The New American Slavery: An Accidental American
This guy was born in New York but spent most of his life in England. Now the US will not let him travel to the US on his English passport and the IRS wants to tax him.
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This comment in no way should be construed as a lessening of my desire to slap the arrogant a**holes in our government till their ears bleed.
Why do hear of the IRS seizing the savings of suspect citizens without any legal due process?
Emergency measures must be taken to correct everything that is all Bush's fault.
Do you want solar energy to fail? It costs money to shut down the coal industry since electricity must necessarily skyrocket.
And what about all those badly needed bail outs companies who pledge money to the correct political party?
Do you really--really?--do you really want to disappoint that oo-wee so precious little boy who watched our glorious Chairman-In-Chief sign the unaffordable Affordable Health Care Act?
And don't you want to save all the teeny-tiny snail darter type fishes, sickly salamanders and newts no longer Darwinian fit to survive as a species? Profuse are the wetlands the EPA still needs to confiscate.
And plenty are the greedy capitalist refuseniks Big Brother needs to keep an eye on.
And what about those Tea Party terrorists?
And gosh darn it, don't you all want to contribute to the welfare of everybody?
Do your fair share to receive your fair share, I always say.
And on this Thanksgiving Day, do not forget to give thanks to the stewardship of our more than equal elite betters!
Keep that in mind as you enjoy all that food the starving future New World Order still can't eat.
Yeah, you. Keep that also in mind.
In the 80s we complained that the Soviets charged a tax for Jewish immigrants to leave. Go figure?????
I am not bothered by this, since I am well below the cutoff value, but I have friends who made donaldducksounds when this rule was made. It increases the cost of 'voting with your feet' when and if the situation in the US becomes bad enough that the producers want to leave. And it is another example of a punitive 'screw the rich' attitude of our society. This rule will come into play when there is an Atlantis.
Jan
Was it Diogenes that carried the lamp looking for the truth/honest men??
The tax is not imposed on everyone who leaves the US, or even on everyone who leaves the US with more than $X. Rather, it only applies if the IRS believes you expatriated for the purpose of avoiding US taxes. Thus if you can convince them (or perhaps a court) that you had some other reason, you're probably OK.
But the exit tax, when it is charged, has nothing to do with your expected earnings for the next 10 years. Instead, what happens is that wealth above a certain amount (I seem to recall $250K) is taxed, in the neighborhood of 30%. In addition, all of your investments -- anything that would show up on Schedule D when sold -- are "deemed sold" at fair market value on the day before you renounced your citizenship, thus creating a capital gain or loss.
And of course you have to settle up at the US Embassy before handing in your passport.
Jan
(Thinking about this since I read this thread.)
I am just wondering if this has teeth, sometimes has teeth, or is just gumming us.
Jan
Jan
Here is what Wikipedia says:
he first law to authorize taxation of former citizens was passed in 1966; it created Internal Revenue Code Section 877, which allowed the U.S.-source income of former citizens to be taxed for up to 10 years following the date of their loss of citizenship. Section 877 was first amended in 1996, at a time when the issue of renunciation of U.S. citizenship for tax purposes was receiving a great deal of public attention; the same attention resulted in the passage of the Reed Amendment, which attempted to prevent former U.S. citizens who renounced citizenship to avoid taxation from obtaining visas, but which was never enforced.[5][6] The American Jobs Creation act of 2004 amended Section 877 again.[7] Under the new law, any individual who had a net worth of $2 million or an average income tax liability of $139,000 for the five previous years[8] who renounces his or her citizenship is automatically assumed to have done so for tax avoidance reasons and is subject to additional taxes. Furthermore, with certain exceptions covered expatriates who spend at least 31 days in the United States in any year during the 10-year period following expatriation were subject to US taxation as if they were U.S. citizens or resident aliens.[9]
You can see where I got the 10 year rule.
In a very closely related area of freedom -
Too often many get hung up on "illegal" aliens, and fall back on (very possibly questionable) law as an ethical reason to restrict an individuals (or family's) ability to travel.
The only thing "absurd" about the war on drugs is the piss-poor way it's been conducted, just as the only thing wrong with our immigration laws is that they haven't been enforced.
Sorry, I don't want to live in a nation with drugged-up idiots laying around the streets dying, and I don't want to live in a nation where taxpayers have to subsidize the healthcare for these idiots because other idiots feel bad about letting them die in the streets.
Ethical reason: my home, stay the f* out.
I'm so glad that Galt didn't feel it necessary to threaten the woman he was stalking with death if she returned to his secret hiding place without having taken the oath.
I'm so glad that people weren't required to take the oath before they could move in to the gulch.
I'm so glad that no doubletalk drive was implemented to keep people out of the gulch.
