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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

The government's actual "solution" to this problem has been to raise the fee of renouncing citizenship, from $450 to $2,350. No problem for wealthy people who want to avoid tax, but quite a large burden on everyone else.

I plan to become a German citizen eventually, because I'm probably going to retire here. But thanks to Germany's disallowance of naturalized dual citizenship and America's tax complexities, that requires weighing a huge number of problems. At least my German bank (DKB) didn't kick me out.

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There's also an expatriation tax if your net worth is greater than a certain amount ($2,000,000) or you've averaged over a certain tax liability for the last five years ($139,000). The tax also applies to pensions, stocks, etc. based on their market value on the day you renounce.

I keep seeing people repeat this, yet I can't find any information to confirm it. you can become a German citizen and still retain your US citizenship, from everything I've read and everyone I've asked on the matter.

See http://www.einbuergerungstest.biz/einbuergerung-allgemein/do.... Germany does allow that only in special cases.

If renouncing is not allowed by the other country (i.e. Brazil), or if the renunciation is too expensive or difficult. I.e. you wouldn't want to go to Mogadishu to renounce your Somali nationality.

What have you read and who did you ask? The general rule [0][1] is that you cannot keep your existing citizenship, with certain exceptions to that rule specified by law [2]. I don't see any that apply to the US, though, most of them deal with situations where you want to, but for various reasons can't, give up your previous citizenship. It's possible that there's a separate treaty with the US (as permitted in § 12 (3)), but I couldn't find any.

IANAL.

[0] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/rustag/__10.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Natural... [2] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/rustag/__12.html

It's probably similar to how most EU countries work - you can have two citizenships,but both of those countries will only recognize their citizenship. So for example - if you had a dual Polish/British citizenship, Poland would only recognize your Polish citizenship. As long as you are in Poland, you are a Polish citizen in the eyes of the law, and you would not be officially treated as a foreigner, or even recignized as one. You could go to the British embassy, but they would be unable to help in regards to Polish law, because Polish law would not recognize your British citizenship. The same works in reverse, if you were in Britain, only your British citizenship would be recognized. However, if you traveled to any other country, you get to pick which citizenship you want to use for official purposes.

No. In Germany we had a big debate about doppelte staatsbügerschaft at the beginning of the millenium. It was already a big undertaking to enable that at all, for children born here from parent with foreign citizenship. It does not go further than this, in general if you want to be german, you are german and nothing else. There are some exceptions as listed above, but they should not apply here.

It depends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Dual_ci...

To expand on what everyone else has already said, most people holding American/German dual citizenship have a German parent.

There are a few other rare exceptions. But it is completely impossible under the standard naturalization process, which requires you to renounce any previous citizenship.

It's not just Germany either. Norway doesn't allow dual citizenship unless the other country doesn't allow you to renounce your citizenship, doing so would require you to put yourself in danger, or if the fee is high enough to be considered unduly burdensome - more than 4% of your general income.

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