Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship • Hacker News Board

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#61

Post by evoxed » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:15 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #30

rada wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know DS but my guess is, Singapore doesn't recognize dual citizenship, hence you must renounce your US citizenship to get a Singapore passport. http://sivers.org/singapore

That's correct. In fact Singapore is so against dual citizenship that even people who have dual citizenship by birth must choose one or the other once they become adults: by age 22 they must renounce all other citizenships, or lose their Singapore citizenship. Denmark is another country with a similar law, which causes a reasonable amount of angst among Danes reaching that age. Particularly true of those with US/Dani…

Same for Japan unfortunately. Although there is a growing trend of just ignoring the notifications and being careful with your passports... it's been fine for a number of people I've talked to, but I'm still curious as to how easy it would be for customs to find out.

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#62

Post by marshallp » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:15 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #48

marshallp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been talk recently of wealthy americans fleeing the country for tax reasons. If Obama gets reelected, as is expected, he's gonna go all out in his second term (I'm an Obama supporter but I dislike the idea of taxing the entrepreneurs more to fund the lazy government workers).

> I'm an Obama supporter but I dislike the idea of taxing the entrepreneurs more to fund the lazy government workers So is that like a very mild dislike or something? Otherwise, that sentence makes zero sense.

Not really. Obama's foreign policy is better than the republicans and he genuinely cares about people so healthcare and welfare policies would be better, but his support base also consists of the unions, which I disagree with.

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#63

Post by ma2rten » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:17 PM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #12

As someone who holds three nationalities, and is 2 years away from a fourth: I look forward to the day I hold none. Beligerence of the "State" knows no bounds, I hope we can free ourselves from this regressive construct and, once again, live in this world judged by our own merit and character, beholden to none.

I also hold three passports. I think that having multiple nationalities does make you see how arbitrary the concept of a nation state is (getting privileges solely because of your place of birth or who your parents are), however I don't see that changing anytime soon, because there is not really a realistic alternative.

EDIT: In case people are interested, my nationalities are: Dutch, German, Canadian. I was born with all three of them (even though I found out only much later). I would loose both my Dutch and my German citizenship if I were to acquire another one.

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#64

Post by MattGrommes » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:18 PM UTC

phren0logy wrote: post #15

pinko wrote: post #2

Is anyone else slightly surprised that: (a) this is public info online, and; (b) it's apparently public because, of all things, HIPPA?

HIPAA is not really about privacy. The name is a good bit of marketing. Don't take my word, check it out for yourself.

I don't know about the wording of the law but in the actual implementations I've done it does provide a measure of privacy and accountability. HIPAA-compliant companies are required to keep your data from being seen by anybody you haven't allowed to see it and for like the programmers working on the HIPAA system who might be exposed to your data you're required to not provide raw access to the data and keep a auditing log of who saw it and when.

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#65

Post by rdtsc » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:19 PM UTC

runako wrote: post #21

patrocles wrote: post #13

The US Tax Code incents US citizens to drop their citizenship before they have 2M USD in net worth. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/877

At best, you're referring only to US expatriates. The article you linked does not apply to people living in the US at all. Also, political innuendo aside, Sivers doesn't mention tax avoidance in his reasons for moving to Singapore: http://sivers.org/singapore

Because if he did he would be in trouble. Renouncing citizenship for the purpose of tax avoidance is not something US govt. likes very much.

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#66

Post by jarek » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:20 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #18

mahmud wrote: post #12

As someone who holds three nationalities, and is 2 years away from a fourth: I look forward to the day I hold none. Beligerence of the "State" knows no bounds, I hope we can free ourselves from this regressive construct and, once again, live in this world judged by our own merit and character, beholden to none.

Mind sharing which one you're pursuing or which ones you think are worthy nationalities to hold?

Personally I think a combo of one of EU countries and Australia or Canada is nice. You get pretty much all of the first world benefits, can live anywhere in the EU while it's still together with minimal hassles, have Australia/Canada when you're missing an environment a little more the U.S., without the crazy that's U.S. citizenship and corresponding tax laws. (But of course I'd think so as a dual CA/EU citizen.)

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#67

Post by mahmud » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:21 PM UTC

jstabbac wrote: post #34

mahmud wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. embassy has evacuated my family and we're still paying for it. It's not free. We could have hired a private militia and escaped to safety for 5% of what we paid the state department.

Could you elaborate? I'm interested in knowing more. Where were you, how much did it cost, what services were provided?

Somalia 1991. [two-digit]k per person. Do the math.

(I need to ask the family, I remember it being more than 30k)

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#68

Post by brd » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:22 PM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #41

nirvana wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind sharing which one you're pursuing or which ones you think are worthy nationalities to hold?

Be a U.S. citizen but don't live there. That is the best option of them all, and one I took.

What? This is most certainly not the best option.

As a U.S. citizen you are required to pay taxes on income earned worldwide and from my understanding you can only deduct up to ~95k in 2012.

From what I've read, being a US citizen and working abroad is expensive and one of the main motivations for people to renounce their US citizenship.

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#69

Post by run4yourlives » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:22 PM UTC

I'm a little disappointed that this would be posted and not include a commentary about the number of reasons that he would have for doing this.

It seems rather useless to simply troll government websites for "revealing" data and make no other comment about it. We can add nothing to this data point beyond conjecture without understanding why a person makes this decision.

EDIT: So people have figured out that he's moved to Singapore and married a Singaporean, which makes perfect sense given their stance on citizenship in general.

I know a Singaporean - they don't like losing citizens. Namely, because of the extensive government involvement in their lives in the form of everything from social services to national ID cards to military service. The approach is a much different path of democracy than what we'd be used to in North America.

Re: Derek Sivers Renounces his US Citizenship

#70

Post by jarek » Tue, May 08, 2012, 5:23 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #31

marshallp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been talk recently of wealthy americans fleeing the country for tax reasons. If Obama gets reelected, as is expected, he's gonna go all out in his second term (I'm an Obama supporter but I dislike the idea of taxing the entrepreneurs more to fund the lazy government workers).

...Obama has a propsal to tax entrepreneurs? Rant time: I despise what political discourse in this country has become. Rather than talk about policy we've trained everyone (like marshallp here) to regurgitate sound bites about how this or that politician is "gonna go all out" to do whatever evil thing sounds fun this week. Look: tax policy is a bunch of boring laws. You can read them if you like. You can look at prop…

> Rant time: I despise what political discourse in this country has become.

Maybe not being associated with that (or at least not as much) is another of Sivers' reasons for renouncing...