Before Anything Else: This Is Not A Recommendation
Most people reading this page did not arrive here because they dislike the United States. They arrived because a bank asked where they were born, because a UK adviser said a product was unavailable to them, or because a lifetime of dual filing has started to feel heavier than it is worth. That is a real pressure, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales pitch.
So, plainly: Next Tax Source does not advise anyone to renounce US citizenship, and nothing on this page should be read as encouragement to do so. Giving up a nationality is irrevocable. It reaches far past tax — into your right to live and work in the United States, your ability to visit family there, your children's citizenship, your access to consular protection, and in some circumstances your other nationality. Those consequences belong to immigration and nationality counsel, not to accountants, and we will say so every time we are asked.
What we do is narrower and, we think, more useful. We tell you with precision what the US tax consequences of expatriating would be before you take any irreversible step, and if you do proceed, we prepare the US filings that expatriation triggers to a standard a licensed professional will sign. Many clients who come to us asking about renunciation conclude that their actual problem was an unfiled-returns problem, fix that instead, and keep the passport. That is a perfectly good outcome and we are happy to help you reach it.
Renunciation And Relinquishment Are Not The Same Thing
Two legal routes, one tax question
US nationality law recognises several expatriating acts. The two that matter in practice are renunciation and relinquishment, and the difference is not cosmetic.
Renunciation is the formal, deliberate act: you appear before a consular officer outside the United States, you take an oath of renunciation, and you give up your nationality as of that moment. It is the route almost everybody takes, because it is clean and the date is unambiguous.
Relinquishment is the quieter route. Certain other acts — naturalising in another country with the intention of giving up US nationality, taking a policy-level position in a foreign government, swearing an oath of allegiance to a foreign state, and others — can themselves be expatriating, provided they were performed voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing US nationality. Where that is the case, the expatriating act happened on the day it was performed, which may be many years in the past. You then ask the Department of State to recognise it.
Why the route changes the tax date — and why that matters
For US tax purposes, your expatriation date is the date you ceased to be a citizen for nationality purposes, and the tax rules then attach to that date. For a renunciation that is the date of the oath before the consular officer. For a recognised relinquishment it is the date of the earlier expatriating act.
That distinction can be decisive. Someone who naturalised abroad decades ago, intending at the time to give up US nationality, and who can evidence that intention, may have an expatriation date that precedes the modern expatriation tax rules entirely. Someone who renounces next spring is squarely inside them. The same person, the same intention, the same facts — a different tax universe, purely because of which route the facts support.
Two cautions, though. First, a relinquishment claim has to be true. The intention to give up US nationality must have existed at the time of the act, and you are asserting that to the Department of State; claiming a convenient historic date you cannot support is not a tax strategy, it is a misrepresentation. Second, continuing to behave as a US citizen after the supposed act — renewing a US passport, entering the United States as a citizen, voting in federal elections — tends to contradict the claim. The evidence has to be gathered before anything is asserted, not afterwards.
This is the single most valuable piece of analysis we do on an expatriation file, and it is worth doing first. Which route your facts support changes everything downstream.
What Renouncing Does Not Do
This section exists because the misunderstanding it corrects is the most expensive one in the whole subject.
Renouncing does not erase prior non-compliance. It is not an amnesty, a reset, or a line under the past. Expatriating ends your future filing obligations as a US citizen. Every obligation that fell due while you were still a citizen remains exactly as it was: the unfiled returns are still unfiled, the unfiled FBARs are still unfiled, the information returns you never knew about are still outstanding, and the assessment and penalty regimes continue to apply to them. For an unfiled return, the clock the statute of limitations runs on has generally never started.
Worse, expatriating while non-compliant is actively counterproductive. As the next section explains, the expatriation rules themselves ask you to certify that you have met your US tax obligations for a run of recent years. Walking into a consulate with five years of gaps behind you does not avoid the problem; it converts a fixable filing backlog into a failed certification with its own consequences.
If you are behind, the sequence is: fix the past, then decide about the future. That order is not negotiable, and the routes for fixing the past are genuinely forgiving — see the route in if you are not yet compliant below.
Renunciation also does not undo US tax on US-source income you continue to receive, does not remove US estate tax exposure on US-situs assets you continue to own, and — as the final section of this page explains — does not make you a neutral person for the purposes of your US relatives' tax position.
