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6 Ways a Government Can Stop You from Leaving · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: As of 2026, Germany requires men aged 17 to 45 to get military permission before leaving the country for more than 90 days.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: If a G7 democracy with one of the strongest passports on earth can do that, how else can a government restrict its citizens?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: In this video, you'll learn the six tools at their disposal to stop you from exiting.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: The last being the most consequential.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Before we dive into those six levers, you must first know how governments get this power in the first place.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Once the German requirement surfaced publicly in April 2026, the government lifted the requirement across the board.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So as of mid-2026, no application is needed and no penalty applies.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Cold War era obligation was never repealed, though.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the statute book, waiting to be switched back on.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: That pattern is worth understanding before we get into the countdown.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: A government has six main ways to prevent you, your assets, or both from crossing its borders.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: All of them attached to something specific, a citizenship, a tax residency, or assets located inside a border.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: None of them attached to you as a person.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: That distinction is critical.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is the kind of planning our members do together inside IMI Sovereigns, our private community of investors and entrepreneurs diversifying their citizenships, tax exposure, and banking.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Quarterly private briefings and live calls cover the rumors circulating in this industry weeks before they turn into headlines on our website and here on YouTube.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Links for the founding member discount is below.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's start with the mildest of the six, because it takes nothing from you.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is the tax clearance certificate.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of charging you or limiting you, the government demands an affirmative sign-off.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Documents confirming your tax affairs are in order before you or your capital goes anywhere.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: South Africa has the clearest active version.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Financial emigration through the Reserve Bank was scrapped in March 2021 and folded into a process managed by the South African Revenue Service, or SARS.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: A South African moving money offshore has a discretionary allowance of 1 million Rand a year, raised to 2 million Rand in 2026, that does not need any clearance at all.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: For anything larger, moving up to a further 10 million Rand a year requires a tax compliance status confirmation and an approval for international transfer.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Above that, combined ceiling of 12 million Rand, the transfer needs a manual letter of compliance from SARS and Reserve Bank sign-off on top of it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Ceasing tax residency can trigger a capital gains charge on the way out as well.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Moving your own wealth out of the country, in other words, requires the tax authority's documented blessing.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: The United States has a dormant version of the same idea on its books.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: The tax code requires departing resident and non-resident aliens, with some exceptions, to obtain a certificate of compliance from the Internal Revenue Service, filed on Form 1040C or Form 2063, and known as a sailing permit, confirming their US taxes settled before they leave.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: The rule is more than a century old, rarely enforced, and most people who technically owe it have never heard of it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: It has also never been repealed, which means it's ready whenever a government decides to use it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: While that sixth tool was a delay mechanism, tool number five is an actual bill.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: An exit tax is triggered by the act of leaving the tax system rather than by selling anything.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: The government treats your worldwide assets as though you sold them the day before departure, then taxes the paper gain even though cash hasn't changed hands.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Most countries that impose one tie it to tax residency.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Canada, Australia, Norway, Japan, France, and Germany all use some form of deemed disposal when you cease being a tax resident.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: The thresholds vary more than you'd expect.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Japan's regime starts at 100 million yen in covered assets, low enough to catch an ordinary equity portfolio.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: France supplies its charge to shareholdings worth 800,000 euros or more, or at least 50% of a company.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Germany's Wegstcheuer targets holders of at least 1% of a corporation.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: The United States is the outlier because it ties the tax to citizenship itself.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: An American cannot end the obligation by moving abroad since the country taxes its citizens on worldwide income wherever they reside, earn and bank.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Only renunciation ends it, and renunciation is what triggers the exit tax.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: That charge falls on covered expatriates, a status you reach by meeting any one of three tests.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: One, a net worth of$2 million or more.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Two, an average annual net income tax liability above$211,000 over the prior five years for 2026.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Three, or a failure to certify five years of full tax compliance.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: For 2026, the first$91,000 of net unrealized gains is excluded, and gains above that are taxed at capital gains rates.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what that means for timing though.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: The exit tax attaches to the residency or citizenship you're shedding.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when wealth and tax residents are concentrated in one high-charge country, the departure bill lands in full.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: A second passport acquired on the way out does nothing about it.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: The defense is structural.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Tool number four costs you the passport itself.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: A passport is state property, and a growing number of debts can cost you the right to hold one.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The United States ties this directly to tax.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: A 2015 federal law, the FAST Act, lets the IRS certify a seriously delinquent tax debt to the State Department, which can then deny a passport application, refuse a renewal or revoke a passport already issued.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're overseas when it happens, the departure can limit your passport to a single trip home.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: For 2026, a seriously delinquent tax debt means more than$66,000 in unpaid federal tax, including penalties and interest with a filed lien or levy behind it.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: That figure is adjusted for inflation each year from a base of$50,000.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: The same lever reaches beyond tax.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: The State Department moved in 2026 to start revoking the passports of parents with large child support debt, beginning with those owing$100,000 or more and eventually reaching the program's$2,500 threshold under a collection program that has pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars since 1998.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: For someone holding a single US passport, a revocation can strand them inside the country with almost no warning.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: For a dual national, the same event is an inconvenience rather than a grounding, because a second travel document gets you moving while you resolve the debt.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: A single passport is a single point of failure, and this is the tool that proves it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Tool number three punishes nothing at all because it attaches to an obligation you never agreed to.