What you get for your US tax money is absolutely not worth having that passport if you have another good passport. I would give that one up (and likely will once I get my second).
> Just an FYI: one hiccup I heard of giving up your US citizenship is that banks didn’t recognize you could be born in USA but not a US citizen.
I had this issue just last month with a UK financial institution (Raisin). I tried to explain it but they obviously were not interested. I actually still have my citizenship (I'd love to renounce but that's currently impossible) but I felt it was worth pointing out their policy was unnecessarily discriminative.
Their responsibilities under FINCEN/FATCA are not prove anything, but just have suspicion or some reason to think you might be a "US Person" (not just US citizen, but US resident, or various other special situations).
Of course, the US claims to extra-territorial jurisdiction, and bullying of global financial institutions to enforce their crazy inter-planetary tax system, are totally preposterous.
like anything in life, there are tradeoffs. the US passport is great because it allows easy employment access to US tech companies, who pay absurd amounts of money; if you live outside the US for at least 330 days, you aren't taxed federally on the first $105K or so. this allows one to, for example, work 20-30 hrs/week while paying zero federal income taxes to take home around $105K. compare that to NYC: you'd need about $160K to take home $105K (!!), plus your post tax costs aro going to be high as hell - rent, restaurants, and so forth. worse, you're probably pulling 45ish hrs a week for that. i imagine SF is similar or worse.
such a setup allows one to build wealth and live an extraordinary life. i'd highly recommend it if you can swing it.
> US passport is great because it allows easy employment access to US tech companies, who pay absurd amounts of money;
US companies don't pay absurd amounts of money, companies in other countries are the once that don't pay enough. Look at how much wealth tech industry has generated (and still is) for the US companies and the US economy, I think they should pay even more.
Can't comment on how the taxes are spent but having US citizenship can give you access to their job market, in tech this can be a valuable benefit. Op's kids will be able to renounce their citizenship should they wish.
But it doesn’t make up for the dozens of hours of paperwork and careful tip-toeing on investments and other garbage.
Just an FYI: one hiccup I heard of giving up your US citizenship is that banks didn’t recognize you could be born in USA but not a US citizen.