The US expatriation list carried 1,781 names in the second quarter of 2026, up 68% from a year earlier, in the first quarterly count published since the State Department cut the price of formally giving up US citizenship from $2,350 to $450.
The Internal Revenue Service published the list July 23, covering information Treasury received through June 30. The previous list carried 1,462 names. The same quarter in 2025 carried 1,057. That works out to a 21.8% rise over the first quarter and a 68.5% rise year over year.
The first half of 2026 now stands at 3,243 names against 2,342 in the first half of 2025, a gap of 38.5%. Six months of 2026 already account for roughly two-thirds of the 4,888 names published across the four lists covering 2025.
What the quarterly list counts
This isn't a renunciation tally. Section 6039G of the tax code requires Treasury to publish the name of each individual losing US citizenship with respect to whom the secretary received information during the quarter. Long-term residents, defined in section 877(e)(2), are treated as if they were citizens who lost citizenship, the notice states. Green-card holders who formally abandon permanent residence land on the same list as renunciants.
Timing is the second limit. The count reflects when Treasury received paperwork, not when someone stood in a consulate and took the oath. A renunciation completed in March can surface in a list published months later.
The notice carries names and nothing else. No country of residence, no age, no stated reason. There's no public way to tell whether the increase is concentrated in Switzerland, Canada or anywhere else.
A $1,900 price cut took effect April 13
State published its final rule March 13. The rule reduced Item #8 on the Schedule of Fees for Consular Services, administrative processing of a request for a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, from $2,350 to $450, an 81% reduction in the renunciation fee.
The fee reaches beyond renunciation. It applies to anyone requesting a CLN, the document that confirms loss of nationality, whether through the oath of renunciation before a consular officer abroad or through the other expatriating acts listed at 8 U.S.C. 1481.
The $450 figure is not new. State charged it from 2010 until 2014, then raised it to $2,350 after CLN requests, in the department's words, "increased dramatically."
Can the fee cut explain the jump?
Not on this data. The price fell 12 days into the quarter and held for the remaining 79. That's suggestive and nothing more.
Two other pressures were already in place and didn't move in 2026. Citizenship-based taxation and the account reporting rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act stayed as written, and Americans abroad keep losing access to foreign bank accounts under them.
Congress has only begun measuring that burden. The Senate Finance Committee reported the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act on July 30 with a section directing the comptroller general to report publicly on the compliance burdens carried by US citizens living abroad, after the committee dropped two of five provisions written for that group.
The third pressure is the record itself. Because the list keys to the quarter Treasury received information, some share of the 1,781 belongs to expatriations completed while the fee still stood at $2,350. Nobody outside Treasury can say how large that share is.
One quarter now matches all of 2011
That same figure, 1,781, is the total across the four quarterly lists covering 2011: 499 names, then 519, then 403, then 360. Three months of Federal Register listings in 2026 equal a full year from the period just after Congress passed FATCA.
The comparison runs in an unexpected direction. Through all of 2011 the CLN fee sat at $450, the same price State restored in April. The department's stated reason for going to $2,350 was the volume of requests that arrived while the fee was $450.
The next list is the first clean test
The third quarter of 2026 is the first full quarter in which the $450 fee applied from the opening day. The IRS published its third-quarter lists on Oct. 30, 2023, Oct. 29, 2024 and Nov. 17, 2025, so the next count lands in late October or November.
The benchmark is already on the books. The list covering the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2025, when the fee was still $2,350, carried 1,592 names.
