# Good Article - Renunciation



## FilingLate

I was wondering as to why their are only 2999 US Citizen who renounce their citizenship when i know of personally 4 and from various message board a dozen plus
this article gives a good look.

Nonomous or anyone else are the Canadian Bank set to report to CRA bank account information starting July 1st?

I have a friend in TD who told me that they are setting up a new floor for Fatca but it hasn't started yet.

Record Numbers Renounce U.S. Citizenship---And Many Aren't Counted - Forbes


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## Nononymous

God only knows. But the sense I have is that they won't be transmitting too much information right away, because most of the tax-protected accounts (RRSP, RESP etc.) are exempt, and the balance threshold for retroactively collecting citizenship data on existing accounts is high. 

I suspect that if you try to open new accounts after 1 July you may need to supply citizenship information, but it's an open question as to whether they'd want to see proof, or if you can simply lie to the bank and they won't care because they've satisfied the requirement to ask.


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## Nononymous

That article raised an interesting point - the official published renunciation numbers are based only on those who've gotten squared away with the Treasury by doing all their exit tax filings yada yada. It doesn't give the number of people, potentially far higher, who've renounced at consulates and then not bothered with tax paperwork. Interesting. 

Since I'm a path-of-least-resistance sort of person, were I to renounce I probably wouldn't risk filing no tax paperwork at all, but I might cut a few corners to reduce the paperwork burden by filing "simplified" 1040s. (Currently I'm not planning to renounce - I think the lazy-ass option of staying off the radar is still pretty good for Canadian citizens living in Canada.)


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## CdnAllTheWay

Those on the list are not necessarily squared away with Treasury. I appeared on the list before my 8854 was received, and I have not filed tax returns.


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## BBCWatcher

Forbes seems to be beating this drum that the U.S. renunciation statistics aren't accurate. (It's great click-bait for Forbes's unusual audience.) OK, but extraordinary claims require at least some evidence. Nobody has come up with any yet. The comments attached to that article are interesting, too. "I renounced, and my name appeared, despite your hypothesis" is a very common theme.

For now I'm afraid I have to put such hypotheses in the same category as "Mitt Romney really won" hypotheses.  I keep an open mind, but it's a rational one.


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## DonMurphyCanada

Yes the Canadian government will be providing information to the IRS on US citizens holding accounts in Canada but the agreement reached has Canadian banks provideing the info to the CRA (Canadian Revenue Agency (Canadian government - tax arm)) instead of directly to the IRS. My understanding is the "foreign trusts" (RESP's and TFSA's) are not reportable under this agreement though

FATCA tax deal with U.S. takes some heat off Canadian banks - Politics - CBC News

Don


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## FilingLate

BBCWatcher said:


> Forbes seems to be beating this drum that the U.S. renunciation statistics aren't accurate. (It's great click-bait for Forbes's unusual audience.) OK, but extraordinary claims require at least some evidence. Nobody has come up with any yet. The comments attached to that article are interesting, too. "I renounced, and my name appeared, despite your hypothesis" is a very common theme.
> 
> For now I'm afraid I have to put such hypotheses in the same category as "Mitt Romney really won" hypotheses.  I keep an open mind, but it's a rational one.



I agree with you however the same report came in Issac Brock Society and they gave a few names which wern't on the list.

Here is the report from Issac Brock

1,001 names in latest Federal Register “name-and-shame” list
Posted on May 1, 2014 by Eric Posted in Issues regarding US persons abroad 55 Comments
The Q1 2014 Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate has been placed on public inspection for printing in the Federal Register for 2 May 2014, two days later than required by 26 USC § 6039G(d). This is the seventh quarter in a row in which the Internal Revenue Service has failed to publish their list of certain ex-Americans by the legally-mandated deadline, bringing their all-time compliance rate to a dismal 27.5%.

One famous name did appear: “Tina Turner”, in precisely that form — rather surprising, since as far as I know that’s not her civil name in the first place. However, contrary to my prediction last time, the overall rate of missing names does not seem to have come down as much as expected. We still have not seen one-quarter of the famous people known to have renounced in 2013: the names of Cuban intelligence officer René González, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines’ former U.N. Representative Camillo Gonsalves, and Pakistani politician Fauzia Kasuri are absent.

The IRS’ utter inability to publish a simple list of names in a complete and timely fashion just fills you with confidence that they’re going to be able handle all that FATCA data fairly and competently, right?

