To ask you to explain why someone would renounce citizenship of a country?

[InTheBox]

This is more out of curiosity than anything in particular. I'm under the impression that it's possible to hold citizenship for more than one country, so what would be the point in renouncing one's citizenship if it didn't really make a difference iyswim?

Law change in Denmark came into effect last September to allow dual nationality. Hurrah! I think an article in the paper said 24 out of 27 EU countries allow it.

I wish I'd renounced years ago. i've never lived in the US. my children aren't to eligible for US citizenship (because of a blip in the law) which at first arsed me off, but I've subsequently come to see as a blessing.
the price hike two years ago was indeed massive.

My US friend says she will renounce if Trump is elected.

My kids are Japanese and British and need to choose when they reach adulthood -20 here, not 18- but tbh they don't check, and other adult friends have both. Naughty though !

DS lives pretty close to the US embassy in London so maybe he needs to make an appointment to discuss it them. I'm pretty sure he does qualify so he may have to start filing for tax purposes otherwise I guessing there may be penalties for not doing so if he does need to register later to study there (he's got his heart set on MIT for his PhD)

madame josephine: you may want to make an appointment with a US specialist tax person to discuss what your son needs to do (or google, there's loads of people in this market at the moment, as it's lucrative..). At the moment there is a special waiving for people who should have filed taxes but haven't, as everyone tries to scramble to get tax compliant with the change of rules. i think you only have to file for the last seven years and then you're up to date.

It's better than that coalfire - it's only 3years taxes and 5years fbars. But it's actually probably even less than that for your son Madame as he's so young. He may not have ever met the thresholds for filing anyway. It wouldn't be at all unusual to file for the first time at his age so personally I wouldn't bother trying to catch up with past years, just start from this year (if he earns enough/has high enough savings to need too).

Should also say that I'm normally very risk averse about the stuff and used the compliance programme suggested by coalfire in my 30s when I realised that I should be filing. But I really wouldn't bother in your son's case.

He's never had an income of his own, we had an agreement that as long as he worked hard kept his grades up I would support him financially. He only moved out in September and his only 'income' now is student finance so I don't think there's any great hurry tbh but if he wants to move over there in a couple of years he'll have to get something sorted before then

You'd want to check that they don't count UK student loans as income (they do count stuff like child benefit so I wouldn't put it past them). But otherwise sounds all good. I had to get a social security number in my 30s because my parents never applied for one when they registered my birth. I was all prepared with my "my parents are massively disorganised" back story but they just issued it no questions asked.

You don't have to apply for dual nationality necessarily (can only speak for my two citizenships). It's just something you have.

Eg DS was born outside the uk. My DM was very concerned about me getting him "registered as British". As if there's some of of big dusty leather bound book with a list of all the citizens in. You know if you qualify for citizen status once you go through the passport procedure. If they send you a passport, you're a citizen.

I always travel with DS's uk passport but only because it's a more recent photo. Eventually there may be places he'd be better off travelling to on the other one (cheaper visas etc) but as they're both EU countries there's not much in it.

Ds has UK/ Canadian dual citizenship and when we opened bank accounts recently, the Indian teller gave us a lengthy speech about the benefits of dual nationality, with the lengthy sad news that he himself was not eligible, as if he were to become a Canadian (or any other) citizen, he would have to renounce his Indian citizenship. This was no loss to him. He saw far more benefits in being either Canadian or British.
The tax thing is the only pita for us, but tbh it is irrelevant whether we have dual citizenship or not - to file taxes in Canada without citizenship, we still have to declare world wide income and pay Canadian tax on our UK income (which stays in the UK and never enters Canada at all).

Dd1 was born in Germany. She was eligible for dual citizenship, but we registered her as British only, to avoid conscription.

Mersey - when I say 'register' in this context, I am talking about registering the birth with the British Consulate and getting a British birth certificate... not applying for some mythical entry in a dusty ledger - actually registering the birth as you would in the UK from the get-go, just doing so from outside the UK.

