逃离美国之谜

    放弃美国国籍的人数创下了新的纪录，这是一个信号，即美国公民——不管他们是住在蒙大拿州还是蒙古——对向自己全球收入征税的系统感到越来越感到失望。

    根据联邦政府机构上周三发布的数据，最新放弃美国国籍的人当中，有一个显眼的名字是马哈茂德•卡尔扎伊，他是阿富汗总统哈米德•卡尔扎伊的兄弟。在这份美国国税局（I.R.S.）每季度发布一次的名单中，伊莎贝尔•盖蒂也赫然在列，她是富豪名媛皮娅•盖蒂和盖蒂石油公司（Getty Oil）继承人克里斯托弗•盖蒂的女儿。

    今年的头三个月，总共有670多名美国护照持有人放弃了自己的美国国籍——随之而去的还有他们的美国税单。这是自美国国税局在1998年开始发布相关数据以来人数最多的一个季度，几乎达到2012年全年放弃美国国籍总人数的近四分之三——去年的人数超过932名，其中包括富有的歌曲作者兼社交名媛丹妮丝•里奇【她被《游艇》杂志（Yachting）称为“盖茨比女士”】以及作为Facebook联合创始人之一的爱德华多•萨维林。

    如果最近这个季度的趋势继续下去，2013年将成为人们因税务问题而告别美国的里程碑式的一年。

    加州帕萨迪纳市的国际税务律师菲尔•霍奇逊表示：“这是美国国税局对海外银行账户发起‘圣战’带来的累积效应。”他说，越来越多的中东投资者正在命令他们拥有双重国籍的子女放弃美国公民身份，以便后者在继承家族企业时不必向美国政府缴纳高额的遗产税。

    尽管放弃美国公民身份对一些批评者来说似乎不怎么爱国或是有避税的嫌疑，但税务律师则指责美国税收条例过于复杂。

    规则“令人困惑，难以理解，复杂到意图良善的美国人也会轻易违规”，杰弗里•尼曼如是说。他曾经是一名参与调查离岸银行服务的联邦检察官，如今则是佛罗里达州劳德代尔堡的私人执业律师。他说：“这或许可以很好地解释为什么有创纪录数量的美国人正在放弃他们的美国国籍。”

    这个趋势在下面这个背景下正愈演愈烈：美国司法部（U.S. Justice Department）加大了对离岸私人银行服务的打击力度，这些服务是由瑞士银行或类似风格的银行提供的。将近十多家外国银行正在接受刑事调查，其中包括以色列的国民银行集团（Leumi）、 汇丰银行（HSBC）、瑞士信贷集团（Credit Suisse）、宝盛银行（Julius Baer）以及瑞士的州立或地区银行。去年，瑞士最古老的威格林银行（Wegelin & Co.）遭到起诉，最终因此关门歇业。近几年来，超过四打的富有美国人和他们的外国银行家遭到过起诉或控告。

    最近几年，超过39,000名美国人主动向美国国税局申报自己的秘密银行账户，以换取减轻罚款和处罚的待遇。不过，政府官员怀疑，在有意或无意不申报自己海外银行账户的人当中，前面提到的人只占一小部分。美国国税局2012年的数据显示，当年只有200万多一点生活在海外的美国人进行了纳税申报，而在海外生活或工作的美国公民总数大约有600万。根据联邦政府公布的数据，在拥有海外银行账户的美国公民当中，只有一小部分人根据要求申报了进行信息披露的税表，即海外银行账户表格（FBAR）。

    Americans are ditching their U.S. passports in record numbers, a sign of growing frustration with a system that taxes U.S. citizens on their global wealth whether they live in Montana or Mongolia.

    The latest bold-faced names to relinquish their U.S. citizenship include Mahmood Karzai, a brother of Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, according to federal data released Wednesday. Also on the list, published quarterly by the Internal Revenue Service, is Isabel Getty, the daughter of jet-setting socialite Pia Getty and Getty oil heir Christopher Getty.

    In total, more than 670 U.S. passport holders gave up their citizenship -- and with it, their U.S. tax bills -- in the first three months of this year. That is the most in any quarter since the I.R.S. began publishing figures in 1998. And it is nearly three-quarters of the total number for all of 2012, a year in which the wealthy songwriter-socialite Denise Rich (christened "Lady Gatsby" by Yachting magazine) and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin joined more than 932 other Americans in tossing their passports.

    If the recent quarter's pace continues, 2013 will become a landmark year for saying goodbye to America, tax-wise.

    "It's the cumulative effect of the I.R.S. 'jihad' against foreign bank accounts," said Phil Hodgen, an international tax lawyer in Pasadena, Calif. He said growing numbers of Middle Eastern investors were ordering their dual-citizen children to dump their U.S. passports if they wanted to inherit family-owned companies without onerous U.S. estate taxes.

    While dumping citizenship may seem unpatriotic or smack of tax avoidance to some critics, tax lawyers blame the byzantine complexity of American tax regulations.

    The rules "are confusing, complex, and so complicated that even Americans with good intentions can easily find themselves running afoul of the law," said Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor who was involved in the government's offshore banking probe and is now in private practice in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "This very well may explain why we are seeing a record number of Americans renouncing their United States citizenship."

    The trend has swelled amid a widening crackdown by the U.S. Justice Department on offshore private banking services sold by Swiss and Swiss-style banks to wealthy Americans in recent years. Nearly a dozen foreign banks, include Israel's Bank Leumi, HSBC, Credit Suisse (CS), Julius Baer and Swiss cantonal, or regional, banks are under criminal scrutiny; last year, Wegelin & Co, Switzerland's oldest bank, was indicted and put out of business. More than four dozen wealthy Americans and their foreign bankers have been indicted or charged in recent years.

    More than 39,000 Americans have come forward in recent years to declare their secret accounts to the I.R.S. in exchange for reduced fines and penalties, but officials suspect that is a fraction of the total number of people either deliberately hiding or unwittingly not reporting their foreign accounts. I.R.S. data for 2012 shows just over two million tax returns filed in 2012 by overseas Americans, compared with an estimated six million Americans living or working abroad. Only a fraction of Americans with foreign bank accounts are also filing required disclosures known as Fbars, according to federal data.