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Conscription is compulsory military service backed in many countries by exit controls that prevent service age men from leaving.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Between roughly 60 and 85 countries conscript at least part of their citizenry, and the number is rising.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Latvia reinstated conscription in 2024.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Croatia is following from 2026, and Germany cleared a new service law in December 2025.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ukraine is the hardest current case.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Under martial law, men aged 18 to 60 generally cannot leave, subject to exemptions, and they need a military registration document to cross the border.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Since August 2025, men aged 18 to 22 have been permitted to leave freely, though the restriction applies to everyone older.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: South Korea can call up dual national men, sometimes catching them on a visit.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: The singer Yu Syung-jun, who had publicly promised to serve, took US citizenship in January 2002 before his scheduled enlistment.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Solas blocked his return for some 24 years, and he is litigating that ban to this day.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Israel, Greece, Turkey, and Russia all assert service obligations on citizens abroad under various conditions.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Germany's new framework reaches beyond the draft.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Alongside a conscription register, it extended that dormant 1965 provision into peacetime, requiring men aged 17 to 45 to seek permission before leaving for more than three months.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is where a second passport helps least.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Conscription attaches to your first citizenship, and acquiring a new one rarely cancels the service obligation of the old one.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Renouncing the original may be the only clean exit, and some states make that difficult or condition it upon completing service first.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Tool number two decides where your money is allowed to go.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: The capital controls limit how much you can move out of a country, or freeze it in place entirely.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your body can be free to leave while your capital is not.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: They also appear fast.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Governments announce them over a weekend with banks already closed, precisely so there's no window to react.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Cyprus is the clearest recent example.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: During the 2013 banking crisis, the country shuts its banks, imposed withdrawal and transfer limits that lasted about two years, and converted a portion of uninsured deposits above 100,000 euros into bank equity.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, close to half of those balances at Bank of Cyprus.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Depositors who thought they were sitting on cash discovered they owned shares in a failing bank instead.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Argentina has cycled through currency controls for years, rationing access to dollars.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Argentines also cannot renounce their nationality, which does leave them permanently exposed to whatever restrictions and emergency decrees Buenos Aires imposes next.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nigeria and Egypt have both had severe foreign currency shortages in recent years, making it close to impossible to move money out through official channels at the official rate.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: China caps individual foreign exchange purchases at$50,000 per person per year.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: One reason Chinese buyers have rooted property payments through workarounds that regulators are constantly closing.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Controls attached to assets located inside the country and to accounts denominated in its currency.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Money already parked in another jurisdiction, in another currency, and ideally in another geopolitical block is outside the reach of any single government's controls.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, tool number one reverses that last trap completely.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's blunt.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: An exit ban is a state order that a named person cannot leave, and the authorities usually take the passport while the matter plays out.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: The trigger doesn't have to be a crime.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Exit bans are used over unpaid debts, tax disputes, pending investigations, commercial litigation, and in some countries as leverage against a relative of someone the government wants.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: China has expanded its use of exit bans over the past decade.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: The human rights group Safeguard Defenders has documented their growing application against foreign executives caught in business disputes and against Chinese nationals connected to investigations.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes as pressure on family members abroad, Russia restricts exits for citizens who owe certain debts, have security clearances, or fall under mobilization.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dozens of other states have some version of the power in reserve.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: The mechanism attaches to your physical presence inside the country, plus your standing there as a citizen, resident, or party to a dispute.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: A second passport does nothing for you while you're inside the banning state and subject to its order.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: What it changes is the situation on either side of that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: A person whose base is elsewhere is far less likely to be inside a high-risk country when the ban lands and has somewhere to go if it's ever lifted.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, run back through the six and the pattern makes itself clear.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: An exit ban needs you physically inside the country.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Capital controls reach the money you left behind.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: An exit tax hits the residency you're shedding.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Conscription is tied to the citizenship you were born with.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: A clearance certificate depends on one tax authority, and a passport can be withdrawn by the single government that issued it.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Each of them is most restrictive and impactful when your citizenship, banking, and assets are all concentrated in one place.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: That concentration is the common variable, and it's the one you have control over.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: None of this means the tools are common.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Most people will never face an exit ban, a frozen account, or a revoked passport, and most who move abroad will deal with an exit tax at worst.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Diversification is not a cheat code either.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: A second passport does not close to nothing against conscription in your first country, and it will not erase a US exit tax, for instance.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: What a second citizenship, a tax residency, and assets spread across jurisdictions do is remove single points of failure.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: A backup travel document if one passport is pulled, an account in another block if one banking system freezes, a tax residence that answers to more than one authority, a landing spot you can enter without anyone's permission.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Most people plan a move around the destination.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: The more useful exercise is to look back at the country you're leaving, ask what leverage it has over you once you've gone, and decide how much of that leverage you're willing to concentrate in a single state's hands.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that covers what your first country can do to you on the way out.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: The next question is what your second one will do for you once you're abroad, because a passport is not just an exit document, it's who picks up the phone when things go wrong overseas.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: We analyzed which citizenships give you the strongest consular protection during war, conflict, a pandemic, or any other crisis that catches you outside your home country.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: That video is on your screen now.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe if you want more on global mobility and investment migration.