U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson renounces U.S. citizenship
U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson renounces U.S. citizenship:- Boris Johnson, the New York-born British foreign secretary and former mayor of London, renounced his U.S. citizenship last year.
A list from the U.S. Treasury Department showed Johnson was one of more than 5,000 people who gave up their American citizenship in 2016.
Johnson has called his former dual British-American nationality an accident of birth — his parents were living in New York City at the time. He left the United States when he was 5.
His decision could be linked to taxes — Americans living outside the country are still liable to pay income taxes.
Johnson said in 2014 that he thought it was “absolutely outrageous” that the U.S. government wanted him to pay capital gains tax from the sale of his London home. He later settled the bill, said to be up to $50,000, according to media reports.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's greatest gaffes
In 2006, Johnson wrote on his blog, "After 42 happy years I am getting a divorce from America.” He said he made the decision after a Continental Airlines security employee said he had to use an American passport to travel through the U.S. and not a British one as he attempted to fly to Mexico via Houston.
“My brothers and sisters are British, and so are my parents, and I would like you to know that I am a loyal subject of Her Majesty, speak in an English accent, and for years I have travelled exclusively on a British passport,” Johnson wrote.
The leading figure in the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, however, later renewed his U.S. passport, according to The Washington Post.
Johnson, whose full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, didn’t comment on his reasons for the renunciation.
