taxed nationals) to settle
there. For example Lala-Land does some background checks and issues passport
to its citizens which can then be used to travel almost all the countries in
the world. Lala-Land will give passports to anyone who applies if they pay
enough money and show some evidence that they arent criminals etc.

~~~
cpursley
It's called St. Kitts and Nevis (and there's a few more).

[https://www.henleyglobal.com/citizenship-saint-kitts-
nevis-c...](https://www.henleyglobal.com/citizenship-saint-kitts-nevis-
citizenship/)

------
peatmoss
Having spent 10% of my life as a resident of another country, this hits home.
If I leave the U.S. a second time, it will likely be a permanent departure
with renunciation of citizenship. I know others who feel the same.

------
klunger
This is a duplicate of a submission I made 2 weeks ago.

Anyway, as an American abroad, I think about this periodically. Like the
author, I never owe anything in taxes, but the stress and expense from making
sure paperwork is correctly filed each year is really awful. If I mess
something up on my FBARs, non-willfully, I would be fined enough to completely
bankrupt me, the fines being way above the value of the accounts I might
somehow misreport. How can you misreport an account? Well, you could use the
wrong currency exchange rate, or you might not have access to information
required on the form so you have o guess, or you could think that accounts
with a balance of 0 all year do not need to be reported (turns out they do).
Or maybe you think that an account with money for a loan does not need to be
reported because it is not really your money (you do). And so on. Every
mistake costs you 10k/account/year. It is true insanity.

Also, I currently have no tax deferred way to save for retirement because my
employer funded pension account here (it is essentially a 401k, just based in
Norway) is treated as a regular investment account by the IRS. So, I have to
pay taxes on any gains each year on my pension. Luckily, this has always been
below the standard deduction, but in some years, it will (hopefully) not be. I
also cannot make any contributions myself to the account or else it turns into
a PFIC (which is a Very Bad Thing).

That being said, I am hopeful that FATCA will be repealed, or at least revised
so that it does not threaten to bankrupt middle class Americans with the
ridiculous fee structure and recognizes foreign pension accounts. I do not
want to give up my US citizenship, but will be forced to if something does not
change in the next few years.

~~~
british_india
Amazing how every rich expat who hates FATCA attempts to complain that it goes
after "middle class Americans". How convenient if FATCA were repealed and the
good old days of Tax Evasion could resume.

It is precisely rich expats who have themselves to blame for FATCA.

If you find the paperwork onerous--why not just renounce your citizenship?
Must be that you get some advantages you're not disclosing by keeping your US
citizenship.

Every American who does their taxes has to deal with this stress. So, you're
special and should get your US citizenship advantages without paying for them?
You looking for expat welfare?

