U.S. Federal Register quarterly list of expatriates

Most democratic governments run a publicly funded newspaper that keeps track of all the proceedings of what goes on in their government on the public record. In Japan, it's called the 官報 {kampō} (The Official Gazette). In the United States, it's called the Federal Register.

Each country has their quirks as to what gets published and what doesn't. For example, Japan publishes the (former) name, birthdate, and home address of every person who naturalizes. In the 21st century, nobody would dream of putting this info out there due to risks of identity theft or invasion of privacy. The reason they do it, though, is because it's a legal requirement; it's been on the books since the Nationality Law was first written for the modern Constitution in the middle of last century. On the other hand, while Japan publishes statistics on how many people renounce, they do not publish the actual names and other details of those who do it.

The United States is the opposite. More people naturalize to the United States than most other countries in the world combined. Publishing that list would overwhelm the rest of the content. The United States, however, does publish the names of people who renounce or relinquish (by willfully committing an expatriating act such as naturalization while knowing the consequences of relinquishment — wrap your head around that).

Informally, the list is known as the "name and shame" list as there are few democratic countries in the world that do this. In fact, not only does the United States "name & shame" U.S. nationals and citizens, they also do it for "long term residents" (permanent residents of foreign nationality who have been in America for more than eight years)!

There's nothing shameful about changing (or even losing) one's citizenship:

• It's allowed and legal under under 8 USC § 1481
• It's not only allowed in Japan, it's actually protected as a right in the Japanese Constitution (Article 22)
• The right to change one's citizenship is actually a recognized human right according to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Article 15

So why does the United States, the land of the free, practice "name & shame", despite the right to change being recognized as a human right? The U.S. didn't always do this. The story of the name and shame list begins with:

Styrofoam cups.

Kenneth B. Dart is the board director of Dart Container. Dart Container is to styrofoam cups as Google is to search. Dart's family run corporation makes more styrofoam containers than all of its worldwide competitors combined.

Dart lived in Sarasota, Florida. Dart had done well for himself. Very well. Despite Florida having no personal state income tax, that wasn't enough for Dart. In 1994, Dart left the United States, renounced his U.S. citizenship, and moved to the beautiful tourist industry country of Belize in Central America, which is famous for its tax laws that exempt its residents from paying taxes on money earned abroad.

But Ken Dart didn't stop there.

Ken Dart, after renouncing his U.S. citizenship, then attempted to create a Belize Consulate in his original city of Sarasota, Florida and appoint himself as the foreign consul. He proposed this consulate as an addition to the consulate that Belize already had in Florida.

How did Dart pitch the idea of yet another consulate in the same state (Florida)? Dart generously allowed the consulate to be the same address as his mansion home in Sarasota, Florida, thus saving the Belize government the cost of building another consulate. Ken Dart, with a straight face, kept emphasizing how strategic Belize was to United States interests:

"If Belize has a consulate in Sarasota, economists from all over the world can travel there to study the effects of Belize groundnuts on the Japanese yen."

The United States declined, saying thanks, but Belize was already more than well represented by another consulate in Florida.

The late humor columnist Art Buchwald awarded Ken Dart the "chutzpah award" for 1995 for his very unique tax loophole exploit.

Dart now lives in the Cayman Islands, vacationing in the United States up to the maximum 120 days per year to avoid U.S. tax liability. Belize has tightened up their tax laws since 1994 — I'm sure that's just a coincidence regarding him moving from Belize to the Caymans. Judging from Dart's personal website, he seems to still be doing quite well, so there's no need to feel sorry that he didn't get his own personal consulate in his Sarasota manor.

If Ken Dart had actually become consul of Belize in Sarasota, it would mean that not only would he be immune to arrest by the IRS (Dart was being pursued for tax evasion — innocent misunderstandings such as whether an executive jet can be deducted as a business expense for security) as a foreign consul in the United States, but he would also be exempt from U.S. taxes (a privilege that foreign ambassadors get) while still living in the United States!

The Ken Dart saga was a big deal in Congress at the time. Congress assumed that everybody who renounced their U.S. citizenship was probably, like Dart, getting extremely creative with their tax obligations. This is despite the fact that many people give up their U.S. nationalities for countries that have higher and/or stricter taxes than the United States.

In 1996, certain members of Congress slipped in a line item in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) that created the "Name & Shame" list in the Federal Register, which Clinton signed into law. Clinton would later avoid fundraisers at the Dart Sarasota mansion, even ten years later.

"I don't know what he is up to now, but I don't want to go anywhere near [Ken Dart]." — Bill Clinton, 2005.

So if you're a United States citizen and you change your nationality, do you need to worry about ending up being publicly outed on this list?

There's a good chance (off-the-cuff statistics suggest at least as high as 50%) that you need not worry; your name may never appear even if you have a CLN (Certificate of Loss of U.S. Nationality).

It's been known that at least since 2006, the list has been very inaccurate. Duplicates can be found all over the place. Spelling mistakes abound. Famous people who were known to have legally expatriated never showed up on the list. Comparing the list to other countries lists often show a 2:1 ratio of names missing (for example, South Korea's list of people that gave up their U.S. citizenship/PR "green card" in 2011 for the ROK is larger than many of the quarterly lists. Comparing to U.S. domestic sources, the FBI's NICS database (which only includes people who renounce their citizenship, not relinquish) also shows a huge disparity when compared to the Federal Register list.

Nobody knows for certain why the list started to become so inaccurate after 2006. There are political theories, but there are simpler, human error theories that I'm more inclined to subscribe to: everybody that has actually been through the process knows that it's heavy on (handwritten) paperwork, there's little if any digitalization, and the procedure is performed so infrequently that the experience and process of relinquishing your citizenship can vary significantly depending on the embassy or consulate you do it in. That's a prescription for inaccurate accounting.

If you don't end up on the Federal Register list, you need not worry: what matters and what makes it official is the CLN. And if you are on the list, remember that the reason the list exists is because Ken Dart made some of the 1996 Congress think that the only reason people change citizenship is because they are all executive jet / off-shore yacht globe-trotting millionaire tax evaders.