Although the story is circulating that Saverin has decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship to go and live in Singapore for an indefinite period of time in order to save money on taxes, it may actually cost him in the long run according to other sources. Interestingly, this move may actually end up helping the United States.
Although, the number of Americans renouncing their citizenship has risen from 235 back in 2008 to almost 1800 in 2011, it is still very expensive to give up the U.S. citizenship. It’s not something I would do for sure.
And I am still trying to wrap my head around why Saverin did it because he reportedly had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to renounce his citizenship. There seems to be mixed reports, but one thing is for sure and that is that Saverin will make as much as $4 billion in the upcoming Facebook IPO.
Saverin was born in Brazil and was one of the people who helped Mark Zuckerberg to launch the social networking giant Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. Saverin’s reasons for going to Singapore don’t seem to be monetary according to some sources and he actually wants to live there to get better opportunities! He also seems to hate the rules that are imposed on Americans as it pertains to holding money abroad.
There seems to be more conflicting reports to this story even as I write up this blog post. It is definitely something that has got Americans talking.