Doesn't it cost to renounce your citizenship too?

What are they gonna do, send a debt collector to the consulate?

Maybe not. It depends.

First, there is a long list of countries where you can deduct a lot of money from your salary if you pay tax in the other country. I think it's like $90 thousand dollars now? So if you make less than that you don't pay US taxes on top of your taxes where you are living.

Second, for basically the same list of countries you can deduct your taxes paid there from your US taxes.

The upshot is this only impacts countries the US empire doesn't deem worthy (I don't know which, sorry), or people who make a lot of money in low tax countries. I am told that both Switzerland and Japan fit that description.

So if you make $150k in Saudi Arabia then you'll end up paying US tax on most of that I think. 😄

The US system of taxing their citizens abroad is unfair, but people living abroad vote in the last place they lived in the US, so they don't have enough concentration of votes to matter. No politician is going to care if 0.02% of their constituents whine about unfair taxes when they have doners at home to appease.