To Get Out of America

More Americans are renouncing their citizenship to avoid paying high taxes

While hundreds of thousands of people all over the world aspire to obtain U.S. citizenship, growing numbers of Americans are becoming expatriates. Since the beginning of this year, the number of renunciants has reached a record high of 1,800 people, according to data published by the Federal Register. The fact speaks for itself: The exodus from the U.S. has increased eightfold over the past four years.

According to official data, only 235 people voluntarily gave up their American passport in 2008. However, in 2009 that number rose to 743, and in 2012 as many as 1,485 people renounced their American citizenship.

This trend – unpleasant for the government – does not fit with the widely publicized image of the U.S. as a country that everybody wants to live in, and is caused primarily by financial considerations of “defectors.” It is not a secret that the U.S. is almost the only country in the world that requires its citizens to pay taxes to “Uncle Sam’s” Treasury regardless of their country of residence. As a result, the diaspora of almost 6 million Americans abroad make tax payments in their countries of residence as well as to their home country. The tax deduction is given only for the first $95,000 earned by U.S. citizens abroad, and only if they follow a difficult bureaucratic procedure to prove that they have already forked out taxes in a foreign country.

Besides, according to a Gallup survey, 46 percent of Americans consider federal taxes to be “too high,” 37 percent call them unfair. The tax rip-off irritates Americans, especially those who permanently live and work abroad. The renunciation of U.S. citizenship is allowed only in American embassies abroad. Almost everyone disillusioned with the “American dream” is asked to pass two interviews with a consular officer. Then it is necessary to fill in documents and to renounce citizenship under oath. Only in several months does the ex-American gets a special certificate verifying the loss of citizenship. It is noteworthy that until 2010, the voluntary procedure of “refusal from American homeland” was free, now expatriates have to pay $450.

The most curious thing is that already in 1996, in democratic America, a provision aimed to publicly shame those escaping from America’s ship was brought into the immigration law. This provision obligates the quarterly publishing of the names of refusers in the Federal Register, so that anyone could know exactly who does not want to live in the American country. In a conversation with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, some Americans claimed that they consider their former compatriots to be no one else but traitors. Against this backdrop the U.S. Congress even tried to forbid those who had renounced American citizenship to return to the country. However, such Draconian measures have not been introduced yet. Moreover, from 2008 onwards a special “exit tax,” which must be paid for 10 years, has been imposed on certain categories of ex-Americans.