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Comment by topspin | Hacker News Reader

It's reported every year because the number is growing rapidly and it's a recent phenomena. Who are these people? Is the US losing exceptionally accomplished citizens for tax reasons? I'd like to know because if so then it isn't inconsequential. Sorry if it bothers you that this prompts people to be critical of these tax and seizure laws, but I'd rather know what's going on than be ignorant because reporting it discomfits you.

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"Growing rapidly" is very easy when it's a very small number. I actually deal in this area for a living, and I have significantly more individual clients coming into the US then leaving (100+ vs none over the past 3 years), so I say to those who want out: good riddance.

What's your reasoning here, actually?

There are still fairly few expats who go to the trouble to renounce their citizenship... so "good riddance" to them?

It's perhaps worth pointing out that these are people who've already left, some of them decades earlier, who hung onto their US citizenship possibly because it's been easier than the alternatives (I can tell you getting citizenship in, e.g., France, is non-trivial, particularly if you're not married to a citizen, but even so if you are).

But now, for this little slice of expats, keeping US citizenship has become the more onerous option, and so they have a pragmatic reason to drop their old citizenship in a country they no longer inhabit, anyway. What's to get worked up about, really?

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