As always, congratulations to Canadian anthropologists and insurance agents, Thai schoolteachers, fresh Singaporean university graduates, and every other ordinary emigrant and accidental American whose name was included in a list which delusional politicians think covers only “a handful of the wealthiest of the wealthy”, and my sympathies to those who for whatever reason did not have their names included.


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## BBCWatcher

It took me a few seconds scanning the list to find what looks very much like a duplicate, and I didn't scan the whole list. (Hint: In the Bs.) Is that a U.S. government conspiracy to artificially _inflate_ the statistics? 

You know what else is interesting about this report? It includes the names of non-citizens who expatriated. It says so right at the top of the report: long-term U.S. residents who give up their U.S. residency are counted. Most people would think that's a very different thing and would want separate numbers, but the list lumps citizens and non-citizens together...because that's what the statute says. So did 2,999 American citizens renounce last year (2013), or did 2,999 U.S. citizens and long-term U.S. residents renounce and terminate their green cards, respectively? Big difference.

As for the publication date, that's a cheap shot and reflects badly on their organization. The list was signed off on April 23. The statute says "the Secretary shall publish in the Federal Register...." That's the Treasury Secretary who doesn't publish the Federal Register. The National Archives (GPO) does, and that's not within Treasury. The only way to interpret that statutory requirement plausibly is "submit for publication," and I would not be at all surprised if there's case law on that point. We don't know exactly when that submission was, but it had to have been in April, on April 23 or later in April. The Federal Register's official publication date (May 2 in this case) is one day after the documents are available for public inspection (May 1), as indicated at the bottom of the report. That's how the Federal Register works if you spend 30 seconds as I did understanding what the Federal Register's official publication date means. (Has anybody at that organization ever seen a magazine newsstand in their lives?) So Treasury submitted this report early enough for the National Archives to make it available for public viewing on May 1. Or, in other words, not late. Just like tax payments and tax returns postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service or entrusted to a designated courier overseas are deemed to satisfy the IRS's deadlines even though actual receipt at the IRS occurs days later. That's among other reasons why it was a cheap shot, and it just makes them look like ignorant zealots, sorry to say.

Not surprisingly if the Secretary of the Treasury (i.e. the IRS) doesn't get the information from the State Department about a particular individual in a particular quarter, then that individual doesn't appear in the report. That's the way the statute is written as the report itself helpfully reminds. Maybe the Secretary of State ought to be compiling and submitting this list for publication instead. But it's really no big deal. Just wait a quarter or three, and by that time the U.S. embassy in some remote place will get that paperwork back to Washington, through State, and over to Treasury.


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## jbr439

BBCWatcher said:


> Forbes seems to be beating this drum that the U.S. renunciation statistics aren't accurate. (It's great click-bait for Forbes's unusual audience.) OK, but extraordinary claims require at least some evidence. Nobody has come up with any yet.
> ...


Well, the FBI apparently reports higher numbers than the State Department. From the article at Why are so many American expats giving up citizenship? It’s a taxing issue - National | Globalnews.ca :


globalnews article said:


> The FBI reported 4,650 renounced their U.S. citizenship in 2012 – compared to the State Department’s 932. So far this year, another 1,958 people were recorded in the FBI’s database.


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## BBCWatcher

A follow-up in the same publication largely reconciled that. The NCIS has a broader definition than what the Treasury Security is required to report, quite simply. And NCIS gets its data earlier in many cases, so, sure enough, one quarter's backlog got cleared and showed up. Different statutes with different definitions yield different results. Which is perfectly reasonable. You probably ought to be at least a little faster and a little broader in adding "do not sell guns" names to the NCIS.

....And so what? Does it matter if the number is 3,238 instead of 3,109 in 2014 (or whatever)? If there's solid evidence the statistics ought to have two zeros added, get back to us. That'd be interesting. Otherwise, nobody (else) cares, to be blunt.


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## jbr439

BBCWatcher said:


> A follow-up in the same publication largely reconciled that.
> ...


Are you able to point to this follow-up?


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## BBCWatcher

Apparently not, but it'll take about 42 seconds to find using your favorite search engine. It's a January, 2014, follow-up article.


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## Nononymous

I tend to agree, unless renunciation/relinquishment goes up by at least one order of magnitude, the numbers are insignificant.


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