The Compliance Years Expected Of You Before Expatriating
Expatriation has a compliance gate built into it. One of the tests that determines whether you are treated as a covered expatriate asks whether you can certify, on the prescribed form and under penalties of perjury, that you have complied with your US federal tax obligations for the five tax years preceding the year of expatriation.
Read that carefully, because the scope is wider than people assume. It is not a question about whether you owed tax. It asks about compliance, and compliance means the whole set: income tax returns for each of those years, the foreign account reports, and the international information returns that your particular affairs required. A US citizen in the UK with a limited company may have had Form 5471 obligations; a holder of non-US funds may have had passive foreign investment company reporting; a beneficiary of a foreign trust has its own forms. A return filed showing no tax due is a filed return. A return never filed because no tax was due is a gap.
So the practical reality is that the expatriation project almost always begins as a look-back project. Before anyone books a consular appointment, we reconstruct the five-year picture and establish, with documents, whether the certification can honestly be signed. Where it cannot yet, there is normally a defined route to put it right first — and we would far rather spend six months doing that than watch a client sign a certification they cannot support.
Note also the quiet trap in the arithmetic: the five years in question are the five years preceding the year of expatriation, and the year of expatriation itself is a separate filing obligation on top. The timing of your expatriation date therefore determines which five years are tested. Moving a renunciation across a year boundary changes the test population, which occasionally changes the answer.
The Expatriation Process, Step By Step
The consular route and the DS-4079 family
Renunciation happens at a US embassy or consulate outside the United States, in front of a consular officer. You cannot renounce by post, and you cannot renounce inside the United States except in narrow wartime circumstances that have no practical application today.
The paperwork sits in a family of State Department forms, and it helps to know what each one is for:
DS-4079 is the questionnaire on your possible loss of US nationality. It is the fact-gathering document, and it is the form that carries a relinquishment claim: it asks about your other nationality, when and how you acquired it, what you intended at the time, and how you have behaved as a US citizen since. For a straightforward renunciation it establishes that you understand what you are doing and that you are acting voluntarily.
DS-4080 is the oath or affirmation of renunciation of the nationality of the United States. This is the operative document — the one you sign and swear before the consular officer, and the act that ends your citizenship.
DS-4081 is the statement of understanding of the consequences and ramifications of renunciation. It exists to confirm, in writing, that nobody has misled you: that the act is irrevocable, that you may become stateless if you have no other nationality, that you will have no right to enter or reside in the United States, that military and tax obligations may survive, and that you cannot change your mind later. We ask every client to read it properly. It is the most honest document in the process.
Consular practice varies. Some posts conduct a single appointment; many require two, separated by a cooling-off interval, specifically so that nobody renounces on impulse. Appointment availability at busy posts, London among them, is a real constraint and can itself add months. A fee is payable to the Department of State for documenting a renunciation; because it is set administratively and has changed before, confirm the current amount on the Department of State's own fee schedule rather than relying on any figure quoted elsewhere.
The Certificate of Loss of Nationality, and the wait
You do not walk out of the consulate with proof. The consular officer prepares a Certificate of Loss of Nationality (form DS-4083, commonly the CLN) and forwards it to the Department of State in Washington for approval. Until it is approved, your loss of nationality is not formally documented.
The wait is genuinely unpredictable — weeks for some, many months for others, depending on the post and on whether a relinquishment claim needs adjudicating. Two things are worth holding on to during it. First, the approved CLN is back-dated in effect to the expatriating act, so the delay does not move your tax date. Second, you will need the CLN itself for years afterwards — for banks, for your other government, for visa applications — so keep the original safe and keep certified copies.
A practical note for the interim: between the oath and the CLN you are in an awkward documentary position, holding no US passport and no certificate. Plan travel accordingly, and do not surrender documents you still need until you have the replacement.
And then the tax filings begin
This is the step people forget. The consular process ends your citizenship; it does not tell the IRS anything useful. Your US tax year of expatriation still has to be reported, and the expatriation statement still has to be filed. The State Department and the IRS are separate, and finishing with one does not finish you with the other.
Form 8854 And The Final Dual-Status Year
What Form 8854 is
Form 8854 is the Initial and Annual Expatriation Statement. It is the form on which you report that you have expatriated, give your expatriation date, set out a balance sheet of your assets and liabilities, and — critically — make the five-year compliance certification discussed above. It is the hinge of the whole exercise: the covered-expatriate determination is made on this form, and any mark-to-market computation is reported through it.
