Facebook Co-Founder Gives Up US Citizenship

One of the billionaire co-founders of Facebook has renounced his US citizenship in a bid to slash his tax bill ahead of the gigantic IPO. Eduardo Saverin, 30, owns about 4% of the social network—a chunk that could be worth as much as $3.84 billion, reports Bloomberg. “Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” says a spokesman for Saverin, who is a native of Brazil and met Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard. He moved to Singapore in 2009.

More and more Americans are quitting their US citizenship in order to reduce tax liabilities. A record 1,780 Americans surrendered their US passports last year, compared to 235 in 2008. In Saverin's case, Singapore does not enforce a capital gains tax. But departing Americans will not elude all tax burdens, Bloomberg explains. The IRS imposes "what is effectively an exit tax on the capital gains from their holdings," treating them as though they had been sold. (More Eduardo Saverin stories.)