The Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship • Hacker News Board

Re: The Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship

#21

Post by BrandoElFollito » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 5:35 AM UTC

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #2

First you must have another nationality to use its passport. Then, if you do not plan to ever go to the US you can just forger about your US nationality and do not file any documents there, including taxes (which you pay in the country you are in, and hush away your US citizen obligations). This will not work in Europe, though, where anything financial has a question about you being a US national - and things get gro…

One more comment following the downvotes.

There is one single country in the world that bullied its way into imposing its tax regulations into the heart of European banking systems.

If you have similar tax regulations in any other country in the world, it has zero impact on you in Europe (say if Vietnam required double filing like the US and you were German-Vietnamiese, you could ignore them when living in Germany because no bank will ask you "are you a Vietnamese citizen?")

This is too say that Europe has been a doormat when it comes to such extraterritoriality and this is slowly changing over the last US presidency. At last.

Re: The Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship

#22

Post by retired » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 8:18 AM UTC

TFNA wrote: post #18

retired wrote: post #9

I would never, ever renounce my citizenship voluntarily. It gives me access to what I call home, my friends, my family, a massive job market. Politics are a bit rough right now but imagine if that clears up in ten years time and you can't go back. Keeping my passport will always assure that I can get back to The Netherlands.

Your Dutch citizenship doesn’t come with an obligation to laboriously file taxes to your home country even if you live abroad, and you are in no risk of being denied a bank account in any EU country. This is something US passport holders uniquely have to deal with, hence the phenomenon of dual citizens renouncing the US citizenship.

Having to file taxes in my home country would be worth keeping my citizenship. The bank accounts aren’t a big issue, plenty of Americans in the EU seem to manage.

This article is about people renouncing citizenship based on the current administration. That is very short sighted.

PS: The Dutch government can still tax my assets, regardless of the 183 days rule. So there is a risk to me for keeping my passport.

Re: The Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship

#23

Post by antonvs » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #20

antonvs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or you resort to bully actions like the US does Yes, so your point is? You seem confused.

My point is that the US law is limited to the US, whatever "illegal" is for the US is contained to its land. The exception being bully tactics they still can afford (less and less, thank you Mr Trump), or the fear countries have to annoy the US and who agree to extraterritoriality, as it is the case with the tax law. Not sure where you seem to be confused.

You might want to look into the concept of international treaties.

The US has thousands of treaties with other countries, covering everything from human rights to nuclear weapons to tax. The European Union is entirely based on such agreements, as is the United Nations. If such treaties didn't exist, neither would the world as we know it today.

More than 60 of the treaties the US is party to are tax treaties, which are mutual treaties that both countries benefit from. Those other countries enforce those treaties within their borders. That should help you understand what's happening here.

> Not sure where you seem to be confused.

You wrote that laws "need to be enforceable" and then complained about "[resorting] to bully actions". Guess what, that's a big part of how laws are enforced, everywhere in the world. It's why police forces and armies exist. You seem to be looking at individual pieces of the picture without understanding how they connect.

Re: The Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship

#24

Post by BrandoElFollito » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

antonvs wrote: post #23

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the US law is limited to the US, whatever "illegal" is for the US is contained to its land. The exception being bully tactics they still can afford (less and less, thank you Mr Trump), or the fear countries have to annoy the US and who agree to extraterritoriality, as it is the case with the tax law. Not sure where you seem to be confused.

You might want to look into the concept of international treaties. The US has thousands of treaties with other countries, covering everything from human rights to nuclear weapons to tax. The European Union is entirely based on such agreements, as is the United Nations. If such treaties didn't exist, neither would the world as we know it today. More than 60 of the treaties the US is party to are tax treaties, which ar…

> The US has thousands of treaties with other countries, covering everything from human rights to nuclear weapons to tax. The European Union is entirely based on such agreements, as is the United Nations. If such treaties didn't exist, neither would the world as we know it today.

Of course. Now: how many countries have a special arrangement with European banks to have their citizens prominently marked as "special cases", an arrangement that is beneficial to only one side? And a gigantic pain in the ass for people who are American citizens but have no links to the US, just the fact that they happened to be born there?

> You wrote that laws "need to be enforceable" and then complained about "[resorting] to bully actions". Guess what, that's a big part of how laws are enforced, everywhere in the world. It's why police forces and armies exist. You seem to be looking at individual pieces of the picture without understanding how they connect.

Thank you for pointing out the fact that I do not understand this.

If I am a US citizen outside of the US, whatever the US request from me, I can just let go. If I never step foot in the US. Additionally, if you are in Europe, this is hardly doable because of how we are vassals.

On the larger scale the US do force extraterritoriality via the use of economic threats.

I am fully aware that treaties work until they don't, and international law works until it doesn't and the UN works until it doe snot (for the latter it does not work in the first place for for the sake of the explanation let's say it does)

Have you ever opened an account in a bank in Europe?

Re: The Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship

#25

Post by TFNA » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

retired wrote: post #22

TFNA wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Dutch citizenship doesn’t come with an obligation to laboriously file taxes to your home country even if you live abroad, and you are in no risk of being denied a bank account in any EU country. This is something US passport holders uniquely have to deal with, hence the phenomenon of dual citizens renouncing the US citizenship.

Having to file taxes in my home country would be worth keeping my citizenship. The bank accounts aren’t a big issue, plenty of Americans in the EU seem to manage. This article is about people renouncing citizenship based on the current administration. That is very short sighted. PS: The Dutch government can still tax my assets, regardless of the 183 days rule. So there is a risk to me for keeping my passport.

> Having to file taxes in my home country would be worth keeping my citizenship.

OK, but what if each year you had to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars (that you maybe don’t even have) to an accountant, because complicated paperwork is demanded of you? What if you got audited and then were required to pay for very expensive authorized translation into English of very many pages of financial documentation?

> The bank accounts aren’t a big issue, plenty of Americans in the EU seem to manage.

People manage until they don’t. Expats do get debanked. Sometimes American passport holders are limited to a single bank in a country, and its offerings aren’t the best for the type of customer they are. Very often a bank will allow Americans to open an account, but will bar them from many types of services like investments for retirement.

> This article is about people renouncing citizenship based on the current administration.

That is the spin that The Guardian puts on it, because politics make the story sexy. But the statistics of citizenship renunciation that the article cites are mainly motivated by the hassles of being a US citizen abroad, not just bitterness towards Trump.