There are lots of Americans permanently resident in Europe. After all, it's the best place on Earth to live. But their exodus is so irritating to the United States that our fellow European residents have started handing in their United States passports and renouncing their citizenship.
They're queueing up in various countries. Bloomberg's report suggests the reasons are principally for tax evasion and avoidance but numerous readers' comments make it clear that what is objectionable au fond is the attitude of their fellow-Americans to those who prefer elsewhere: that they are tax cheats; that they are rich and disloyal; that they need to be made to pay.....
Idly, I looked up how to renounce UK citizenship. No bullet-proof booth (shades of the confessional), interviews with embassy officials, long-term left-over tax liabilities, huge fees, or other general big brother nastiness. You just do it online. And if you want to take up being a UK citizen again you can do that online as well - once certainly and, at the Home Secretary's discretion, repeatedly.
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2 comments:
What if we all did it?
I think the Americans make it so hard to become (or cease to be) a US citizen because they are absolutely convinced that every single person on earth wants, above all, to be an American.
Once you accept this, many traits of their behaviour and attitudes to the world become easier to understand.
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