The US government has started enforcing provisions of 1986 legislation allowing the country to exclude tax "refugees" - Americans who drop their citizenship to avoid paying US tax on earnings they make overseas. A spokesman for the State Department confirmed that renouncing US citizenship for tax purposes were grounds for denying re-entry. Anybody born in the US is classified as a US citizen until they renounce their nationality. This has created a cohort of "accidental Americans" who have been burdened with tax liabilities even if they left the country shortly after they were born. Johnson, who left the US at the age of five, renounced his US citizenship in 2016.

Source: Irish Independent June 30, 2019 07:17 UTC