"Income tax" on "earned income" does not include Social Security, medicare/caid tax so you still pay some. It also doesn't cover "unearned" income like capital gains or rent.
I said earn > $200k because I'm sure citizenship is worth at least $88000 per year to most people. You would also need to be very confident that that income level is never going to to go away.
Further, most developed countries where you would be more likely to be earning that much money have tax reciprocity treaties with the US that cover the rest of your earned income.
> medicare/caid tax so you still pay some
exactly. You're still 'on the hook' annually to pay for subpar services you'll most likely never use, assuming they exist when you're eligible for them.
> I'm sure citizenship is worth at least $88000 per year to most people.
I'm sorry, but that makes me laugh HARD. By your math I would have paid approximately $1.9 million dollars in the past 21 years just to hold the US passport I might have used 10-15 times in that timeframe to gain entry to the US. Do you honestly think the right to visit the US 15 times over 2 decades is worth $2 million USD? Especially when you can visit the US without a US passport fairly easily (assuming you're not a cryptobro acting like a fool?).
Full disclosure, I'm a US expat who's lived in Australia for over 20 years and was granted Australian Medicare YEARS before I was a permanent resident.
There’s no good reason for you to keep your US citizenship just like there’s no good reason for the average Australian citizen to gain US citizenship.
This is in the context of digital nomads who probably aren’t seeking citizenship in Australia or a similar country.
Ending US citizenship purely for tax avoidance without considering FEIE (like this article does) aimed at a target audience of young people who probably don’t know much about where they are going or how taxes work (digital nomads) is not smart.
US citizenship has benefits beyond the passport. What that is worth depends on the individual. People from all over the world wait years for US visas and work permits, so there’s some value and demand implied.
I have children and family in the US, so I don’t put a price tag on my passport. Any place desirable enough for me to get citizenship there and renounce my US citizenship is going to tax me too.
On the flip side currently if you renounce your US citizenship it immediately triggers a 5 year back tax audit by the IRS and you have to clear your bill before they'll let you renounce.
