[dd_roger]

Honestly I find it pretty fucked up that someone would renounce their citizenship "for convenience". I can't really comprehend how their country could mean so little to someone, especially when that country is a democracy.

Regarding the taxation when living abroad, doesn't it actually make sense? Sure it sounds like an oddity because the US are the only to do it, but most emigrants I know still use the consular services of their country of origin every now and then, benefit from its diplomatic protection, and can return any time if circumstances require it (implying they should be contributing to keeping the country safe and functional in the meantime, call it an insurance policy if you will), and probably many other benefits I'm not thinking of. Some countries will even send special forces abroad to recover citizens in danger.

So yeah apparently the practicalities of it suck sometimes (and that should definitively be improved) but in principle it's not as outlandish as it sounds, imo.

[001Diana]

It would have sounded ridiculous to me too had I not lived it. It’s the tax compliance, not the paying of taxes that is the issue. Most of us will never pay, we already pay more in the country we live in. The tax compliance enforcement costs the US far more than it makes in collecting taxes from citizens overseas, and other countries refuse to allow dual citizens to open accounts or invest. There are MASSIVE, and I’m talking tens of thousands of dollars in fines that can be assessed if you are overseas a file a form too late. And it’s difficult for a specialist accountant to work it all out, let alone a regular person. It’s the anxiety of not knowing what is coming next. If there were a fee for living overseas and having the option of using consular assistance, sure I’d be happy to pay it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you live more or less any other industrialized country, and work there, you will owe the US ZERO in taxes because you pay more to the country where you are resident (and perhaps a citizen).

The complaint is not about having to pay taxes to reflect your status, it's about having to pay accountants etc. to complete forms that show you don't owe any tax to the US.

[metagame]

Why wouldn't a country mean little to someone, even if it is a democracy? I live in the United States, and any theoretical vote I give is completely worthless unless I would move to Maine, and even then it's still not worth much. I move out of the United States, my vote is still worthless. I get citizenship elsewhere, my vote might have a chance at value.

The United States doesn't actually do much for its citizens; it's the states that do things for citizens, and if you're not in a good state, you get no real value from the United States or any part of your country. It wasn't always this way, but it's been this way for as long as I've been alive.

Sentiment is overrated and irrational if the country's never given you anything, and the United States just doesn't give anything to a substantial volume of its citizens.

A common argument is that the United States gives the right to free speech, or to guns, or to varying abstract concepts, but it would also give this even if everyone stopped paying their taxes and the United States was unable to enforce anything.

I'm a big fan of taxation, and of most laws. The US, though, really doesn't do anything with it that has ever benefit me.

The poster really does seem like, if anything, she cares too much for the country.

[ApolloFortyNine]

I've always wondered how people in the green card immigration queue, sometimes estimated to take 20 years until their turn, feel when they read someone like you failing to value the country they live in at all.

[metagame]

Probably skeptic, because they lived elsewhere, got an education for relatively inexpensive or free, and all they see is the difference in the value of currency.

Or probably skeptic, because they're planning on moving to a good state.

Or most probably, they don't care. They're moving countries, they probably don't have the most nationalistic bent to them.

I don't hate the United States, I'm just not being unrealistic about how beneficial it's been for me.

[kalleboo]

> I can't really comprehend how their country could mean so little to someone, especially when that country is a democracy.

Maybe that's what happens when someone means so little to their country?