Americans are renouncing their citizenship at a record pace.

The US Treasury Department says 1,376 Americans renounced their citizenship during the third quarter.  If the current rate holds, Bloomberg News projects that 6,813 people will hand in their US passports. That's a 26 percent rise from 2016's total of 5,411 - which was itself a 26 percent jump from 2015.

Although it correlates the incredibly embarrassing and ugly first year of Donald Trump's infestation of the White House, the quitting trend actually dates back to 2010.  That's when the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) became law.  It was designed to crackdown on tax evasion by US citizens living abroad by requiring foreign institutions to reports on their accounts or withhold a 30 percent tax on them.  For many of these people, it's more desirable to give up their American citizenship than to pay up.