Form 8854 is filed with your final US income tax return for the year of expatriation, and a copy goes separately to the address specified in the form's instructions. Both steps matter; filing the return without the separate copy is a common and avoidable defect. Where a deferral election or a deferred-compensation position applies, Form 8854 can also carry an ongoing annual obligation after the year of expatriation, which surprises people who assumed the paperwork ended with the oath.
Failure to file Form 8854, or filing it without a valid certification, is itself one of the routes into covered expatriate status — regardless of how modest your assets are. An accidental American with a small UK salary and no investments can become a covered expatriate purely by not filing a form. That is the single most unfair outcome in this area and it is entirely preventable.
The dual-status year
The year you expatriate is a split year for US purposes. Up to your expatriation date you are taxed as a US citizen on worldwide income. From that date forward you are taxed as a non-resident alien — broadly, on US-source income and on income effectively connected with a US trade or business.
Mechanically this produces a dual-status filing: a return for the citizen portion of the year and a statement covering the non-resident portion, with the whole package filed together. Several ordinary features of a US return behave differently in a dual-status year — the availability of certain deductions and credits, the treatment of a joint filing position with a spouse, the allocation of income and foreign tax credits across the two periods, and the treatment of items that straddle the date. Getting the split wrong is the most common technical error we are asked to correct on expatriation returns prepared elsewhere.
Timing is therefore a live planning point, and one of the few legitimate ones. Income recognised before the date is worldwide-taxable; income recognised after it may not be. Where an event is genuinely within your control — a sale, a distribution, an option exercise — the sequence relative to your expatriation date is worth modelling rather than leaving to chance.
The Three Covered Expatriate Tests
Everything expensive about expatriation flows from one determination: are you a covered expatriate? If you are not, the exit regime largely passes you by. If you are, the mark-to-market rules and the later gift and bequest rules apply to you.
There are three tests. They are not cumulative — meeting any one of them is enough, and that is the point most commentary gets wrong.
1. The tax liability test
The first test looks at the size of your US tax liability. It asks whether your average annual net income tax for the five tax years ending before your expatriation date exceeded a specified amount. The threshold is indexed annually — $206,000 for a 2025 expatriation and $211,000 for 2026 — and the year that counts is the year you expatriate, not the year you file. What matters structurally is that this is an income tax liability test, not an income test and not a wealth test: a high earner who paid little US tax after credits can fall under it, and a modest earner with a large one-off gain can fall over it.
That distinction cuts both ways. A US citizen in the UK with a substantial salary may have had very little net US income tax after foreign tax credits, and so fail to meet this test despite a large income. Conversely, someone with modest income but heavily US-taxed items — certain capital gains, certain distributions — can meet it unexpectedly. Because the test averages five years, a single large transaction in the look-back window can pull the average over the line. This is one reason expatriation dates are sometimes worth moving.
2. The net worth test
The second test is a balance-sheet test: whether your net worth on your expatriation date equalled or exceeded a specified amount. That amount is $2 million, and unlike the tax liability threshold it is not indexed — it has stood unchanged since 2004, so inflation alone has pulled more people over it every year since.
The structural points matter more than the number. Net worth means the fair market value of everything you beneficially own, worldwide, less liabilities. It includes your home, your pension and retirement interests, business interests, life policies with value, and interests in trusts to the extent they are attributed to you. It is tested on a single day, your expatriation date, which makes valuation evidence as of that day important. And it applies regardless of where the assets are or whether they have ever been near the United States.
For a long-term UK resident, this test is usually the binding one. A London property that has appreciated over twenty years, plus a workplace pension, plus accumulated savings, will put many perfectly ordinary professionals over a threshold designed with the wealthy in mind. Property valuation, pension valuation, and the treatment of a jointly owned home with a non-US spouse are where the real work sits. Gifting assets away before expatriating to get under the line is a well-trodden path with its own gift-tax and anti-avoidance consequences, and it is not something to improvise.
3. The certification test
The third test is the compliance gate: you fail it if you cannot certify, on Form 8854 under penalties of perjury, that you have complied with your US federal tax obligations for the five tax years preceding expatriation. Fail the certification and you are a covered expatriate even if your net worth is trivial and your tax liability was nil.
