In the four years that have passed since Washington started its campaign against tax evasion, the number of wealthy Americans who renounced U.S. citizenship to escape taxes, increased by seven times. 1,780 American expatriates have said no to citizenship last year, at U.S. embassies, up from 235 in 2008, according to figures shown in the U.S. Federal Register. U.S. Embassy in Bern had to allocate additional resources to deal with numerous requests from U.S. citizens living in Switzerland to give up their passports.
United States is the only member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) who charge taxes to their citizens regardless of country of residence. The U.S. are, since 2008, in a campaign search for people who try to avoid taxes by hiding income in foreign financial accounts, including Switzerland. The effort to combat tax evasion is part of Washington’s strategy to reduce the budget deficit and re-direct the government debt towards a downward slope, more sustainable. In this context, Swiss and German banks have started to bypass the Americans and U.S. law was changed and now requires more detailed statements of income. Therefore, more and more of the 6 million Americans living abroad began to be discouraged by the cost attached to U.S. citizenship.
“It started with the consequences of the scandal at UBS, and non-American banks deem to have become too risky to have relationships with U.S. customers living abroad. Situation will worsen as new legislation will require banks to act against clients suspected of tax evasion . Some of them will make voluntary declarations of assets before giving up citizenship,” commented an American lawyer in Zurich. In Switzerland, most Americans feel under the scrutiny after the tax evasion scandal at UBS bank. Under investigation is, in addition to UBS, a group of another 11 other financial services companies in Switzerland, suspected of facilitating tax evasion, according to Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich.
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