Taxes
More Americans Abroad Are Eager to Drop Citizenship on Lowered Fees
US citizens living outside the country are preparing to officially cut ties after grappling with stricter IRS rules.
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So-called accidental Americans tired of reporting assets to the Internal Revenue Service are preparing to renounce their US citizenship as the US Department of State gets ready to significantly cut the filing fee.
Passed in 2010 to crack down on tax evasion, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, has posed a number of headaches for US citizens living outside the country. It requires foreign banks to report assets of US account holders to the IRS. And in some cases it has led lenders to refuse accounts and services to anyone with US citizenship to avoid fees for noncompliance.