This is the test that catches accidental Americans — people with no US assets, no US income, and no idea they had obligations. It is also the only one of the three that is entirely within your control to fix in advance. That asymmetry is why we treat the look-back work as the first task on every expatriation file, not the last.
There is a narrow statutory exception that can relieve certain dual citizens from birth, and certain people who expatriate as minors, from the first two tests — but notably not from the certification test, and the conditions are tight and fact-specific. If you were born with dual nationality and have lived your life outside the United States, it is worth testing whether you fall within it. Many people who assume they do, do not.
The Mark-To-Market Exit Tax
The concept
If you are a covered expatriate, the exit tax rules treat you, for US income tax purposes, as having sold all of your property at fair market value on the day before your expatriation date. Nothing is actually sold. No money moves. But the deemed sale produces deemed gains and deemed losses, and the net result is brought into your final-year US tax return as if it were real.
That is the whole concept, and it is worth sitting with, because it has a consequence people find counter-intuitive: the charge falls on unrealised appreciation. You can face a US tax bill on a London house you have no intention of selling, computed on a gain you have not received in cash. The liquidity problem that creates is the single hardest practical issue in expatriation planning.
A statutory exclusion applies to the net deemed gain, so there is a band of gain that escapes the charge; that exclusion is indexed annually — $890,000 for a 2025 expatriation and $910,000 for 2026. Losses from the deemed sale are generally allowed against the deemed gains, which softens the position for someone holding a mixed portfolio. Where the resulting tax cannot be funded, there is a statutory election to defer the tax on a property-by-property basis — but it comes with conditions, including security arrangements, an interest charge over the deferral period, and a waiver of treaty rights that would otherwise prevent collection. Deferral is a real option, not a free one.
What the deemed sale covers
The mark-to-market rule reaches broadly: real property wherever situated, shares and securities, business and partnership interests, intellectual property, personal property of value, and interests in certain entities. Basis matters, and so does history — assets held since long before you had any connection to the United States still carry their full appreciation into the computation.
For a US–UK client, the recurring themes are the main residence (where UK private residence relief gives no US protection), long-held employer shares, and interests in a UK trading company. Valuation is the engine of the whole computation, and defensible valuation evidence dated to the day before expatriation is not something you can assemble retrospectively.
The Three Categories That Do Not Follow The Mark-To-Market Rule
Three classes of asset are deliberately carved out of the deemed sale and handled under their own regimes. Missing this is the most common conceptual error in DIY exit-tax planning, because applying the general rule to these items produces a materially wrong answer.
Deferred compensation items
Deferred compensation is not deemed sold. Instead, it is split into two categories by reference to whether the payer is a US person (or has elected to be treated as one) and whether certain notice and waiver conditions are met.
Eligible deferred compensation is left in place and taxed as it is paid: a withholding charge applies to each taxable payment when you receive it, and you waive any treaty right that would reduce that withholding. The practical effect is that the asset is not accelerated — you are taxed on the pension or plan when it actually pays out, at a flat rate, for the rest of its life.
Ineligible deferred compensation is treated very differently: you are taxed on the present value of your entire accrued benefit as of the day before expatriation, as though it had been paid to you then. That acceleration can be severe, and whether a plan is eligible or ineligible often turns on administrative steps the plan sponsor has to take — which means it can sometimes be influenced, if it is identified early enough.
For US citizens in the UK this is where UK pensions land, and the analysis is not simple. The character of the arrangement, the identity of the scheme administrator, the interaction with the US–UK treaty's pension articles, and whether the scheme can or will make the required elections all feed in. Treat any blanket statement that "UK pensions are fine" or "UK pensions are caught" as a hypothesis to be tested on your actual scheme documents.
Specified tax-deferred accounts
Specified tax-deferred accounts — broadly, individual retirement arrangements and certain other US tax-favoured accounts such as education and health savings vehicles — are not deemed sold either. They are treated as having been fully distributed to you on the day before expatriation.
The deemed distribution is taxed as a distribution would be, as ordinary income where that is the normal treatment. The compensating feature is that the early-distribution additional tax does not apply to the deemed distribution. The money stays in the account; only the tax is accelerated. The basis and character consequences of that deemed distribution then follow you, which matters if you later actually take the money.
Interests in non-grantor trusts
An interest in a non-grantor trust is the third carve-out, and the most awkward, because a beneficial interest in a discretionary trust often has no determinable value to mark to market.
