Facebook co-founder renounces U.S. citizenship
''Eduardo Saverin, one of Facebook's four co-founders, has renounced his U.S. citizenship, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
The expatriation, first reported by Bloomberg, comes just before the social network is expected to launch an initial public offering of its stock next week.''
In fairness to this guy, he wasn't an American most of his life, he received US citizenship, but kept his home nation as well as Singapore and now he doesn't want US citizenship anymore.
Don't really blame him either. Increased taxation causes this. Eventually people go elsewhere. Right now it make sense for only the super rich, but as the screws get tightened more people will leave or simply adjust to compensate.
I don't care about this guy since he never was truly American, but more of a global citizen. What I do worry about is the fact that there has been an increase of life long Americans leaving, something I only think will continue.
The fact he wasn't always an American makes this understandable. People who were born Americans and renounce their citizenship over something as stupid as money, I have no respect for. At the end of the day, money is just money. Hell, your money would be worthless without the US government backing it.
But being an American citizen is something you can't put a price on. If you're not proud to be part of that, what are you proud of? Creating some stupid social network?
I don't see what makes it so good. Perhaps for the poor since this country makes it so nice to be broke. Aside from that, the amount of zeal and propaganda here is the same as in any other part of the world.
Didn't Superman renounce his American citizenship last year? I'm not up to date on my comic book history...
A few of my American colleagues have joked about renouncing their citizenship due to taxes, but nothing serious yet. I've met a few older / wealthier American's how have worked on the idea and have seriously considered it.
Apparently the numbers are increasing, but I don't think that it will make a material difference to the IRS, etc... Here's a related article... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-01/wealthy-americans-queue-to-giv…
Capital gains tax is at 15%ish, so how are some people paying up to 45%?
What I don't really get is - why does he even give a shit? Is there really going to be a material difference in living standards when you have only US$2B in the bank, as opposed to US$3B?
On a side note: I find that many of the least patriotic citizens of any country - not just the US - are those who have spent their entire lives in that country, and haven't really experienced life outside of it. I've noticed that with some Americans, who bitch about how terrible their lives are without consideration of how those lives would be if they were living in Bahrain or something. And I've noticed that here in Singapore, where people regularly spend hours complaining about anything and everything, despite the fact that Singapore has very high living standards and very low unemployment.
Weather's still pretty shit, but well. Can't wait 'til someone develops the technology to encase an entire city in an air-conditioned glass dome.
Probably true, I have a British friend who is an American citizen and the guy is like George Bush on roids. Flys an american flag from his house, has a "Everything's bigger in texas" decal on his car and celebrates July 4th like he just won the lotto.
I am from Europe and I renounced a citizenship as well. I originally had three citizenships (three G8 countries), as I have a very diverse European background. I still have two other citizenships. I don't get the big deal. In my opinion renouncing a citizenship shows much more maturity and intelligence than blindly following everybody else, just because you happened to be born in one country. Everybody thinks their country is the best. Well guess what - only one country is the best and the other countries suck to a different extent. Ok I think there is a subjective component and some people might prefer different countries. But it is highly questionable that everybody was born in the country best suited to him. I believe that the US is the greatest country (although I don't have US citizenship), so I wouldn't agree with what this Facebook guy did. But I still value that he came to his own conclusion and showed some independence. Why do we care if he renounced his citizenship?
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