Ugh, this article again? It crops up every quarter without fail.<p>If one of these could actually provide some sort of analysis or evidence for their conclusions, that'd be pretty great. Each time it's published, they relay a few anecdotes about 1 or 2 mildly famous people renouncing citizenship. They then give a trend in absolute numbers without addressing population changes, and finally go on to blame taxes or whatever else for the trend that they assure is happening.<p>Is expatriation increasing? Maybe? Who knows with this quality of reporting.<p>The question of how to treat international taxation is almost entirely separate from expatriation. If people aren't taking the easy step and relocating to different states due to tax differences[1][2][3], I doubt it's the main reason they're renouncing citizenship.<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/working_papers/Varner-Young_Millionaire_Migration_in_CA.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/working_papers/Va...</a>
[2] - <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3556" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3556</a>
[3] - <a href="http://publicassets.org/press/press-releases/new-study-jobs-not-taxes-stimulate-migration/" rel="nofollow">http://publicassets.org/press/press-releases/new-study-jobs-...</a>
I'm quoted in the article and would be happy to answer questions about this. Our firm does a lot of this kind of work -- U.S. citizens and green card holders cutting all ties to the United States.
FTA: <i>In total, more than 670 U.S. passport holders gave up their citizenship [...]in the first three months of this year</i><p>Not understanding how a fact like this even rises to the level of a sentence in a related article, much less the lede. Can someone please explain to me how a tax policy which has a net effect of reducing its tax base by 0.002% (rough guess, assuming I didn't slip a digit) is something worth talking about at all?<p>I mean, the IRS is going to lose more revenue to people upset with US food choices...
Oh come on guys. Every country has some tax blip that makes it foolish for a small number of people to live in that regieme. Fine. Lets not extrapolate that out to headlines designed to be read as "millions are throwing away their citizenship - its all because we are over taxed!"<p>Plus please realise America is a low-tax country compared to Europe and Australia because it has a minimal welfare state, compared to Europe and Australia.
I wonder if that "due to high taxes" causal explanation can be quantified a bit better. Not <i>every</i> person who renounces U.S. citizenship does so for tax reasons. I could believe it's 98% though, or maybe 80%; I have no idea. Is there any way to estimate the proportion who renounce for various reasons?<p>A non-tax category in which I know people who've renounced is those who have issues with dual citizenship. Denmark, for example, does not permit dual citizenship. So if you are an American who moves to Denmark and eventually wishes to naturalize, you must renounce your American citizenship. Perhaps more commonly, if you are born with dual Danish-American citizenship (Danish parents but born in the U.S.), you can keep the dual citizenship until age 22, but then at age 22 must apply for permanent Danish citizenship, and at least officially they will, as with the naturalization case, require you to renounce your American citizenship (though in practice it seems not everyone actually does so).
This is BS.<p>A total of 932 gave up their passport in 2012. This quarter has been high, so we are taking about a couple hundred in a country of 310,000,000
Does a flat tax (with reasonable deductions) hurt anyone besides the super rich? It seems like it would solve a lot of problems and close a lot of tax loopholes. Imagine if we could nearly eliminate the IRS.