Tag Archives: Form 8865

Forms required by #Americansabroad 101 – The Explanation


The above tweet references a comment that I left on a medium.com post written by Rachel Heller titled “Why I renounced my US citizenship” (Hint: It’s not because I’m avoiding taxes!“.
The article was well written, interesting and attracted responses from Homeland Americans. (It was reproduced here and attracted even more comments.) The comments from U.S. residents demonstrated again that they do NOT understand the problems experienced by Americans abroad. Although Rachel DID mention the problem of “forms” as a contributing factor to her renunciation, at least one comment – ” indicated “disbelief” that “forms” could be a contributing factor to the renunciation of U.S. citizenship.


It is clear that this person, well intentioned as he/she may be simply does NOT understand what forms mean in the lives of Americans abroad. It’s as though he/she thinks that filling out a form is akin to completing a customer satisfaction survey.
As I result, I wrote a reply in the hopes of inviting him/her to understand what forms really mean in the lives of Americans abroad. (This post is a modified version of that “reply”.)
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