For many years, US citizenship served as a handy safety net for Asia's rich. Like UK and Canadian passports, it offered protection, for example in the run-up to the handover in Hong Kong when some of the wealthy feared wrongly, it turns out that their empires might be dismantled by China. But one of the more onerous parts of being a US citizen is the obligation to pay taxes in the US, no matter where income is earned or received.
The only other two countries with similar enforced tax rules are Libya and North Korea -- hardly the company the US would like to be keeping, said a source.
Income abroad is self-declared,...
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