Some 28 out of the 750 names on the U.S. government's latest quarterly list identifying Americans who have – as the Federal Register in which the names appear every three months puts it – “chosen to expatriate,” have appeared on previous lists, the American Expat Financial News Journal can exclusively report today.

The number of Americans who formally gave up their U.S. citizenships during the second quarter of 2022 was the fifth-highest ever, based on the latest quarterly list of names published in the Federal Register.

According to this list, some 1,473 Americans gave up their U.S. citizenship in the second three months of this year, more than twice as many as in the first quarter, and the most since the second quarter of 2020, when 2,406 names were published (see tables, above and below). 

A Guardian article about a growing backlog of American expats around the world who would like to give up their U.S. citizenships, but haven't been able to since the pandemic struck in March 2020, has gone global, not just on social media, but on the pages and websites of other publications as well, since it was first published online on Dec. 31.

As this and other news organizations reported back in February, more Americans handed their citizenships back to Uncle Sam in 2020 than during any other single year to date, in spite of the fact that U.S. embassies and consulates around the world – which are needed to process such citizenship renunciations – were closed or offering reduced services for most of the year...

The latest U.S. Government posting of the Internal Revenue Service's "Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate" brought total U.S. citizenship renunciations in 2020 a record high of 6,705. 

Since Monday, Expatriates around the world have been re-tweeting and otherwise sharing a Bloomberg opinion piece that clearly explains what its writer says is the reason so many Americans have been renouncing their citizenships recently: "the nightmare of American tax and financial reporting".