The State Department is drastically reducing the cost of renouncing American citizenship, ending a yearslong legal battle over the price of relinquishing a blue passport.

In an update published in the Federal Register on Friday, the State Department said it was reducing the consular fees of renouncing U.S. citizenship to $450 from $2,350, a more than 80% reduction in cost for the clunky, bureaucratic process.

The policy change, which is effective April 13, was proposed in October 2023.

The change announced Friday returns the fee to what it was in 2010, when the State Department first instituted a charge for Americans renouncing their U.S. citizenship.

The process, which is arduous and costly, requires extensive work from consular officials, including confirming that anyone seeking to give up their citizenship fully understands the implications of doing so.

Obtaining a “certificate of loss of nationality” requires two separate interviews with consular officials, a vetting process and a formal oath of renunciation. The process can take months.

The department warns on its website that the risks of renouncing U.S. citizenship include becoming “stateless” and requiring a visa to enter the United States.

While there are no figures showing how many Americans have formally renounced their citizenship, an estimated 9 million Americans live abroad.

For them, American citizenship can become a burden — the United States is one of only a few countries that levies taxes based on citizenship rather than geography. This means that Americans living abroad must file a tax return, and they may find it more difficult to open a bank account, because of reporting rules for foreign banks imposed by the U.S. government.

The State Department first announced in October 2023 that it intended to lower the fee associated with rescinding citizenship. At the time, hundreds of commenters spoke in favor of the change, with many citing bureaucratic American tax policy as the reason they hoped to give up their citizenship.

“Many reported spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on tax professionals, even when they might have no U.S. tax liabilities,” the State Department said in announcing the change. “Some stated that despite being required to comply with U.S. tax laws, they received and/or benefited from few of the services for which their taxes were collected.”