Douglas Cowgill has spent the last decade helping Canadian-Americans renounce their U.S. citizenship. And in the new Trump era, as more Americans consider cutting ties, he’s become a hot commodity. “There’s no question, we’ve gotten a huge uptick in requests,” says Cowgill, although politics are just part of it (see also: paperwork). Here, he describes what’s involved in an official renunciation and why Trump-era border policies are changing the calculation.

You’ve been providing legal counsel to Canadian-Americans interested in renouncing their U.S. citizenship for a decade. How did you get into this specialty?

I moved to Canada in 2011 for a relationship. I had just finished law school and was free to go wherever, so I followed my future wife, who was already working as a teacher in Vancouver. I began figuring out how I could use my American degree in Canada, rather than going back to school to become a Canadian lawyer. The two options I had were immigration and tax law. Immigration seemed more interesting to me, particularly since I was going through the process myself. Early on, a lot of my clients were Canadians looking to move to the U.S., but around 2015 we started to see more and more Americans looking to renounce U.S. citizenship.

Was that a Trump bump?

It was and it wasn’t. Certainly, Trump had prompted a spike in the number of Americans interested in renouncing, but the 2010s was also when we started to see the impact of U.S. tax policy on dual citizenship. In America, people are taxed based on citizenship, not on where they live. If you’re an American living in Canada, things like capital gains and even tax-free savings accounts might be subject to clawbacks from the IRS, in addition to the tax you’re paying in Canada. There are financial implications, but it’s also the time and resources required to keep up with the paperwork, which is complicated and, for most people, requires an accountant. On the other hand, there can be financial implications to renouncing, so it’s a calculation.

What about the explicitly political reasons for renunciation?

The administration and taxation........

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