To avoid "national service" perhaps if holding dual nationality? Not sure many countries which still insist on it, and then probably only if/when resident. But could be a valid reason to discard one nationality of 2 or more held?

Registering a birth at a British consulate abroad doesn't confer nationality, or anything else. A child whose birth is registered in a consulate just gets a birth certificate. They would still be British without it.

Registering a child with a consulate as a British Citizen under the Nationality Act is different. That child wouldn't be British otherwise. The child whose birth is registered would.

Lots of confusion always about this, due to the fact there are 2 types of 'registering' you can do in a consulate. Dd for example is British by descent. I didn't need to register her birth with the consulate because that would have just given me a bit of paper giving her birth details. She would still be BC-d.

As others have said, often people hold a nationality without knowing and every country has different laws on acquisition, renunciation etc.

Mersey If you are a US citizen and you have a child whilst abroad (who is also a citizen) you are supposed to apply for a "Consular Report of Birth Abroad" and/or a first US passport for them. You are right that they are citizens regardless of whether or not you do this but the US does like you to do this at birth (my parents got a bollocking for waiting until I was two years old and they actually wanted to travel).

In particular, if you want to travel to the US as a US citizen you need to travel on a US passport (although I'm not sure how they would detect your dual nationality if you'd never applied for one before).

Lucky we did the right one, then, later

The issue about what passport to travel is based on why you are travelling. If you are going on holiday then just use the one that doesn't need a visa. However if you are trying to enter a country to live there, including flying home to the UK after a holiday, then you need to bring the passport that shows you have the right to live in that country. IE your British or EU passport or a non-EU passport with a residency permit.

You can also get British citizenship entered into a non-British passport. It is called Certificate of entitlement to the Right of Abode, if you don't want to carry both passports

DS was registered in the usual way for our country of residence, so as a citizen of that country, with the usual BC.

He doesn't have a British BC but is still dual British nationality. I know some parents whose kids are British citizens only but born here. Those kids tend to be registered as British by the consulate as there's no point them having a local BC.

What I meant is that registering a birth and being a citizen are two separate things. Outside the legal requirement to register a birth, you don't need to register as a citizen

Unless you are a US citizen going on holiday to the US wulfy. US citizens are supposed to enter the US with their US passport even if they are dual nationals. It doesn't matter that it's a holiday.

See the penultimate paragraph here.

So another reason to renounce would be to avoid having to keep paying to renew a foreign passport!

I know quite a few kids who have dual nationality but have never had a british birth certificate or passport because of the cost. Usually it's cheaper to get a European passport if you are eligible for one.

My children have an automatic right to dual nationality at 18 but we are going through the procedure to obtain their French nationality early because of the risk of a Brexit, and because it means they can have an ID card and cheaper passport. I doubt we will renew their UK passports as it's so expensive, but there is no need for them to renounce.

Wulfy, the US (and some other countries I believe) legally require American citizens to enter and leave the US on their US passport. Not that they'd normally find out if you visited on a different country's passport, but you're not supposed to do it.

Someone up there said 'I believe if you are a U.S. citizen and sell a house in the UK, you have to pay capital gains tax in the U.S.'

This is also true for non-US citizens living in the US, but you do have a certain amount of time within arriving in the US to sell the house before you become eligible for the tax. We were not charged it as we sold the house within the time period.

Also, as someone already said, just because a child's parent is a US citizen doesn't automatically mean the child is a US citizen.

DH is a US citizen but was not born in the US. Our children weren't born in the US either. For the children to qualify as US citizens he had to prove he'd lived in the US for 5 years, of which 3 were as an adult.

In my country my kids can get UK citizenship by virtue of being my kids (ie can be born outside UK) but this only goes for one generation. My grandkids won't have a right to UK citizenship because of my being British, although they might become entitled through other means (eg achieving it through a residency rule)