As they say on the internet: "How can we miss you if you won't go away?"
From the AP via the Los Angeles Times, March 14:
- U.S. State Department reduces citizenship renunciation fee by 80%, from $2,350 to $450, ending years of legal battles challenging the charge’s constitutionality.
- The steep fee, enacted in 2015 due to surging demand among American expatriates seeking to avoid new tax reporting requirements, faced fierce opposition.
- At least 8,755 Americans paid the full $2,350 since a 2023 reduction announcement.
The State Department has slashed by about 80% the fee for Americans to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship.
After years of legal battles with several groups representing Americans wanting to give up their citizenship, the department on Friday published a final rule in the Federal Register that reduces the cost from $2,350 to $450.
The new fee, which took effect Friday, had been promised in 2023 but never implemented. The cost is now the same as it was when the State Department first started charging Americans to formally renounce their citizenship in 2010.
Renouncing U.S. citizenship can be an intensive and lengthy process. Applicants must repeatedly confirm in multiple written and verbal attestations to a State Department consular officer that they understand the implications of the step before being allowed to take a formal oath of renunciation. It must then be reviewed by the department.
The fee was raised from $450 to $2,350 in 2015 to cover the administrative expenses as the number of people wanting to renounce their citizenship surged in part due to new U.S. tax reporting requirements for American expatriates that angered many.
That dramatic fee increase drew significant opposition from groups such as the France-based Assn. of Accidental Americans, which represents people mainly living abroad whose U.S. citizenship is due to their having been born in the United States....
....MUCH MORE
I think the Supreme Court is weighing a couple birthright citizenship cases, not sure how the AAA will factor into their decision.
