Question: I would like to see if someone has or has not renounced their US citizenship. I think there is a list published each year. Where are those lists?
Answer: The list is called "Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate" and is published quarterly by the Internal Revenue Service in the Federal Register.
To view all lists published so far, visit www.fdsys.gov and type in "Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate" into the search box. The list appears to have been first produced in January 1997. As of this writing, the latest list of individuals was published in November 2009.
You may well wonder why this list of individuals who have sworn off allegiance to the United States is published by the Internal Revenue Service and not by the State Department, especially when it is the State Department that issues the "Certificate of Lost Nationality" that results when a person has gone through the difficult process of renouncing their US Citizenship.
The reason for the IRS handling the list is because the 1996 law (PL 104-191, Title V, Sec 512(a)) was passed in an atmosphere where it was assumed that tax evasion was the number one reason for renouncing one's US citizenship.
If you live in Alaska, you can get a flavor of this climate by visiting the Digital Pipeline at http://sled.alaska.edu/databases/home.html and typing in [renounce citizenship taxes].
