[electromagnetic]

A family friend ran into this. She lived in Canada nearly all her working life and only heard about having to file paperwork with the US when it was being announced there was going to be a crackdown due to the recession.

Fortunately between her and her husband they had enough money to get a good lawyer and get it sorted out before they tried to nail her for all the tax she owed.

I think the biggest issue with the "tax by citizenship" is that it turns US citizenship into a commodity to be traded for personal benefit.

It's noble to try to chase the tax dodgers, but it's a lot more practical to tax the people who stay and ensure anybody who wants to flee is going to be losing sizeable amounts of their property.

Canada has investment rules based on nationality/citizenship and the owners of those shares can't just elope and expect to keep their controlling interests. In fact most of the big companies that face these rules have their foreign investments near maximum, so that anyone fleeing would be forced to sell all their stake and selling a big stake of any company means selling at a sizeable loss.