The State Department has slashed by about 80% the fee for Americans to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship.
After years of legal battles with several groups representing Americans wanting to give up their citizenship, the department on Friday published a final rule in the Federal Register that reduces the cost from $2,350 to $450.
The new fee, which took effect on Friday, had been promised in 2023 but had never been implemented. The cost is now the same as it was when the State Department first started charging Americans to formally renounce their citizenship in 2010.
If you were born in the USA, still live here, have no other citizenship and drop the $450 to renounce - what happens?
Part of the requirement for renouncing is (or at least should be) that you have established citizenship somewhere else. Otherwise you would be considered stateless, which causes all kinds of problems. Everything from being unable to access government benefits, to not being able to get an ID.
I say “should be” because the US is one of the few attending countries that refused to sign the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness
As an aside, it is this annoying thing with American exceptionalism in regards to certain issues that makes it anathema to the concept of a United Nations, despite it being a founding member-nation.
I don’t think you can, there are some conventions around this. https://www.unhcr.org/what-we-do/protect-human-rights/ending-statelessness/un-conventions-statelessness
So unless you have a second one the conventions prevent them.
You must declare taxes even if living abroad
You must file, but the US has reciprocal tax treaties with many countries, which allow you to deduct any taxes you paid in your home country. So if you paid $15k in taxes in Spain, you would be able to put that towards any taxes you owed in the US.
Of course, you still have to actually file your taxes in the US. Which is a massive pain in the ass, because the US tax code is kept intentionally convoluted so people will feel the need to pay for tax software. The tax software companies literally lobby congress to keep the codes complicated. In most other countries, the government basically just sends a mailer that says “hey here’s what we have on file. Let us know if you have any corrections.”
TURBOTAX being the major beneficiary of this.
You can use https://www.freetaxusa.com/ while it’s still available. Even if it doesn’t support all your cases you can at least get started.