More than 500 names have appeared on the U.S. government's latest list of Americans who have, as the Federal Register (where the names appear) puts it, chosen to expatriate," a relatively low quarterly number, given that only four quarters in the past six years have contained fewer names. (See table, above.) 

"It's not that people plan to fail, it's that they fail to plan," is one of the favorite sayings of James ("Jimmy") Miller, the American founder and principal of Baobab Wealth Management, who, as he explained to the AXFNJ's John Richardson last month, had been living in Moscow, Russia, for the past four years, until the Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February. At which point he, his wife and their young son were forced to race to join the thousands of other non-Russians who were hopping any plane they could get to leave the country...

Having been born in Australia and lived her whole life there, "Amy," as she wishes to be known here, had no idea that her life was about to be turned upside-down, and changed forever, in March, 2020, when someone from her bank said that they needed to ask her to fill in some details having to do with her citizenship.

Then suddenly, Amy says, her "OMG Moment" – as it's often referred to by accidental Americans, a group which Amy was soon to discover she was a member of – arrived... 

Over the last few years, thousands of so-called "accidental Americans" have grudgingly accepted the unexpected news that the U.S. considers them to be U.S. citizens, even though they had lived their entire lives, since birth, as citizens of other countries – and as a result of this news, are considered to have tax-reporting and potentially tax-paying obligations.

As this and other news organizations reported back in February, more Americans handed their citizenships back to Uncle Sam in 2020 than during any other single year to date, in spite of the fact that U.S. embassies and consulates around the world – which are needed to process such citizenship renunciations – were closed or offering reduced services for most of the year...

It's a fact that as the tax and financial reporting obligations imposed by the U.S. government on its expatriates have increased exponentially in recent years, awareness and understanding of them by the average American resident overseas has not kept up. This lack of knowledge, not surprisingly, too often results in significant levels of non-compliance.

The Paris-based Association of Accidental Americans (AAA) has said that it has decided to go ahead with its latest complaint against the U.S. State Department, in an effort to force it to make it easier for dual citizens around the world who wish to give up their U.S. citizenships to be able to do so.

The AAA announcement came even as "Loss of Nationality services" in many U.S. embassies and consulates around the world continued to remain closed, due, these embassies and consulates say, to the Covid pandemic, and other factors.

It's been eleven years (and a few months) since President Obama signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act into law, which changed everything in terms of finances and taxes for American expats and U.S. Green Card holders around the world.

So at this point, most Americans who live abroad are at least aware, on some level, that they should be filing tax returns every year.

And yet, as Frost Law partner and chair of tax controversy Eli Noff tells AXFNJ podcast interviewer (and Toronto-based lawyer) John Richardson,

As the U.S. government has once again published its latest quarterly list of the names of Americans whom it says surrendered their U.S. citizenships in the three months to the end of June, experts in the business of assisting Americans to renounce and relinquish their citizenships are again questioning the numbers. 

As this publication and others have been reporting in recent months, Americans resident in Thailand have become increasingly vocal in their calls for the U.S. government to provide them and their families with Covid-19 vaccinations, as it has done for their fellow U.S. citizens – and taxpayers – back home...