A decade ago, Erin Klatt first arrived in New Zealand on a working holiday visa, and within half a year, the former Wisconsin dairy farmer knew she had found her permanent new home. Leaving the United States in 2016 for a mix of personal and political reasons, Klatt quickly felt a sense of belonging in the South Pacific nation that she never experienced back home. By 2025, at 34 years old, she took the formal, final step: cutting official ties with her country of birth.
Klatt built her career in New Zealand’s dairy industry, parlaying her experience into an essential skills work visa that allowed her to extend her stay. It was also through farming that she met her British husband, who was also building a life in New Zealand. In May 2025, the couple became naturalized New Zealand citizens together — and Klatt moved forward with renouncing her US citizenship just weeks before the US State Department cut the renunciation fee by roughly 80%. She paid the then-applicable $2,350 fee and recited the formal oath of renunciation at the US consulate in Auckland.
For Klatt, the decision was rooted in long-standing personal disconnection and political frustration. “I never felt overly patriotic or connected to the country,” she explained, adding that she had long been dismayed by the trajectory of US politics during the Trump administration. Combined with the financial burden of tax obligations for US citizens living abroad, renunciation felt like the only natural choice. After completing the process, she said she felt only excitement and relief: “I’m very happy with my decision. No regrets. If anything, I celebrate every now and again that I am not a part of them.”
Klatt is far from alone in this choice. Current data on American renunciations is incomplete, as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does not compile full annual figures, releasing only quarterly lists of names. Americans Overseas, a non-profit resource for US citizens living abroad that aggregates these quarterly lists, counted 4,889 names on the IRS lists for 2025 — the highest annual total since 2020, when the number spiked to 6,705. The organization reports a sharp rise in inquiries about renunciation this year, and projects a 15% increase in expatriations compared to 2024, with elevated numbers expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
Daan Durlacher, co-founder of Americans Overseas, notes that the organization currently supports roughly 40,000 mostly dual-citizen US citizens across Europe and the globe who are either in the process of renouncing or researching the process. Durlacher, who holds dual Dutch and US citizenship himself, argues that the official IRS figures significantly undercount total renunciations, as many names of people known to have completed the process never appear in the agency’s quarterly reports. “These numbers are not complete, and I don’t know why,” he said.
Renunciation is a rigorous formal legal process that requires multiple strict prerequisites. Applicants must already hold a second citizenship and legal residency in another country, must have all US tax returns from the previous five years fully filed and up to date, and must attend an in-person oath ceremony at a US embassy or consulate outside the United States. Processing wait times can stretch from six to nine months, and until an 80% fee cut earlier this year, the process carried a $2,350 price tag, now reduced to $450.
While high-profile cases like Klatt’s are rooted in political dissatisfaction, experts say financial and administrative burdens driven by US tax policy are the most common motivators. The United States is one of only two countries in the world (the other being Eritrea) that requires its citizens to file and pay taxes on worldwide income, regardless of where they reside and earn their living. This policy, enforced through the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) that went into effect in 2014, creates particularly heavy burdens for “accidental Americans” — people who acquired US citizenship by birth on US soil or through an American parent, but have never lived or worked in the country.
Fabien Lehagre, founder of the Paris-based Association of Accidental Americans, estimates that there are roughly 300,000 accidental Americans across Europe, 40,000 of whom reside in France alone. Many of these individuals only discover their citizenship status as adults when their European banks request a US Tax Identification Number to comply with FATCA rules. “The main obstacle, for accidental Americans who retain their citizenship, lies in US extraterritorial laws that make a normal financial life extremely difficult in Europe,” Lehagre explained.
For other people considering renunciation, the decision stems from a desire to align their legal identity with their actual life and long-term commitments, rather than political or financial motives. Caroline Chirichella, a dual US-Italian citizen who owns a PR firm and lives full-time in southern Italy, has been considering renouncing her US citizenship since she obtained Italian citizenship via ancestry in 2018, after the birth of her first child. A self-described “very proud American,” Chirichella said her entire life and family are now based in Italy, with no remaining family ties in the US. Reducing her citizenship to only the country where she plans to reside permanently, she explained, would resolve an unspoken identity limbo. “Quite frankly, my life now is in Italy. I don’t have any connections as far as family in the US. My kids were born in Italy and my husband is Italian,” she said.
The recent 80% cut to the renunciation fee has pushed many long-time considerers to finally move forward with the process. Jennifer Sontag, a dual US-Italian citizen who left the US for Sicily permanently in 2018, has been planning to renounce for years, and the fee reduction gave her the final push. Sontag, who owns a relocation agency in Sicily, says Donald Trump’s 2016 election was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” that pushed her to leave the US permanently. She obtained Italian citizenship via ancestry in 2021, and is currently working through the rigorous requirement of having her past years of business finances audited under US tax rules before scheduling her oath ceremony.
While she is looking forward to the relief of shedding her US citizenship, the decision carries emotional weight. “It’s part of my identity. It’s who I am, right? I’m never going to be fully Italian. I’ve lived here for five years. I’m learning the language, I’m learning the culture, but I still don’t have those core experiences that make me Italian,” she explained.
Legal experts warn that renunciation is a permanent, irreversible decision that requires careful consideration. Brad Bernstein, president of a New York-based immigration law firm, notes that many people underestimate the long-term consequences of giving up US citizenship, including losing the right to live and work permanently in the US and access to US consular protection and visa-free travel to dozens of countries. “Saving a few thousand dollars shouldn’t be what drives a decision this serious,” he said. “You could be giving up your ability to live and work in the United States permanently.”
Political science professor Howard Lavine of the University of Minnesota notes that renunciation often serves as a deeply personal act of identity re-alignment for people who have fully built their lives outside the US. “I think people who want to renounce their citizenship want to begin to think of themselves in a very different way, they want their lives to be different. And one way their lives can be different is by holding different social identities,” he explained. Shedding the old national identity helps people align their legal status with how they see themselves, he added, serving as a form of emotional regulation.
For people like Chirichella, who are still weighing their decision, the permanence of the act means taking it slow. “As much as I like the idea, to renounce my citizenship makes me very sad. I do not want to make this decision until I’m 100%. Once I renounce my citizenship, I can’t get it back,” she said. Durlacher, who still retains his dual citizenship, reminds all those he advises of one key consideration before they make the jump: “Being a US citizen, you still have a vote. That’s why I’m still a US citizen.”
