A central source of information about expatriation

This site is about renunciation of U.S. citizenship: the law, the process, the details.

We made this site because there's very little information available about renouncing U.S. citizenship. And what little information exists is often riddled with errors and is not based on first-hand knowledge.

The site is free to use as you wish, and there are no restrictions on how you use anything here.

Information on expatriation: hard to find, not helpful

Government sources about expatriation are scarce and hard to find. Much information on the government sites that do exist, including from both the Department of of State and the IRS, is surprisingly outdated or inaccurate.

Even most consular staff, who are legally tasked with administering renunciations, themselves have little idea about the laws or the process.

Private sector sources can be just as bad.

Many non-government sites we've seen are innocently misleading at best and dangerously wrong at worst. None that we've seen are based on the authors' first-hand experience.

And unfortunately, many of these private sites exist solely to take advantage of the information scarcity by selling you worthless products or consulting services.

Accurate information and first-hand knowledge

So we made a site where you can get accurate information about expatriation from beginning to end. Use the menu bar at the top to explore the different areas, or visit each section in order by following the links at the bottom of each page. Some highlights of what you'll find:

• Step-by-step description of what it's really like to renounce U.S. citizenship, based on actual first-hand experiences of many individuals in different countries.
• Explanation of your rights: what rights you lose upon renunciation, and what rights you still have.
• Summaries of the law on expatriation and the tax issues so you will understand the history and factual background of citizenship-based taxed, including an analysis of the erosion in value of the foreign earned income tax exclusion.
• An international comparison of tax systems which makes clear that the U.S. is the sole country in the world which taxes non-resident citizens the same as residents.
• Insight into the impact of renunciation on tax: comparison of U.S. income tax on citizens vs. non-resident non-citizens, analysis of the exit tax on expatriation imposed in 2008, and ideas of how to begin to analyze your own tax situation.
• Resources you'll need so that you can inform yourself further, including all documents required for expatriation by the Department of State, all IRS tax documents, relevant laws and court cases, outside analysis from legal and financial professionals, and media stories from 1914 to the present.
• Summarized data on renunciations, including totals by quarter and year. Analysis and critique so you can understand the numerous flaws in the only dataset publicly available about expatriations.
• Basic information about acquiring second citizenship, a new section which we added after receiving several inquiries.
• Answers to dozens of questions in the extensive and ever-expanding FAQ section. Thorough discussions of numerous topics including: the constitutionality of U.S. expatriation laws, the issue of stateless-ness, the viability of the "drop off the radar" tax avoidance strategy, the future of international tax collection.

We have first-hand experience with expatriation. We're two friends who each renounced U.S. citizenship (separately) within the last few years with our families. And we personally know quite a few others who have expatriated, many of whom were willing to share their experiences with us for this site.

We all went through the same issues that everyone considering expatriation faces: the emotions and philosophical questions, the life considerations, the financial calculations, the legal and tax research, and of course the eventual renunciation itself.

We hope we can demystify the process and make it a little easier for people who are considering it now.

Free

A final note: Everything here is free.

We don't sell anything. We offer no products, no consulting service. We're not clandestinely trying to promote our own or anyone else's law/accounting/consulting/asset-management/whatever firm. None of the links here were requested by the source. There are no advertisements and there are no affiliated links which will pay us if you buy something from them. And we don't record any data about you to use for our own marketing or to sell to others.

We made this site because there's very little information available about renouncing U.S. citizenship. And what little information exists is often riddled with errors.

It's hard to get good, first-hand information about renouncing U.S. citizenship. We want to give people considering expatriation the information and resources so they can analyze their situation.

In a nutshell, we made the site that we wish had existed when we expatriated.

So iIt's all free for your use. Copy anything you want, and use it in any way you want.

Feel free to contact us (see FAQ for contact info) with your questions, stories, corrections, and suggestions. Depending what you send, it might take us a while get back to you (anything we have to research might take a week or two), but we try to respond to all messages.