Record Numbers Leaving US

For John, BLUF:  Mostly probably penny wise and pound foolish on the part of the US Congress or the bureaucracy.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Often The Wall Street Journal has no link for the hoi polloi, without our payed subscriptions, but this is an exception.  Reporter Laura Saunders gives us "Record Number Give Up U.S. Citizenship".

A record 1,335 people were listed as renouncing their U.S. citizenship or long-term residency in the latest quarterly disclosure from the Treasury Department, released on Thursday.

The total is the highest quarterly number of expatriates since a law requiring the publication of their names was enacted in the 1990s, according to Andrew Mitchel, a lawyer in Centerbrook, Conn., who tallies the lists of names. The previous quarterly record was 1,130 for the second quarter of 2013, he says.

The new figure puts 2015 on pace to exceed the total of 3,415 renunciations in 2014, which was itself a record. That was up 14% from 2,999 individuals in 2013, the previous record.

Here is the explanation from the Department of Treasury.  On the other hand, this is what you might expect.

Experts link the growing number of renunciations by citizens and permanent residents to a tax enforcement campaign against U.S. taxpayers with undeclared offshore accounts. The campaign began after Swiss banking giant UBS UBSN.EB +2.53% admitted in 2009 that it had encouraged U.S. taxpayers to hide assets in secret Swiss accounts.

But the campaign has made the financial lives of more than seven million Americans living abroad more difficult, because the U.S. taxes nonresident citizens on income earned anywhere in the world, and U.S. tax liabilities can apply to the children born to Americans abroad. In many cases, there are only partial offsets available for double taxation.

This raises the question as to if our tax policies, probably designed to capture the high rollers, really just squeezes the middle class.  Well, and there are those who just don't like the US and wish to return to from whence they came.  I wish them the best, but believe they are misguided.

While we use the term "record numbers" we probably receive this many illegal immigrants in a day.  People just want to come here as economic migrants.  I wonder what attracts them?

Regards  —  Cliff