Why a record number of Americans dumped their citizenship
They say the only two givens in life are death and taxes. And, while you still can’t live forever, an increasingly large number of Americans are skipping out on their fiscal obligations by dumping their citizenship.
A whopping 1,426 Americans chose to expatriate in the third quarter of this year, breaking the previous record which was set on the first quarter of 2015, according to data recently released by the Federal Register.
VOCATIV: THE BEST AND WORST PASSPORTS IN THE WORLD
Americans living abroad have always had to file taxes or face heavy fines or even imprisonment, but a crackdown that started in 2010 could be the reason behind the recent surge, according to a 2014 deVere Group survey. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), enacted in 2010, allows the American government to request from foreign banks the financial account information of American clients, or be subject to a 30 percent withholding tax on revenues generated in the United States. This makes American clients extremely costly, and it makes it especially attractive to dump clients of modest means.
