“What we have seen is a substantial change in mentality among the overseas community in the past two years. Before, no one would dare mention to other Americans that they were even thinking of renouncing their U.S. nationality. Now, it is an openly discussed issue.”-Jackie Bugnion, American Citizens Abroad
Since 2008 the numbers of U.S. citizens rejecting their citizenship has only gone up.
2008: 235
2009: 743
2010: 1,500+
And these are the people who left the United States and officially rejected their citizenship. The number of people who still have U.S. citizenship, after leaving, are in the millions!
The exodus has got government leaders so riled up that they’ve passed tax laws (like FATCA & FBAR) that essentially makes anyone who leaves the United States a tax evading terrorist.
This is redundant because expatriates are already required to pay U.S. taxes even though they live in another country: “The U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that taxes its citizens on income they earn abroad.“-William McGurn, Wall Street Journal
By one count, 5.2 million U.S. citizens live outside the United States, and pay taxes to the United States!
Recently a U.S. citizen, who’s been living in Sweden for 25 years, got hit with a huge FBAR fine: “I was potentially looking at a seven figure fine.”-‘Pamela’
‘Pamela’ also explained how she was treated like a suspected terrorist: “I was treated like a criminal. I was told that even in the Voluntary Disclosure Program it would be assumed I was a ‘willful violator’ of the tax laws and would need to pay 25% of all my overseas assets, based on the highest balance in the sum total of all my bank accounts, retirement accounts, apartment, car, etc. over the last eight years.”
The U.S. government even puts pressure on other countries to go after the U.S. expats: “We have heard of banks calling in mortgages and refusing pension fund and insurance coverage for U.S. citizens.”-Mary Louise Serrato, American Citizens Abroad
Serrato says the U.S. government is even going after people who were born in the U.S., to foreign parents, but then left immediately afterwards never to return: “Many individuals are not even aware that they are American and should be filing, such as Green Card holders and ‘accidental’ Americans (born in the U.S., left when they were three and never returned), children of Americans now living overseas (even if U.S. citizenship was never claimed)!”
“I really can’t believe it! This nice country that I respect, have they gone mad?”-Peter Hallworth, U.K. citizen, who’s two adult sons (raised in Britain) are being forced to pay U.S. taxes because they were born in the United States
U.S. expats living abroad, yet paying U.S. taxes with little or no representation. Isn’t that what the U.S. Revolution of 1776 was all about?