Why a record number of wealthy Americans are renouncing U.S. citizenship

a record number of americans are renouncing their citizenship and it's mostly because of money robert frank joins us now with more robert i you know i like to be yeah really i like to be agnostic objective and not care about things but just reading this i just i don't know i it just something so dear to that some people worked so hard for and would you know or just just would really it's very precious and and very you know 10 years some people to finally and it's a great day in their life what it's about money it just i don't know i just didn't like reading that headline but maybe it's not as bad as i think well it's about a lot of things joe let's just talk about the numbers first the number of americans who have renounced their citizenship has more than tripled since last year to more than 6 000 that is a record now because u.s embassies have actually frozen new applications since march attorneys say the real number of people who intend to renounce could be 5 to 10 times higher and we've also seen a big surge in wealthy americans buying second or third passports in europe or asia through the golden visa programs now former google ceo eric schmidt he recently became a citizen of cyprus which allows him to travel freely in europe he of course is still in american citizenship but also has that as an add-on now all this exodus is driven mainly by a tax law that forced any american citizen to report overseas tax accounts and file taxes but the pandemic has also increased demand for passport portfolios that makes international travel a lot easier with all these lockdowns and advisors say clients are citing the likelihood of higher taxes more debt and political dysfunction in washington as a reason to move to many of the places like the virgin islands montenegro and singapore those are the popular destinations now all this can be very expensive americans worth two million or more have to pay capital gains taxes on all of their assets as an exit tax for them to leave and joe as you say it's not only sort of something near and dear to americans to have that passport but it's also very costly to do it so it shows you how motivated these 6 000 people were to renounce shepherd smith here thanks for watching cnbc on youtube

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Id: _sLZIau4U3Q

Length: 2min 24sec (144 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020