Ex-American citizens are suing the US government because they say the $2,350 fee they paid to renounce their citizenships is too high.
  • Hyperreality
    3•9 months ago

    Thereby handily ignoring the rest of my comment, because you’d prefer to think of anyone who wants to renounce citizenship as a rich tax evader, rather than admit that there are plenty of reasons why someone might not want to have American citizenship, because shock horror not everyone wants to be American, live in the US, or loves the US. Especially if they’ve never lived there or visited.

    Imagine having been born in Italy during a long holiday, and for the rest of your life being forced to fill in Italian tax forms, despite working a minimum wage job and having no idea how the Italian system works and barely speaking the language. And when you try to get a loan from a American bank, they say no, because they’d have to file relevant paperwork with the Italian equivalent of the IRS.

      • Hyperreality
        0•9 months ago

        Imagine a scenario where you gained Italian citizenship through an accident of birth. Your parents were on holiday, your mother went into labour a bit earlier than expected.

        Is the only reason you wouldn’t want to be Italian that you want to avoid paying tax there?

          • Hyperreality
            1•9 months ago

            If it wasn’t taxes, they’d have done it sooner,

            The Guardian:

            By some calculations, there may be as many as 30,000 people among the estimated 5 million to 9 million US citizens living abroad who would like to begin the renunciation process but can’t.

            …

            Marie Sock, the first woman to stand as a presidential candidate in the Gambia, was forced to pull out of the race recently after she failed to get any response to her request to renounce her US nationality from the US embassy.

            …

            He became disillusioned when he learned that because his son was born outside the US he would not be eligible for US citizenship, and yet because of James’s citizenship he would treated as if he were a US taxpayer. That struck him as a modern form of taxation without representation. For the past year he has been trying to get through to an official who will help him renounce his citizenship, without success. “I never asked for US citizenship, and now I’m not even allowed to give it up.”

            https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/31/americans-seeking-renounce-citizenship-stuck