WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has slashed by about 80% the fee for Americans to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship.
After years of legal battles with several groups representing Americans wanting to give up their citizenship, the department on Friday published a final rule in the Federal Register that reduces the cost from $2,350 to $450.
The new fee, which took effect on Friday, had been promised in 2023 but had never been implemented. The cost is now the same as it was when the State Department first started charging Americans to formally renounce their citizenship in 2010.
Renouncing U.S. citizenship can be an intensive and lengthy process. Applicants must repeatedly confirm in multiple written and verbal attestations to a State Department consular officer that they understand the implications of the step before being allowed to take a formal oath of renunciation. It must then be reviewed by the department.
The fee was raised from $450 to $2,350 in 2015 to cover the administrative expenses as the number of people wanting to renounce their citizenship surged in part due to new U.S. tax reporting requirements for American expatriates that angered many.
That dramatic fee increase drew significant opposition from groups such as the France-based Association of Accidental Americans, which represents people mainly living abroad whose U.S. citizenship is due purely to their having been born in the United States.
The association filed several lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the fee, including one that remains pending that argues there should be no cost at all for renouncing one’s citizenship.
“The Association of Accidental Americans welcomes this decision, which acknowledges the necessity of making this fundamental right accessible to all,” its president, Fabien Lahagre, said in a statement. “This victory is the direct result of six years of relentless legal action and advocacy.”
In court, the association said since the 2023 announcement that the fee would be reduced at least 8,755 Americans had paid the full $2,350 to renounce their citizenship. The State Department did not provide numbers for the total number of Americans who have renounced their citizenship.