A tax law was passed in 1996 that said anyone who gives up their citizenship and is worth $500,000 or more, must be doing it to dodge taxes. This law, granted by Congress, gave the INS the power to label someone as a "tax dodger" and banish them from the US. Also, the IRS became intollerable of people who banish their US citizenship and show no mercy to anyone who does it by taxing them on all earnings for 10 years after they give up citizenship.

Welfare to non-citizens was cut, the oath new citizens take was highlighted, an "exit tax" was created for wealthy ex-citizens (who would pay on capital gains as if they were dead), and the threat of being exposed on "the list" was all to help cut down on the number of passports given up and/or to increase the perceived value of an American citizenship. In the mean time, the thousands of people who each describe their reason(s) for expatriating as "extenuating," fall on the deaf ears of the IRS, who can link each case back to tax avoidance. For example, the case where a man was shipped off to France in World War II, fell in love, married and never came back to the US. Everything he owned was in France and he wanted to will it to his wife. Congress allows the IRS to tax estates left to aliens. The American in France hated the idea of his wife sellling their home to pay US taxes, so he gave up his US citizenship. His motive was proclaimed by the the IRS as tax avoidance. For some people with similar scenarios, the IRS can and has waited up to ten years on making a decision whether or not renouncement was done in order to avoid taxes, simply by saying "the inherently factual and subjective nature of the inquiry" makes it too difficult.

The whole point is to make renouncing of citizenship much harder and more "scary," if you will, so people won't flee the US to avoid taxes. In the two years the Federal Register has been out, no one can say if it has deterred people from banishing their citizenship. And no one seems to know how Congress gave the INS power to label people who expatriate as "tax dodgers" and banish them from the country (without appeal), when the IRS is forbidden to let other agencies look through someone else's tax returns. Even though it is probably safe for un-Americans to walk their forsaken land, their names are still on "the list."