According to a new report by the Internal Revenue Service, a record number of American citizens have given up their U.S. citizenship for that of another nation.
According to government figures, before 2011 only about 1,000 Americans on average renounced their citizenship per year. But thus far in the last quarter, 2,300 have turned their backs on America, US News reports.
That brought the total for 2016 to 5,411 individuals who left the U.S. behind. That is a 26 percent hike over the 4,279 from 2015.
Many now ex-patriots, though, seem to have left because of America’s difficult tax codes requiring Americans living abroad to file mounds of paper work with the Internal Revenue Service as opposed to because they wish to renounce their citizenship as a rejection of their birth nation.
US News pointed out that the last quarter of 2016 also coincided with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.
But even as the number of ex-pats climbed, the number is statistically unremarkable in a nation of over 300 million citizens. Additionally, with as many as eight million Americans living overseas. 5,000 ex-pats represents less than one percent of the total living abroad.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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