What if your assets are less than $2 million?
In most high-income countries with that income, you either won’t pay anything, or the difference will be marginal.
There will be very few people in the world for whom renouncing the US citizenship would be worth it long-term.
Unless you go full tax-haven, which is also fine.
Such as? All of them stem from FATCA, and we’re back to taxes.
And in a lot of situations not even renouncing the US citizenship will help you there, as you’ll be scrutinized for having a US birthplace.
I understand that FATCA's reporting requirements are onerous enough for banks that they reject US account holders. Then, the inability to get a local bank account may cause problems.
This is where I ask, "can't you just use a US bank account, then? One with good international support? (No fees, etc.)" I suspect this is feasible in many countries?
I do know, however, that in India, many activities require an Indian credit card (regular Visa &etc cards work fine for many things, but for others -- particularly if they touch the government in any way -- they are rejected). And the way to get an Indian credit card is to have an Indian bank account. You see where this is going. So e.g., you end up unable to buy train tickets without bugging an Indian citizen to do it for you.
I would also suspect that, the minute you need to deal with an account with any kind of special government classification -- say, a retirement account -- then you need that account to be at an institution that knows about those laws, which again would require a local bank.
There’s only one benefit from renouncing the US citizenship. You’re no longer a tax resident.
There’s also a $112k+inflation/year exemption for foreign earned income for non-residents. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
So if you’re renouncing your citizenship for tax reasons, it’s very unlikely that it’s going to be worth it, if you’ve got under $2m in assets.
Not to mention that if you decide to return to the US, not only have to go through the US immigation system, but you also won’t clear a background check, because people who renounce their US citizenship are entered into the NICS system.