Tag Archives: American Expat Finance News Journal

Archive – Helen Burggraf From October 23 – U.S. Gov moves in direction of lowering renunciation fee

Introduction:

What follows is a post written by Helen Burggraf in October of 2023 discussing the U.S. government intention to reduce the fee for a CLN from $2350 USD to $450 USD.

It is reposted with the kind permission of Helen Burggraf.

BREAKING: U.S. gov’t at last moves in direction of lowering renunciation fee

By Helen Burggraf

In what some expat groups and individuals are already hailing as a potential breakthrough, the U.S. State Department is seeking comments on its plans to reduce by almost 80% the basic fee it currently charges U.S. citizens for processing their requests to expatriate.

In a notice dated today [Oct 2] and posted on the Federal Register,

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-10-02/pdf/2023-21559.pdf

the State Department says it is “proposing to amend” the fee from its current $2,350 to $450, in response to concerns that “members of the public have continued to raise” since the fee was increased to the current amount from $450 in 2014.

It says that it is proposing to do this in spite of the fact that the lower amount has only ever represented “a fraction of the cost of providing” the consular services involved in processing a CLN (Certificate of Loss of Nationality).
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Highlights of @HelenBurggraf’s American Expat Financial News Journal (2018 to 2023)

Highlights of @HelenBurggraf’s American Expat Financial News Journal (2018 to 2023)*

*(with help from Nick Papadopoulos)

As the late Charles Adams would say:

“As goes taxation, so goes civilization”.

The American Expat Financial News Journal (archived here) was, as many American expats know, a news website that existed from 2018 to 2023. It contained a wide range of articles – covering myriad topics, mostly having to do with American expats’ tax and financial issues – and often, reflected the frustrations of Americans living everywhere outside of the U.S., from Australia to Zanzibar. Most of the articles published during that time can still be found at archive.org.

The AXFNJ was the work of Helen Burggraf, a long-time American expat living in London, and Nick Papadopoulos, an Athens-based, British/Greek website designer and entrepreneur, many of whose clients were (and still are) in the cross-border financial space.

From Day One, the American Expat Financial News Journal was a unique and unmissable running commentary on the difficulties U.S. expats are obliged to live with, as a result of America’s problematic, citizenship-based tax regime, which were made worse by the introduction of FATCA in 2010 (and ignored ever since by Washington lawmakers).

The following pdf highlights “some” of the articles written during the life of the publication.

Stories covered by the (sadly no longer published) AXFNJ 2018 – present -1

Although the links refer to the original URLs, you can find the articles in the archive (which has a search feature) at:

https:/axfnjarchive.wordpress.com

Thanking Helen for a great publication that reflected the history of the time!

Helen is still on X.com @HelenBurggraf.

John Richardson – Follow me on X.com @ExpatriationLaw