#24: What's Driving Americans to Expatriate or Get Second Citizenships in 2023? With David Lesperance and Mel Warshaw

IMI Podcasts

Our guests this week on the Mobility Standard were David Lesperance, Managing Partner of Lesperance & Associates, one of the world's leading experts on international tax and immigration, and Melvin Warshaw, a US-based cross-border tax and private client lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in the field.

Lesperance and Warshaw are also the authors of our American Exceptionalism column, where they explore investment migration questions that uniquely impact Americans.

We spoke to them about:

• The bump in American interest in investment migration we saw during the pandemic has persisted even after the end of the crisis. What's driving Americans out the door in 2023?
• The three types of approaches American HNWIs take with regard to investment migration.
• The tax pitfalls Americans moving abroad need to avoid at all cost and the harsh penalties for non-compliance.
• How you can set things right with the IRS if you discover you're not in compliance.
• Why the IRS is ramping up its enforcement of tax reporting non-compliance among expats, and how US expats can get out ahead of it.
• A status update on the long wait lists for expatriation appointments among US consulates.

Lesperance: "Mel and I have a client for whom taxes would clearly be one of the reasons to consider moving abroad. But, he said: 'Well, I'm a hedge fund manager I understand statistics. I know that my children statistically won't be victims of a mass shooting event. But I know with 100% certainty that they are going to go through active shooter drills at school, and I know that every time they go to play soccer with their friends, or go to the movies, or go to Mcdonald's, they're going to be thinking about that and I just don't want that for my kids."