Rather than deem a sale, the rules impose a withholding charge on each direct or indirect distribution made to you from the trust after expatriation, for as long as the trust continues to make them, and you waive the treaty rights that would otherwise reduce it. Where the distribution is of appreciated property, the trust is additionally treated as having sold that property at fair market value.
The consequence is an obligation with no end date. A covered expatriate who is a beneficiary of a family trust does not conclude the exit-tax exercise on their expatriation date; they carry a withholding regime into every future distribution, potentially for decades. Grantor trusts, by contrast, are generally looked through to the underlying assets and swept into the general mark-to-market rule — so the grantor/non-grantor characterisation of each trust is a threshold question that has to be settled before any computation is attempted.
After Expatriation: What It Means For Your US Family
The expatriation rules do not stop at your exit. A separate and permanent regime applies to gifts and bequests received from a covered expatriate, and it is the part of this subject that most often changes clients' minds.
In outline: where a US citizen or US resident receives a gift or a bequest from a covered expatriate, the tax is charged on the recipient, not on the expatriate. It is reported on the designated form for that purpose, and it is computed by reference to the highest estate or gift tax rate then in force, with relief available for foreign gift or estate tax paid on the same transfer. An annual exclusion-sized amount is disregarded, and transfers to a US citizen spouse, or to charity, where they would qualify for the marital or charitable deduction, are generally outside the charge.
Read what that does. If you are a covered expatriate with US-resident children, every future gift and your eventual estate may carry a charge that lands on them, at the top rate, with no unified credit to shelter it, for the rest of your life. It does not expire. It does not reduce as time passes. And because the liability is theirs rather than yours, it is easy to overlook entirely while modelling your own exit charge.
For a family where the parents are in London and the children have settled in New York or California, this is frequently the decisive factor — more so than the one-off mark-to-market charge, because the one-off charge can be quantified and funded, while the recipient regime is open-ended. It is also the strongest argument for doing whatever can honestly be done to avoid covered expatriate status in the first place, which usually means fixing the compliance history rather than restructuring the balance sheet.
If You Are Not Yet Compliant: The Route In
Most people who contact us about renouncing are not current. That is normal, it is not a disaster, and it has a defined solution — but the solution comes first, because of the certification test.
Where the failures were non-willful, the IRS operates the streamlined filing compliance procedures, which exist precisely for people who did not know. There are two tracks, and which one applies to you turns on where you have been living:
The IRS Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedure is the track for taxpayers resident outside the United States. It is the route most US citizens in the UK use, and it carries no miscellaneous offshore penalty for those who qualify. The Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedure is the track for taxpayers resident inside the United States, and it carries a penalty on the unreported asset base — so establishing which track your facts support is the first decision, not an afterthought.
In depth, from the Journal
The expatriation questions that decide the outcome, each taken on its own.
The three covered-expatriate tests, and which catches UK residents most often
The deemed sale: which assets are marked to market, and how each is valued
Form 8854: what it asks, and when it is due
The five compliant years, and what happens if yours are not clean
Relinquishment or renunciation: proving the expatriation date
The dual-status return for the year you expatriate
How long a Certificate of Loss of Nationality takes
Where the issue is narrower, the narrower fix may be enough. If your returns are fine and only the foreign account reports were missed, start with missed FBARs. If the returns themselves are the gap, start with missed US tax returns. If the problem is a corporate information return, our guide to Form 5471 covers who must file and how a missed year is fixed.
And if you have never lived in the United States and are only now discovering that you hold its citizenship, read accidental American first. The compliance route and the expatriation route are both open to you. Which order they belong in is a real decision rather than a default: catching up as a citizen through the streamlined procedures is right for most people, but it can permanently close the Relief Procedures for Certain Former Citizens, which require that you have already expatriated and have no filing history as a US citizen or resident. That route — where it is open — produces no tax, no penalties and no covered expatriate status, so it is worth establishing which one you qualify for before filing anything.
One honest caveat: where conduct was not non-willful, the streamlined procedures are not available and different advice is needed. We will tell you if we think that is your position rather than filing you into a programme you do not qualify for.
UK-Side Issues For US–UK Dual Nationals
Expatriation is a US event, but for a long-term UK resident it does not happen in a UK vacuum, and the two sides have to be reconciled rather than handled by two firms who never speak.
