"You such a goddamn nudge, Dragnaur. There is no reason an American who lives in, say, Belgium, who is married to a Belgian and works for a Belgian company and has Belgian children and plans to live the rest of his life in Belgium ought to write an income tax check for Uncle Sam. "

As long as he wishes to have the protection of the US military and have access to the US Embassy in Belgium and vote absentee for US President, sure he does. If he chooses to give all those up, then he can give up his citizenship as is happening.

Invictus, I don't know what you mean by the ambiguous term "anti-Obama" but whatever it means Barack assumed office in 2009. Why the significant increase in renounciations in 2013, but not 2010, 2011, or 2012? What changes at the State Department do you refer to? What changes in overseas citizenship do you refer to? An argument isn't made up by ambiguities and your post indicates you know that. To account of the dramatic upswing in 2013 requires evidence from 2013 that wasn't in place in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 for the argument to meet a rational burden. FACTA provides the rational evidence for that increase. In fact American citizens living overseas founded their own advocacy organization 35 years ago called the Americans Citizens Abroad, and they make their own argument against FACTA that echoes the arguments made against it in the Congressional debates from 2009-2010.

Draugnar, I've figured out you are a bored middle-manager who lacks any type of effective supervision while you work so you post on here as a troll to deal with your boredom.

An increase between 2008 and 2009 of over 700%. That happened the year he took office. I'd say that *was* the Obama backlash increase.

@Emac - not management at all. I'm a software developer who mostly works from home. And this being Saturday... My only "management" is as technical lead on my projects where I distribute the tasks between myself and other developers based on who has the time and the skill sets to get the work done on schedule.

But I do lack management above me on an hour by hour or even day to day basis. My job (and those who work with me) is a salaried position. We do what it takes to get the job done. When a client comes in with a tight schedule and a shit ton of work to be done, we work long hours and long weeks. when time and effort permits, we can take it easier as needed.

You'll note that only the last couple of days last week (when I had already billed 50 hours) did I spend any workday time on here. Mon-Wed was a little evening time and lunch only.

And if you doubt my coding prowess, I already went to far sometime back and posted a shit ton of code I wrote for handling some customized discounting and Quote validation for our Acquire Express software (go to the Cincom link and look at the Acquire group news listing to learn more about the software I integrate and customize for our clients).

Or just trust me. Draugnar knows his codes. Seriously.

Does it matter what he is taking a break from when he trolls?

What matters is the interpretation of "break" versus "bored middle-manager who lacks any type of effective supervision while you work so you post on here as a troll to deal with your boredom" when nothing could be further from the truth. And posting that kind of comment on a *Saturday*. Not exactly a business day, now is it...

Bringing this back on topic, there are at least 1.7 million US citizens living in other countries, making the number giving up citizenship irrelevant in comparison. you could have 100,000 people renounce citizenship, and FACTA would still be making a profit.

Mendax, There is no way to check it, but I would suspect that the combined wealth of the individuals who chose to renounce citizenship equaled if not exceeded the combined wealth of those citizens who did not. I would also suspect that the earning power and entrepreneurship ration between the two groups resembled the wealth ratio I suggested.
The other point is that the chilling effect of FACTA on American investment in and participation with foreign capital markets and corporations does not serve the purpose of increasing tax revenue. The enforcement costs represented by the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service bureaucracy looks like it may not even pay for itself given the available tax avoidance options open to wealthy individuals and capital interests. For example the "Amazon Tax" passed by the Illinois legislature that was expected to generate $150 million in new revenue actually reduced revenue according to the Illinois Department of Revenue because of the tax avoidance strategies implemented. The evidence indicates that FACTA is generating the same types of tax avoidance strategies, i.e. renouncing citizenship.

Am I the only one who noticed that Nigee's first post on this thread said

" That backs up my point regardless of detail or accuracy or transparency so I think I win, of course if you question me I'll seek to ridicule you and get all superior, so I win again"

As if he had made a prior point to be backed up?

Fishy fishy fishy fish ... And it went wherever I did go

@Phil - parody

Phil, yes. It seemed like the husband of the Zimbabwian was making a transparent troll post, but I could be wrong.

And 1800 in 300 million isn't significant regardless of the % increase. to go from 250 to 1800 is to go from less than 1 in a million to less than 6 in a million. Big deal. That's even less intriguing than the % increase of CO2 since the industrial revolution.

So we can ignore the distribution of wealth in the United States since the 1% aren't significant?

Well the monty python fishy reference could be taken as a troll accusation, but I was going for the "sounds fishy" reference. Implying (or inferring - I still don't know the difference), but definitely NOT accusing him of already posting to the thread, but forgetting which account he used.

But of course it was just a joke. I emailed the mods ahead of time, so Im covered. No multi accusations here ... Move along ...

Well keep in mind, young padawan, that 1% is one in a hundred. 10000 times more significant than 1 in a million.

Did I say Zinbabwean .... I meant Cambodian of course, well you know, foreign.

And as a side note ... @draug, I'm getting really tired of agreeing with you and feeling obligated to +1 your posts, as I've done here, once again. Can you please go back to threatening to sue (or shoot) the mods so the world can get back to equilibrium? Your reasonable arguments are causing me to lose sleep ;-)

I see what you did there Nigee. Again referencing something someone else said as though it were your own. Clever. I shall call you "emacowner" from now on.

Note to mods: the emacowner comment has nothing to do with the similarity between Lando and landowner which got me in trouble in the past, I was mearly saying that Nigee is "owning" emac with his superior logic.

@Phil - you've gotta get over that punishment mate. look at it this way, in your younger days you were the wild man of webdip, living on the edge. Now you are older you are the voice of reason. Your forum hell-raising days are behind you :-)

Never!!! I've still got my steel-toed Docs and my copy of "Nevermind the Bollucks"!
Rebel for life!

Yes, your mathematic point is correct, but it ignores the fact that the people renouncing citizenship are not insignificant given their wealth. In the human world of wealth all things are not equal so a 1 (one individual with millions of dollars in wealth) does not equal 1 (one individual with thousands of dollars in wealth.)

Do you have any evidence for that?

Evidence for what specifically Mendax?

I honk he meant evidence that I still have my copy of "never mind the bollucks"

I assume that is vinyl with the yellow sleeve