Oh yeah - no more Cuban cgars or Rum or travel to Cuba for you as well... illegal to buy as an American, EVEN IF you are overseas. Subject to arrest and (of course) huge fines.
Were I the author, I would have made a quick call to the BRITISH consulate and told them that America no longer considered a UK passport valid. And why. And what they were requiring a Crown subject to do - essentially forcing him to tell HIS home, HIS country, and HIS laws to bugger off.
EVERY government tells their citizens to have their consulate's phone numbers loaded into their mobile before they enter a foreign country, and it's for situations like this - where one government (or their officers and officials) make unreasonable demands on their citizenry (potentially seen as treasonous by their home country) contrary to International law and treaty.
"I would like you to know that I am a loyal subject of Her Majesty, "
F* him. He's a British subject. I don't want him in my country, anyway. Stay in England, stay British.
Or haven't you (insert insulting invective here) figured out just why that U.S. citizen raised abroad, now in the White House, IS A BAD THING?
He wanted to be able to verbally say something to people who aren't authorized to document it.
He didn't want to be bothered to document his decision.
Imagine if he had come back and said, "I'm an American! You're denying me my citizen based on the hearsay of these officials who aren't even working in Immigration? I'm SUING!"
He'd win, too. And the staff there knew they had no power, nor should have, to take down his ad hoc denial of his citizenship.
He didn't plan, he doesn't want to follow the rules so he's tossing aside everything he never participated in anyway in a whiny piece about a rule he could have easily followed but chose not to because he wanted to have his cake and eat it as well.
We owe this guy nothing. He's contributed nothing. He wants nothing from us and never did.
Good riddance.
There are none. There are no free borders.
You can make up rights every day, but pretending that protecting our borders is slavery is an exaggeration that is utterly silly and bizarre.
Thanks for showing why logic and reason needs to be taught in schools again.
There are rules for that.
He just didn't want to follow them.
But I think that the US should not work this way. And I think that the US does not have the philosophical right to tax its citizens who live overseas.
Jan
Much of our standard of living comes from the fact that we not only give our citizens the right to do business around the world, but that we protect them.
What you suggest is that we end that practice.
Or protect them thought they do nothing to contribute to that protection.
The former is economically damaging to all of us and the latter? That's unjust.
This is not breaking new ground - I just do not know how it works for countries that already do not tax their citizens living on foreign soil.
Jan
The USA and two more, that's it, and not as much as the USA.
The USA is the only one that actively defends their citizens abroad with military protection.
With most other countries, you are at the whim of the host.
I think it is perfectly just for someone to give up the protection of the USA military and they can, by filing the right papers and saying, "I am not a USA citizen".
It is a choice.
This man wanted to have that choice without documenting it and blamed the people who were not authorized to accept it on his verbal word because they could be sued.
He wanted the benefits, and as he said at the beginning, the "option", without the cost.
That's a choice.
My response is that he should choose, not demand both.
It's that simple.
Choose one.
Having the benefits without the cost is anathema to what Ayn Rand taught.
"In every argument, one side is always right, the other is always wrong, but the middle is always evil" - Ayn Rand (from memory)
People with dual citizenship are evil, in this metaphor.
There are all sorts of rules that does not make them right. For instance, those damn Jews who did not want to get in the ovens or those East Germans who didn't want to live their.
That's bizarrely silly.
Please use the dictionary and look up slavery.
Damn Jews? For not getting into ovens? You're revealing more about yourself every post.
Might quit while you're ahead.
You make a great slave because you beg for your bondage.
Kindly don't expect us to believe such bizarre exaggerations.
That you don't understand the purpose of borders and taxation, or even a fundamental definition of freedom and slavery is not my baggage - it's yours.
Logic???
Has nothing to do with your "right to travel". You have none that trumps my right to property.
And comparing this guy, unwilling to fill in the proper documentation to renounce his citizenship with SLAVERY? That's beyond rhetoric. It's just weird. You don't seem aware of just how heavy handed your rhetoric is, like calling capital punishment "Mass murder", or taxation "grand theft". There are reasons and purposes to the documentation of citizenship and he has every freedom to travel. He just can't misrepresent his citizenship and travel and THAT is the right of the airlines who are private.
They don't owe him a ride. He could have just as easily chartered a private flight and not dealt with the issue. No one is restricting his freedom.
Instead, you're suggesting that a private airline has to follow YOUR rules or they are enslaving you.
I leave you to that argument - there is no point to discussing it if you can't see just how far off in left field such an idea is.
You have to twist things that far?
Slavery = you can't cross borders freely is your argument and it's garbage.
Goodness sake - I have no interest in talking to loons.
Good day.