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by __d 1573 days ago
What other passports do you have available? The US tax obligations are onerous, but being a US citizen means good no-visa access to lots of places, and somewhere to return to if you want to.

Establishing a "reason to leave" when visiting the US might mean you need to buy a house elsewhere if you do renounce.

2 comments

Many other Western countries offer equally powerful passports and an equal or better place to return to. In contrast the US is one of only two countries that taxes foreign citizens' income earned abroad, and the FACTA requirements are completely unique.

To use the article's own example, if you had an Irish passport I wouldn't see a lot of reason to keep hold of a US one (unless, of course, you did want to live or work in the US) - sure, in the event that you suddenly want to go to Equatorial Guinea some time, it'll cost you $200 and a bit of bureaucracy. But you'd make that back in the first year or two of not being subject to US taxation.

For visa-free travel you definitely can't beat the US. That's a compromise one has to weigh here. Most places that have good value in the areas outlined in the article, like the Caribbean and some African islands, have less than great visa-free travel access. This can be potentially be relieved somewhat with additional residency permits but it takes some serious consideration of your travel needs/wants.
You very definitely can beat the US for visa free travel, albeit not by a large margin:

https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

Sweden, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and several more all beat the US