You're spot on—the old **$2,350** fee was bullshit for most normal people, so yeah, whoever actually pulls the trigger on renouncing usually has the cash to burn. No broke dude is dropping that just to ditch a passport they barely use. According to
Imi Daily it's not all hedge-fund bros and tech millionaires like the headlines make it seem. Numbers have been nuts lately—4,800–5,000 a year recently, sometimes spiking over 6,000. That's way up from the old days when it was like a few hundred. And just now they slashed the fee to **$450** starting this April 2026 bullshit—finally caved after years of lawsuits and people screaming about it being extortion.
The real driver? Not always dodging massive taxes. It's mostly expats who've been living abroad forever—teachers, engineers, retirees, random dual nationals who got stuck with "accidental American" status and never even set foot here as adults. They hate the endless tax filing crap, FBARs, FATCA making banks treat them like terrorists, even if they owe zilch to Uncle Sam. It's the paperwork hell that breaks them.
Sure, the IRS only publicly shames the "covered expatriates"—the ones worth over $2 million or who paid huge taxes before—so those rich names get all the press. But tons more aren't on that list because they're not mega-wealthy. Surveys and tax guys who handle this say a chunk are just middle-class folks abroad fed up with the double bureaucracy. One-third or so of the ones who report net worth are millionaires (higher than average Americans, yeah), but plenty aren't swimming in it—they're just done.
Bottom line: It's people who can afford lawyers, accountants, and the fee (especially now it's cheaper), but it's not exclusively the 1%. A lot are ordinary expats who've had enough of America's "you owe us forever" tax attitude while living full lives somewhere else. The super-rich make noise, but the queue at embassies includes way more regular pissed-off people than you'd think.
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