Canadian lawyers see spike in inquiries by Americans renouncing citizenship

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Jan 28, 2025

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Canadian attorneys claim to be seeing a spike in Americans interested in renouncing their U.S. citizenship. They expect that number to grow under Donald Trump’s presidency.

Alexander Marino, director of U.S. tax law at Moodys Tax in Calgary, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that business has been good for offices like his that specialize in North American tax cases.

In most instances, U.S. natives living in Canada ditch their ties to their homeland to divorce themselves from the Internal Revenue Service. But since Trump was elected to the U.S. presidency for a second time in November, Marino has seen a “bump” in Canadian-Americans interested in cutting their ties to the United States.

“For a lot of people, the election results are a bit of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Marino told the CBC.

He expects 2025 to be a record year for Americans saying goodbye to Uncle Sam.

Wisconsin native and former dual-citizen Douglas Cowgill told the CBC he went full-Canadian in 2023.

“I had to look at it from the perspective of what lies ahead of me for the next 20 to 30 years, and definitely that is a life here in Canada,” he told the outlet.

Cowgill, who has a Canadian wife and family, works as an immigration lawyer in British Columbia. The 39-year-old Cheesehead-turned-Canuck told the CBC the monthly inquiries he received in December were nearly double the norm. Cowgill expects that trend to continue.

The U.S. Federal Register publishes quarterly lists of Americans who surrender their citizenship. The number of registrants went on the rise in 2014 when the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act was enacted in the U.S., requiring foreign financial institutions to report on foreign assets held by U.S. account holders.

In 2016, about 4,100 names were on that list. That number jumped by more than 50% when Trump first took power in 2017. Expatriations dipped during President Joe Biden’s last year in office.

Trump has hinted at initiating a trade war with Canada and possibly annexing everything above the United States’ northern border.

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