FATCA will never be repealed. On the contrary, it's being copied by other
governments all over the world. But you had to have known that the tax evasion
party was going to eventually come to an end. If you consider yourself a
victim of FATCA, then your anger should be directed at other rich expats who
abused the system so badly that they inspired Congress to pass FATCA with both
Democratic and Republican support.

~~~
klunger
Did you miss the part where I do not have a way to save for retirement? And
why on earth do you assume that I am rich? Because I live in Norway? I barely
qualify as middle class. Thanks to student loans and zero support from my
family, I still have a significant negative net worth, despite the fact that I
live as thriftily as possible and have been working as an engineer since 2010.

If you are a US resident and mess up on your taxes, you do not get fined into
bankruptcy. You just have to pay what you owed. The fee structure is the
insane part of FATCA, not the taxes themselves.

As soon as I get Norwegian citizenship, if FATCA has not been repealed by that
point, I will seriously consider renouncing. Because of the above reasons, not
because I am some rich fat-cat wanting to evade taxes. If I wanted to evade
taxes, I would move back to the US, which is a fantastic tax haven, instead of
living my life here in Norway.

What the heck is "expat welfare"? The _only_ relationship I have with the US
government at this point is stress and expense from these forms every year,
along with my inability to save for retirement. Literally no other developed
country imposes this stress and compliance cost on their residents abroad. It
is not welfare to expect to be treated like everyone else. And, if it was just
filing regular taxes, and then getting it excluded with the FEIE, that would
still be annoying, but fine. However, there is a whole extra set of insanely
confusing forms to navigate, where you get fined into non-dischargeable
bankruptcy if you mess them up, even non-willfully. People develop mental
health issues and have even had their marriages destroyed from the stress of
this prospect. It is not "just some extra forms" or "expat welfare" to want
this onerous burden to be removed.

Sometimes I walk past the US embassy because it is in downtown Oslo (it looks
like a prison and is a total blight on an otherwise charming neighborhood,
btw), but I do not get any kind of "expat welfare" from it. I suppose I will
visit there when my passport needs renewing in a few years, but that is it. If
I wanted to contact them or voice my concerns about the pension issue (which
could be resolved if they updated the tax treaty, like Germany has done), I
have no way of doing so.

Why are you trolling this thread with support for FATCA when it is clearly a
terrible thing for millions of people? You have no idea what you are talking
about. Ugh!

------
serge2k
> To get the same records in the US, law enforcement would have to get a
> subpoena

Don't any deposits over a threshold get reported domestically as well? IIRC
10k is the limit.

> At the same time, the US has worked out Intergovernmental Agreements (IGA’s)
> with many countries, including the Netherlands

Worked out... bullied. As I recall the threat was to stop allowing business
with the US.

> By the US definition, they are US citizens as well, and should have been
> filing US income tax forms every year. Many only discovered this recently
> and are now under threat of huge fines if they do not get compliant with the
> US taxation laws. The same goes for children of US citizens, like my son,
> who are born abroad but qualify as US citizens.

Don't you have to apply to get citizenship? I thought it was more of you are
entitled to citizenship. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't tell the US gov't
to get fucked in this situation, unless you actually are taking advantage of
being a citizen.

So glad Canada (and nowhere else but what, 1-2 countries?) have this global
taxation BS.

------
jkot
One can always reapply for citizenship under the same conditions as anyone
else. If her parents are Americans and she was born here, she will very likely
get citizenship back.

------
hn_user2
Interesting. Although I have always just assumed that since I need a social
security number to open any kind of account in the US that the IRS already
knows how much I have in the bank.

>If US citizens living in the US had to report the balance of every account
they had in their local bank — all their assets, in other words, not just
their income — they would be up in arms, protesting the government’s intrusion
in citizens’ private business.

------
parsnipsumthing
Millions of Americans every year don't pay taxes or file any tax returns. I
would recommend that instead.

If you are a not particularly wealthy individual and you don't owe any back
taxes to the IRS, the consequences of not any filing taxes are likely to be
nothing.

------
tim333
I know the US is set in their ways but adopting residence based taxation like
everyone else wouldn't cause many problems. You can always have an anti
avoidance clause for capital gains to stop billionaire shareholders skipping
abroad to sell their shares.

------
researcher7
You complain about the US legal system, which based on the constitution
protects everyone with due process rights, and like countries like the
Netherlands which have no bill of rights? Me and my family spent our life
savings, endured the horrors of leaving everything behind to come to the US to
enjoy the liberty and rights that are guaranteed to everyone, yet people like
you are not happy and want lower standards.

Good riddance. If you don't want to be a citizen of this great country, it
would be better than you.

~~~
jorkro
Uhm,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Netherland...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Netherlands#Chapter_1:_Basic_rights)

Although I agree with you that this does not seem like a good reason to
renounce your US citizenship over, it is pointing out some issues with the US
tax code that need fixing.

Your response doesn't address that and reads more like an ad hominem attack.

------
youngButEager
Want to reduce stress and frustration in your life? Add this to your personal
philosophy:

"If it's stupid, get away from it."

\- dumb boss? job transfer or new job

\- dumb family members causing you problems? Avoid them.

\- dumb taxation? get away from the legal clutches of the taxing authority

Everything detrimental in life that can be avoided, _should_ be avoided if
possible.

There is enough unhappy other stuff that comes up in our lives that if you're
not at __least __bailing on crappy situations, you 're missing a chance at a
happier less stressful life.

------
umeshunni
Her biggest complaint is that she has to report her overseas bank accounts. If
she had done some basic research, she would have realized that this isn't
specific to people residing outside the US, but any US national even within
the US has to report foreign bank accounts with balances >$10k.

