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Comment by vonnik | Hacker News Reader

This type of article appears every few years. Frankly, I don't think the numbers are very impressive, and they seem to be declining.

"In 2013, 2,999 Americans renounced their citizenship; in 2014 so far, it’s a little more than 1,500 people."

The population of the US in 2012 was about 314 million. So 0.000009% renounced their citizenship...

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I know, from news here in Canada, that they have introduce some delays that are preventing thousands of dual citizens to renounce their US citizenships until 2015 at the earliest. Furthermore, you can not renounce your US citizenship if do not have citizenship in another country. So, of course, most Americans can not do this and to use the population of the US as a relative base for your count is meaningless.

Good point. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_diaspora) there are 6.3 million Americans living abroad or ~2% of Americans. So perhaps ~0.04% of Americans abroad renounced citizenship annually. To put it in context, though, you'd need to know how that rate change over time and the size of the American diaspora over time.

So it's hard to judge how big or meaningful this story is. But anecdotally, I too am in Canada and I have definitely been hearing a lot recently from American friends who are finding US citizenship to be a PITA because of taxes.

Except they raised the fees for doing so something like %1,000 in the intervening period.

Remember, you don't get to just renounce. You have to petition the government for permission to have a hearing to renounce, and then you have to show up at this hearing -- in an embassy on foreign soil-- and give them reasons to let you renounce.

IF you say the wrong thing, they will not let you renounce.

The old adage "love it or leave it" forgets that we are, as far as the federal government is concerned, cattle, who can only wander off if we aren't too valuable. If you are worth several million, you will not be able to renounce without paying hefty taxes, and even then you probably need to rent some politicians with pull to influence the situation.

Which doesn't make sense at all. I should be able to renounce my citizenship via a simple statement on a public forum, such as a newspaper. If a citizenship is really just verification one has taken a certain oath to a country, why can't the individual invalidate that oath once they no longer respect it?

1. Canary in a coal mine. Are these (currently small) numbers an indication of an underlying problem?

2. Are the numbers reported by the U.S. government accurate?

3. To the contrary, the annual expatriation numbers appear to be increasing.

Correction: 0.0009%. (You forgot to multiply by 100.)

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