Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.
Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship ahead of a possible increase in tax rates for top earners. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dormitory and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world?s largest social network holds its IPO.
Besides helping cut tax bills stemming from the Facebook, the move may also help him avoid capital gains taxes on future investments since Singapore doesn?t have a capital gains tax.
Saverin?s estimated gain, and subsequent tax bill, would be based on an appraisal by his tax advisers. They could have valued his Facebook stake at less than it will be worth once shares trade publicly, reducing his liability. For tax purposes, Saverin could say that the value of his stake should be discounted because of the potential difficulty of selling the shares while the company remains private.
Saverin moved to the U.S. in 1992, and became a citizen in 1998, his spokesman said. He has invested in Asian, U.S. and European companies, according to his spokesman.
He plans to invest in Brazilian and in other global companies that have strong interests in entering the Asian markets. ?Accordingly, it made the most sense for him to use Singapore as a home base,? Goodman said in the statement.
Renouncing citizenship is an option chosen by increasing numbers of Americans. A record 1,780 gave up their U.S. passports last year compared with 235 in 2008, according to government records.
Income-tax rates for top U.S. earners will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent next year and rates on capital gains and dividends also are scheduled to rise, unless Congress blocks the increases.
?It?s a loss for the U.S. to have many well-educated people who actually have a great deal of affection for America make that choice,? said Richard Weisman, head of the global tax practice at Baker & McKenzie in Hong Kong.
Not many out of 300 million. They should also give how many people renounced their former country to become a US Citizen.
In February 2012, 60,000 people became citizens of the US.
If Saverin wants to go, let him go. He was only a temp for a few years anyway. His interest is in saving money and avoiding taxes, not being a good citizen of any particular country. I wonder why he did not go to Canada or the UK? Oh, taxes are too high there
========== Saverin?s name is on a list of people who chose to renounce citizenship as of April 30, published by the Internal Revenue Service. ==========
You might be more interested in the changing demographics of the USA.
And you can have every last one of them...
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13% in U.S. foreign-born, a level last seen in 1920
Of 40 million born abroad, the greatest number lives in California, with large populations in New York, Texas and Florida, Census Bureau report says.
The U.S. foreign-born population has risen to its highest level since
1920, with 13% of all those living in the nation in 2010 having been born elsewhere, a new report from the Census Bureau shows.
Forty million of those residing in the U.S. in 2010 were born in other countries, up from 31 million, or 11% of the total, a decade earlier. The foreign-born share of the population dropped between 1920 and 1970, hitting a low of 4.7% in 1970, before rising again for several decades.
But that growth has slowed in recent years as immigration has dropped, census officials said Thursday. Most of the recent increase in the foreign-born population came between 2000 and 2006, said Elizabeth M. Grieco, chief of the bureau's foreign-born population branch.
California is home to the lion'sshare of the foreign-born population, with 1 in 4 residing in the Golden State, the new report shows. Twenty-seven percent of the state's population of 37 million in 2010 was born abroad, up from 26% in 2000.
Three other big states, New York, Texas and Florida, accounted for a third of the nation's foreign-born population, with New York having the second-highest total at 11%. West Virginia had the smallest percentage, with just 1% born outside the U.S.
The new report draws on the 2010 American Community Survey, an annual poll of 3 million U.S. households.
The report details many characteristics of the foreign-born population, showing that on average, foreign-born households are larger than those of people born in this country, have more children younger than 18 and are more likely to include three generations or more living under one roof.
The foreign-born were more likely to be employed than native-born Americans, the study showed. Sixty-eight percent of the foreign-born population age 16 or older were working in 2010, compared with 64% of those born in the U.S. And 79% of foreign-born men were in the labor force, compared to 68% of native-born men; in contrast, 60% of U.S.-born women were employed, compared with 57% of foreign-born women.
But people born elsewhere were less likely than those born in this country to have health insurance and more likely to be living below the poverty line. Among regions of birth, the poverty rate was highest for the U.S. foreign-born population from Latin America and from Africa.
More than half of the nation's foreign-born people arrived from Latin America and the Caribbean, with most of those from Mexico, the report showed. More than a quarter of the total came to the U.S. from Asia, with about 12% from Europe, 4% from Africa and smaller percentages from other regions.
Those who arrived in the U.S. since 2005 were more likely than other immigrants to live outside such traditional "gateway" states as California, New York and Texas, the Census Bureau said in another recent study. Although the gateway states still accounted for the majority of the newly arrived, many recent immigrants were settling in states with smaller foreign-born populations, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Wyoming and the Dakotas.
The annual American Community Survey took the place of the long-form decennial census in 2010 and is used to help distribute $450 billion in annual federal funds. But a bill moving through Congress is seeking to eliminate its funding, with the bill's Republican sponsors arguing that the survey is unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy.
The Republican-controlled House voted 232 to 190 this week along party lines to cut all funding for the survey in 2013. The Senate, where Democrats hold a majority, has not acted on the bill.
The sharp increase of those who renounce their US citizenship (a process that is made very difficult by the US government) should concern those politicians who think they can tax the wealthy with impunity. We once had a country where you could make a lot of money, and where industry was not controlled by the government. We have lost that, and now people with the talent to make a lot of money are realizing that they have more freedom and opportunity elsewhere.
It makes some people feel good to say let them go, we don't need them, but when they go, a lot of jobs go with them.
He did pay US taxes on everything he earned here. What he's staging for is the $100 billion Facebook IPO.
Interestingly, if you renounce your U.S. citizenship, you're STILL liable for income taxes for a period of time after the renunciation. This on-going liability if for INCOME taxes and does not affect capital gains rates like from an IPO.
We would like some to come to the old Great Lakes cities - Detroit, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo .... They built those cities once before a century or so ago; now they've died or moved away and we could use the population growth.
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