Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate

The Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate, also known as the Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen to Expatriate, As Required by Section 6039G, is a publication of the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the Federal Register, listing the names of certain individuals with respect to whom the IRS has received information regarding loss of citizenship during the preceding quarter.

The practice of publishing the names of ex-citizens is not unique to the United States. South Korea's Ministry of Justice, for example, also publishes the names of people losing South Korean nationality in the government gazette. Prior to the 1990s, however, loss of United States citizenship was not a matter of public record; the State Department considered that routine disclosure of the names of people giving up U.S. citizenship might present legal issues.

The United States government first released a list of former U.S. citizens in a State Department letter to Congress made public by a 1995 Joint Committee on Taxation report. That report contained the names of 978 people who had relinquished U.S. citizenship between January 1, 1994 and April 25, 1995. This action was in the larger context of widespread media attention to the issue of wealthy individuals who gave up citizenship to avoid United States taxes. As a result, several legislators proposed bills or amendments to end the confidentiality surrounding loss of citizenship, and to publish the names of ex-citizens. The one that eventually passed was an amendment by Sam Gibbons (D-FL) to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. That amendment added new provisions to the Internal Revenue Code (now at 26 U.S.C. § 6039G) to require that the Treasury Department publish the names of persons relinquishing U.S. citizenship within thirty days after the end of each calendar quarter. Publication began in 1996; lists published in 1997 included the names of people losing citizenship after 1995. The list includes only the names of former citizens, not their reasons for giving up citizenship or other information about them. Lawyers familiar with the process state that it takes roughly six months after people give up citizenship for their names to appear in the list.

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