No, I’m just kidding. It makes sense that you can continue to vote - certainly if they want to keep taxing you.
My advise. let your daughter keep her citizenship.Its an uncertain world and you never know when she might need it later in life. If she gets offered a great job in the US, or meets and falls in love with an American resident, or one of a hundred possible things.
I understand the Tax issue, but surely you can find a tax consultant who can help, there are millions of Americans who live outside N America so this is likely a commonly offered service.
I know this is a hijack, but I remember reading years ago that ex-Californians still had to pay state taxes. That person recommended to move from California to another state, to break that requirement, before moving abroad.
Back to sharing experiences, I know many people who have problems getting mortgages because of their U.S. citizenship. We lucked out that we have one of the few banks that still accepts U.S. citizens. But it means we have few choices when we renew our mortgage. As mortgages usually run 3-6 years here, this comes up frequently.
Even people who are not U.S. citizens are affected as they also have to sign paperwork affirming that they are not U.S. citizens, whenever they open an account or do anything related to banking, stocks, etc.
We didn’t have any trouble with a home loan. The big headache for us has been setting up investment accounts connected to our future retirement, because the US govt imposes a heavy reporting requirement on any institution serving American citizens. FATCA is well intentioned in terms of making sure overseas people aren’t trying to hide money and dodge their responsibilities, but the real-world impact is that very few banks are willing to jump through all the hoops and our investment opportunities are severely limited.
To the OP:
She might wish to do so soon if she’s determined that renunciation is in her best interest. The fee for renunciation is now US $2,350. There is also the requirement to pay any outstanding taxes before one may renounce citizenship.
The second thing is that if one is still a U.S. citizen, one is required to use their US passport to enter and depart the United States.
I know one person in South Korea who renounced his US citizenship. He did so because of his career in Korea. He had to be a Korean citizen to operate the school he founded.
There are very good reasons for renouncing citizenship and very good reasons for not doing so. It really boils down to what the person considers to be best for their own situation.
Yes, here in Switzerland, only one bank will work with Americans and allow them to open a bank account.
There are certainly many tax experts who could help with the filing every year. But she would still face hefty bills for buying and selling any property outside of the US in the future. If she bought a house in Australia and sold it later, the US tax bill can be huge. My husband’s was 80K on a house that he bought before we even met, more than a decade before he became a US citizen! As if your average person can just cut a check to the govt. for 80K. That seems obscene that the US will demand money on any property for the rest of her life.
In my daughter’s case, she was last a resident of the US when she was 12 so she was never registered to vote or had a state driver’s license.
Years ago, that was true. One of the reasons I was careful only to vote for federal offices, as otherwise I’d be subject to state taxes. As far as I can ascertain, voting for Californian offices no longer has that implication.
All the posts about the taxes owed for selling a house are scaring me!
Yes, it’s those taxes I’m worried about - for life!
Howdy! Yes, this is my day job. I have only run into a couple of cases like this in 20+ years, though, and IANAL. My first thought is that 18 is awfully young to be making an irrevocable decision like this, particularly if one is not in an income bracket where one is likely to have any U.S. tax liability at all for years. I also advise talking to a U.S. immigration lawyer and a U.S. tax advisor, purely because of the gravity and the irrevocable nature of the decision. What if she wants to pursue educational or professional opportunities in the U.S. in the future? Many years ago I was assigned an employment-based green card application for a European citizen, an established professional in his 50s with college-aged children. Imagine my surprise when I received his required biographic documentation, which included a U.S. birth certificate! Further inquiries revealed that he had been contacted by Selective Service to register for the draft during the Vietnam War, and suddenly he found it convenient to claim the European citizenship of his parents and leave the U.S. behind him - forever, he thought at the time as a young potential draftee. I have no idea how that all got sorted out, because I left that job, but consider that at 18, your daughter may not yet know where life may take her.
Eva_Luna, U.S. Immigration Paralegal
I beg to differ. I have not lived in Illinois for 54 years and do not file IL tax returns (if there are any–I don’t even know). I can vote only for Federal candidates: president, senate, congressman in my former district. I believe it is a federal law that stipulates this. And I have voted every second year since 1968 when I left. I am in no sense a “resident” of the state.
My niece renounced her US citizenship (or, rather, her parents renounced it for her) at less than a year old. Since then, she’s entered the US many times with no problems, and with no visa, as a Canadian citizen.
