I remember when the Berlin Wall came down. Two Democrats would like to rebuild the wall to keep US citizens in.
Senators want to tax Americans, even after renouncing citizenship
What happens to Americans when they say goodbye to Uncle Sam and opt for citizenship elsewhere? A few US lawmakers are proposing that expatriates be banned from ever returning to America — and are taxed heavily once gone.
Senators Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania) are suggesting that Congress hears a law that would force former citizens of the US to pay hefty taxes long after renouncing their citizenship and also bans them from ever setting foot again on American soil.
The proposed legislation is being dubbed the Ex-PATRIOT Act, an obnoxious acronym for the Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy bill. If passed, it intends to put pressure on US citizens from saying sayonara and shipping off elsewhere.
The Ex-PATRIOT Act is being called a direct response to the recently publicized news that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has become a citizen of Singapore, a maneuver which is expected to save him tens of millions of dollars in US taxes. Saverin says it isn’t a taxation issue; Schumers says it’s a “scheme.”
The New York Times reports that Saverin stands to make upwards of $4 billion when Facebook goes public later this week. Although he still has shares in the company, the co-founder parted ways with Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the social networking site shortly after he helped it get off the ground nearly a decade ago. He filed the paperwork to become a citizen of Singapore in January 2011 and was approved in September. Only recently, however, was the news publicized after the Internal Revenue Service published the names of recently declared expats.
“This had nothing to do with taxes,” Saverin explains in an interview with The Times published on Thursday. “I was born in Brazil, I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen.”
In 2011 alone, the IRS reports that at least 1,788 Americans officially renounced their US citizenship. Saverin is reported to have settled down in Singapore after visiting there three years ago.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” his spokesman, Tom Goodman, tells Bloomberg News.
Regardless of his intentions, Sens. Schumer and Casey want to make sure that other Americans aren’t encouraged to do the same. In a statement issued before they formally proposed the legislation, the lawmakers call Saverin’s move an “outrage” that was done only to “help him duck” paying taxes.
Singapore has no capital gains tax, unlike the States.
The country that broke my heart
Many of us unemployed or underemployed aging Americans are “too young to retire, and too old to rehire.” I’m one of the grievously underemployed, in that I am working very hard indeed, but cannot earn enough to get by. I expect that I will soon find it necessary to start all over again on some foreign shore, in late middle age, with very little money or resources. I am presently working on tying up all the loose ends and getting ready to make it all happen.
It is already inexcusable for the US to tax its own citizens living abroad, on money they earn outside the US. To punish former citizens for attempting to start a new life outside the clutches of the all-encompassing federal government is truly unconscionable.
I lost all trust in the US when the Clintons attempted to obliterate the Serbian people. Even so, as long as I live here, I retain my allegiance to the US Constitution, to US law, and to the laws of my present state of residence. In other words, I hold up my end of the bargain solely because it is the right thing to do, knowing full well that the US government (not to mention state and local governmental bodies) is no longer bound by the rule of law.
The infamous Senators Schumer and Casey needn’t worry; once I leave – and it’s only a matter of time – I won’t be tempted to return. After all, how many survivors of the Titanic would have preferred to remain on the ship as it broke apart and settled to the bottom of the frigid North Atlantic?
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Note the clearly-visible Confederate flag in the picture above. At the destruction of the Berlin Wall, this universal symbol of freedom was present.
Those who love freedom, love the Confederate flag;
Those who hate freedom, hate the Confederate flag;
Those who equate the flag with racism, are morons and/or liars!
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I am prevented from leaving by the conditions of my unsupervised release from Federal Prison. That extra added sentence that the federal courts impose, outside of the legal sentencing guidelines, that allows them to continue to punish those who have completed their incarceration. In my case, two additional years of supervised release followed by three years of unsupervised release. During this time, I must report monthly all activities in writing, report all income and spending (down to groceries, fuel, candy, tobacco, medications, etc.) and be ready to provide yearly a full accounting as thorough as an IRS audit. I have to carry at all times an identification card identifying me as a released convict. I have to inform all current or potential landlords that I am a convicted federal felon (here in Florida there is a concerted effort to not rent to anyone with a felony conviction ANY felony conviction, even tax evasion or littering in a national park. Public housing, low income housing, etc. by state law cannot rent to those convicted of drug offenses and the managers of these housing projects have extended it to all felons.) Thus, I reside in a small privately owned hell hole that cannot accept those who receive section 8 assistance or other housing programs because they do not meet even their lax standards. My neighbors are the down-trodden, families with unmarried parents, kids from abusive relationships, drug dealers, the chronically lazy, unemployed, those gaming the system and a couple of older folks just getting by on their Social Security and foodstamps. We have a car (19 years old and rickety, but it runs!) so we usually have a neverending procession of people that “need” to go somewhere in a hurry, they’ll give me a couple of bucks for gas after their checks arrive on the 1st … the only people I drive are those that I know their situation and need is real and that have small children.
Apologies for the over long coment! 😳
The iron curtain fell but now the shoe is on the other foot! As an American that believes in freedom I am starting to feel like I’m living in the USSR.
@plemmen,
No apology needed.
The US has much longer prison sentences, and far more people in prison, than any other country in the supposedly “free” world.
When your unsupervised release period is up, you might consider going elsewhere. If you want to make a little money overseas to help pay the bills, you might be able to get a certificate in teaching English as a foreign language. Might want to look into that when the time comes.
That has crossed my mind on more than one occasion. I shall consider it as I am semi-fluent in several languages. I may well need to brush up on Church Slavonic as well …
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