Your UK position is driven by UK residence, which is determined by the Statutory Residence Test and is entirely independent of your nationality. Renouncing US citizenship does not change your UK residence status, your UK tax liabilities, or your exposure to UK inheritance tax — all of which continue exactly as before. If you were planning to leave the UK as well, the residence analysis is its own project; our residence and domicile guide is the starting point.
Two interactions deserve specific mention. First, the US–UK treaty. Several of the expatriation mechanisms discussed above operate by requiring you to waive treaty benefits — the withholding regimes on eligible deferred compensation and on non-grantor trust distributions both do, and the deferral election does too. A client who assumes the treaty will protect them post-expatriation may be assuming protection they have already signed away.
Second, the mismatch on UK-favoured assets. A deemed sale of your UK main residence under the US mark-to-market rule produces a US gain with no UK gain to generate a credit, because UK private residence relief exempted it. There is nothing clever to do about that mismatch; it simply has to be modelled before you commit, which is why the cash-flow work comes before the consular appointment and not after.
Our US–UK tax specialists page explains how we run both sides of a cross-border file under one reviewer.
What We Do, And What You Get
Stage one: the decision-support work
Before anything irreversible, we produce a written analysis you can take to your immigration counsel and your family. It covers:
The route analysis. Whether your facts support a relinquishment with an earlier expatriation date, or point to a renunciation, with the evidence that would be needed for either and our honest view of how strong it is.
The five-year compliance position. A documented reconstruction of the relevant years — returns, foreign account reports and information returns — and a clear statement of whether the Form 8854 certification can be signed as things stand, or what has to be fixed first.
The covered expatriate determination. Each of the three tests worked through against your actual numbers, with the current statutory thresholds confirmed at the date of the advice, and the balance-sheet and valuation work behind the net worth test.
A quantified exit charge. A mark-to-market computation on your real assets, with the three carve-outs — deferred compensation, specified tax-deferred accounts and non-grantor trust interests — analysed separately rather than lumped in. Plus the cash-flow question: what the charge would be, when it would fall due, and whether a deferral election is worth its conditions.
The downstream family position. What covered expatriate status would mean for gifts and bequests to your US-resident relatives, which is often the number that matters most.
Timing. Whether moving the expatriation date across a year boundary changes the tests, the dual-status split, or the charge.
Many clients stop here, having learned that their real problem was compliance rather than citizenship. That is a successful engagement and we bill it as advice, not as a failed sale.
Stage two: the filings, if you proceed
If you decide to go ahead — with your own immigration counsel, on your own judgement — we prepare the US tax side to a ready-for-signature standard:
Any catch-up filings needed to support the certification, through the appropriate streamlined track. The dual-status return for your year of expatriation, with the pre- and post-date allocation done properly. Form 8854, with the balance sheet, the certification and any mark-to-market computation. The separate copy of Form 8854 to the address in the instructions. Final-year foreign account reporting. Any deferral or other elections, with their consequences explained in writing before you sign. And the ongoing Form 8854 obligation, where a deferral or deferred-compensation position creates one, so it does not get forgotten in year three.
We do not prepare the State Department forms and we do not advise on nationality law — that is your immigration counsel's work, and we coordinate with them rather than guessing.
How it actually runs — honestly
It takes longer than people expect, and the long part is not the clever part. Reconstructing five or six years of records from UK banks, pension administrators and former employers is usually the bulk of the elapsed time, and some institutions take weeks for archived statements. Valuations for the net worth test and the mark-to-market computation need commissioning, not estimating. Consular appointment availability is outside everybody's control. And a relinquishment claim adds an adjudication step at the Department of State with no reliable timetable.
We would rather tell you that at the start. A realistic expatriation file, where there is a compliance backlog to clear first, is measured in months rather than weeks, and the CLN may arrive well after the tax work is finished.
What we do not do: we do not file for you, we do not sign for you, and we do not submit anything to a government portal. Every return, every form and every election is prepared, reviewed and signed off by our licensed professional, and then you sign and file it. That is deliberate. It is your signature on a document sworn under penalties of perjury, and you should understand every line of it before it goes.
Your Next Step
If you are weighing this up, the useful next step is not a decision — it is a quantified picture. Book a confidential consultation and we will tell you where you stand on the three tests, what the charge would look like, and what your US family's position would be. If the honest answer is "fix your filings and keep your passport", we will say that.
For fee expectations on a defined piece of work, request a quote. For a conversation first, request a private consultation.