The backstory: her parents are Canadian citizens and crossed into the US, to Michigan from Ontario, for a short trip when the mom was 7 months pregnant. The mom went into preterm labor and wanted to get back to her own doctor in Canada, but doctors told her not to risk traveling, so the baby was born in Michigan. When they returned to Canada, they were told at the border and then at the US Consulate that the baby had to be registered as a US citizen and receive a US passport. They didn’t plan to live in the US and wanted the baby to have Canadian healthcare, so they renounced US citizenship and claimed Canadian citizenship as soon as possible.
I’ve travelled into the US with this niece (now an adult) several times and she’s never been given any trouble by US border authorities about her Canadian passport saying she’s born in Michigan.
OP, if your daughter’s non-US citizenship was from 1 of the many countries that don’t participate in the visa waiver program, then travel back to the US could be difficult. But I don’t think it should be an issue for an Australian. An immigration lawyer could tell you for sure.
Thank you for your detailed response!
Thank you, everyone, who have weighed in. Rest assured, we are taking this very seriously. Many have said that 18 is the best time to do this since she is not yet making money in a thriving career, etc. If she waits until then, it may be viewed as a simple tax issue which is not the main point. Financially, the buying and selling of property and being able to work with banks and lenders overseas is a bigger issue.
As many of us here are Americans or Canadians, we tend to think “why shut the door to the possibility of maybe wanting to live in the US in the future?” Interestingly, the other side of the family tends to think "Of course she will want to settle in Australia or the UK or Europe. Why would you ever move to a country with unaffordable healthcare, a terrible housing market, a dangerous and violent place where poverty is getting worse, kids get shot at school/the mall/ a concert, why support a country with a gun fetish, ugly politics, overbearing religion, etc. I think some of us Americans do not understand how others truly view the USA. We’ve been taught that everyone wants to live in the USA!
I can confirm that we get a lot of patronizing comments and questions along these lines from many people we left behind back in the States. They want to know when we’ll get tired of our “little adventure” and come “home,” and they don’t see any problem with the taxation of expats because they view it as the government “keeping our bed warm” or something like that for our inevitable return. It’s incredibly condescending; these people genuinely cannot understand that we’ve turned a corner in our lives and are choosing to adopt a new home, permanently.
Of course, on the flip side, our Stateside friends who don’t make that kind of comment are actually much more likely to take the opposite position: “How did you manage to leave, and can you help us emigrate as well?”
Actually, I am in the middle of pursuing Canadian citizenship by descent myself, and would do European in a heartbeat if I were eligible (and I have actually researched it in all of the countries of my ancestry where I might actually want to live, including consulting with a local attorney in the one other country that seemed like it might be realistic and with a citizenship consultation company in another - I’m skipping Belarus, though, thanks). My answer was purely about preserving the choice for someone who is pretty be young to make a decision with permanent implications.
FATCA was exactly the reason I renounced around 7 years ago. I moved from the US to the UK in 1995. I gained dual citizenship in 2000. I didn’t have any complicated finances so simply filing US tax forms each year was no hassle and I never had to pay anything. I’d even sometimes get a refund for a few dollars for some reason. But over the years I’d accumulated a fair amount of cash that I wanted to put into a managed bond fund for retirement. The choices available as an American citizen were very limited and had poor returns. After renouncing I could get a fund that’s done very well even with the pandemic and war in Ukraine messing up the markets.
The process of renouncing was pretty straight forward. Fill in some forms, then some more forms, then go to the embassy for an exit interview. But they take one final bite, the fee for renunciation was around $3500.
I haven’t been back to the US since then so can’t comment on visas or what hassle there would be at the airport.
Thank you for sharing your experience! That makes a lot of sense in your situation. Still concerned about being able to visit, though. 
I don’t think everyone wants to live in the USA , but I’d be concerned about the permanent implications. Because although not everyone wants to live in the US, some people eventually do - and they don’t always know by the time they are 18. Most of the people I know who came to the US from Europe * didn’t do so until they were older than 18 - and since they weren’t already US citizens, they went through the whole immigration process.
Talk to attorneys and tax advisors for sure - but I’m guessing an 18 year old isn’t going to be buying/selling property or taking out loans anytime soon , so she probably has at least a few years to decide.
* Since I live in NYC, I probably know more immigrants than most Americans.- there are four who immigrated from three different European countries just in my family.