Tax Lawyer Rob Wood on Expatriation

Has the passage of ObamaCare left you--like conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh--threatening to leave the country? Or perhaps you're so sick of listening to Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers that you'd like to flee to a remote island without cable TV. Or maybe you're a naturalized U.S. citizen or permanent resident who has prospered here, but would now like to move back the old country for retirement--or to start a new venture.

Whatever your motives, just because you leave the United States and renounce your citizenship, don't assume you can leave U.S. taxes (or U.S. tax forms and complexity) behind, particularly if you are well-off. If you expatriated on or after June 3, 2004, but before June 17, 2008, certain expatriation tax rules apply under Internal Revenue Code 877. If you are subject to expatriation tax, you must file a Form 1040NR (a U.S. Nonresident Alien Income Tax Return) for each year in the 10-year period following expatriation. The expatriation tax for these filers applies to U.S.-source gross income and gains on a net basis.

Forbes article pdf at woodporter.com

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[AliceStokesPaul]

This is especially punitive for those of us who have not lived in the U.S. for many, many years. I have lived in Canada for over twenty years. My son and husband are not U.S. citizens. I would like to renounce citizenship because paying taxes to the U.S. while not holding ANY income from there is increasingly hard. I am not even rich but, they still make it so hard. What are the rules? I don't consider myself to even really be American anymore but, the U.S. won't let go.