The rest of her post reads like whining about having to fill out forms.

~~~
protomyth
I think you miss the part where the foreign bank does its own reporting, and
how said banks are starting to refuse to have US Citizens as customers.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
The author herself doesn't seem to be experiencing outrageous banking pain,
though. She's paying no US taxes, and could almost certainly fill out her own
tax forms if the thousand-Euro fee is onerous. It's completely unclear what,
exactly, is so burdensome about her citizenship.

~~~
protomyth
I would say her experience and stress of that experience are shown in her
"Violation of Privacy" section. The final part "If they do not match, the US
threatens excessively large fines, entirely out of proportion to the totals
reported in those accounts, enough to wipe out one’s entire savings. Many
banks, meanwhile, are beginning to refuse to do business with US citizens in
order to lower their compliance costs." seems pretty painful. I would worry a
lot if an error could subject me to a lot of problems.

~~~
kmonsen
In general the IRS does not come after you if you make what they think is an
honest mistake. I have had several friends get a letter with a correct tax
return and simply had to make up the difference.

~~~
genericuser1234
It's not the IRS to worry about, but a department within the treasury called
the "Financial Crimes Enforcement Network." So the concern is very much still
valid.

------
Grue3
And I would've taken it in a heartbeat. This post seeps with privilege. Oh no,
you're in a position to choose between two first-world countries. We're so sad
for you. Not.

------
tn13
I could have become a US citizen long back but I have avoided taking that
citizenship for the simple reason that I don't want to expose myself to
American Tax Terrorism.

~~~
dalke
It couldn't have been that long back as three years ago you were newly in the
US with an H4 spouse visa (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6364977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6364977)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5323455)
).

I assume you asked
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11972642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11972642)
5 hours ago for a friend?

Also, even greencard/non-citizens are subject to ATT.

------
bruceb
1\. Having American citizenship allows her to travel easily and often visa
free to many countries.

2\. Allows her to work in America with no visa issues. Access to top companies
in the world including most of the ones we see on HN.

3\. Allows her potential kids to have access same benefits and go to
universities cheaper and again easily work in the US even if they didn't grow
up there.

Should renunciation chargers be changed? Probably. Maybe if you don't earn
very much you could pay less. Are there somethings that could be reformed?
Yes. But she is complaining about forms and doesn't even pay taxes.

~~~
dalke
Having Dutch citizenship gives her #1. The Dutch passport gives visa-free
access to 156 countries. The US passport gives visa-free access to _155_
countries. See
[https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php?ccode=nl](https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php?ccode=nl)
.

Her Dutch citizenship still gives her access to the EU, including many
companies mentioned even on HN, a US-centric site.

LOL! 1) Her child _has_ US citizenship - that doesn't go away after she
renounced, 2) As an EU citizen, her children would have rights that US
citizens don't have, and 3) Standard tuition fees in the Netherlands are about
$2500, which is less than a community college tuition in the US.

------
skywhopper
It sounds like she didn't pay US income tax, she just had to file a tax
return, which seems reasonable.

The idea that the US government doesn't track US citizens bank accounts if
they live in the US is laughable. Of course they do. Banks have to report all
kinds of details of large transactions and balances. We don't have to fill out
forms because the government can go directly to the banks to get the
information.

The way voting works I think is entirely reasonable. How else should it work?
Is she suggesting there be senators and representatives just for expats? I
would honestly expect the states would not want expats voting in their local
elections, so the expats have more rights than I would expect there. For the
Presidential election, yeah our voting system is screwed up there, but it is
screwed up for everyone.

So it sounds like she left to avoid paperwork that felt intrusive. Meh.
Welcome to life.

~~~
serge2k
> It sounds like she didn't pay US income tax, she just had to file a tax
> return, which seems reasonable.

It's really not. That part about banks not wanting to serve american's is
true. (Almost) no other countries do this type of thing.

~~~
british_india
Nonsense. FATCA was started by the US but now the OECD and many, many other
countries around the world are copying it--as they should.

Earlier, banks were more than willing to support the tax evasions of
Americans. But in case you were living in a cave, the last few years have seen
those tax-evasion-enabling international banks fall one by one, admitting they
enabled tax evasion and paying massive fines. So, the banks don't want
Americans because they know so frequently those Americans are practicing tax
evasion. They were burned and never again want to enable tax evasion. Rightly
so.

