Blame greedy pols for flight of taxpayers




The U.S. government is driving some of its most productive citizens abroad. The only beneficiaries are countries such as Singapore and Switzerland, which offer sanctuary to Americans fleeing avaricious Uncle Sam.

Three years ago, Eduardo Saverin, one of Facebook’s founders, joined 1,780 other Americans in renouncing their citizenship. Heading overseas allowed him to reduce the federal government’s take when his company went public.

Some people always have been ready to leave the U.S. A half century ago actor Yul Brynner switched his nationality to Switzerland after battling the Internal Revenue Service. But the number of tax exiles is increasing.

Just 231 people gave up their citizenship in 2008. Last year the number was 2,999. The first three months of 2014 was 1,001, up from 679 for the first quarter of last year.

Tax flight is not an option for most people. However, the rich have more choices internationally. And they increasingly are telling Uncle Sam goodbye.

So are big corporations, such as Pfizer, which is seeking to buy the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Presumably the U.S.-based Pfizer perceives synergies and economies, but the acquisition also would let Pfizer move its headquarters to the United Kingdom, which employs a “territorial” tax system, with taxes collected only where the income is earned, in contrast to Washington’s worldwide levy.

About 50 firms have moved their headquarters over the last three decades, half of them since 2008. Recently, the Obama administration decried the practice and proposed to increase the share of foreign ownership required for inversions.

Traditionally the entrepreneurial and productive wanted to come to America. Many still do. But the choice is no longer so clear-cut.

Some lawyers admit that they counsel foreign businessmen to consider carefully before seeking American citizenship. International tax attorney Andrew Mitchel said: “Many of these people do not realize what that means for their businesses until they start dealing with the IRS.”

Washington’s increasingly greedy and petty behavior appears to be having an impact. Hong Kong tax attorney Timothy Burns argued: “Fifteen or 20 years ago there was a big rush to make sure your kids became U.S. citizens, for access to U.S. schools for example. Now we’re seeing just the opposite.”

There are high, progressive rates at home on top of a comically complicated tax code. The U.S. alone among major industrialized states taxes Americans living overseas. America also is one of the few countries to use worldwide corporate taxation — claiming a cut of money earned everywhere, no matter how little a connection to the U.S.

Moreover, Uncle Sam requires Americans to report international bank accounts over $10,000 and assets over $50,000. U.S. citizens overseas must file foreign bank account reports, backed by big civil and criminal penalties.

In 2010, Congress passed the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act, which attempts to turn every foreign financial institution into an IRS agent. The results are significant compliance costs and fearsome legal risks.

Increasingly banks and other companies are telling Americans to go elsewhere. Complained tax attorney Brad Westerfield, the rules have “become so complicated — the increased filing obligations over the years. You see more people giving up their citizenship or relinquishing their Green Cards.”

Not that it’s easy to escape. Washington hits up departing wealthy citizens for a tax on unrealized capital gains. The fee reminds some observers of the “exit taxes” imposed on Jews escaping tyranny and murder by German Nazis and Soviet communists. Yet Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey have introduced legislation to double the levy to 30 percent for those leaving America.

Of course, most people think about more than money before giving up their citizenship. But current policy creates powerful pressure for some. Increasing tax flight should serve as a wake-up call for Washington politicians. Unfortunately, they insist on blaming everyone but themselves. Heading overseas to save money is “immoral,” asserted Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

But what is moral about the looting and pillaging that goes on every day in Washington? Politicians are among the greediest people in America, acting at the behest of the envious who are determined to use government to live at everyone else’s expense.

America once was a land of opportunity. As it loses that distinction more people are tempted to go elsewhere. Instead of seeking to punish those who desire to move, policymakers who are real patriots would change the punitive policies that are pushing people abroad.



Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.


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And leave it to the dipshits like Schumer and his merry band of tax 'em, tax 'em, tax 'em some more. Instead of reading the writing on the wall and finding a way to stop the hemorrhaging, they just say "fuck it" and try to double their pain on the way out the door. Then, to make up for those leaving, they'll increase the taxes on the companies still here. (Till ThEY get fed up.)

 

if a Bandito sticks a gun in you're face and takes you're money; it's armed Robbery. When the Government does the same thing, It's Tax Law.

 

Can't argue with that logic.

 

The article below runs hand in hand with the tax topic, ie: government doing nothing that can't get out of its own way.


A nation drowning in needless rules and regs

Thursday, July 3, 2014



Government just doesn’t work very well. That’s the persuasive thesis of three important books published this year.

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s “The Fourth Revolution” takes a historical and international (and British) perspective.

They argue that the welfare state, a creation of early 20th-century Brits, has become clunky in comparison to recent reforms in Scandinavia and the Asian model most highly developed in Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore.

Peter Schuck’s “Why Government Fails So Often” looks at a multitude of federal programs and concludes that most, though not all, have “deep structures” which make “policy failure and mismanagement” inevitable.

Philip K. Howard’s “The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government” takes a different approach.

Howard, a New York lawyer and founder of a group called Common Good, starts off with anecdotes showing how law prevents problems from being sensibly solved.

A bridge blocking New York’s harbor from the newest supertankers can’t be elevated without 47 permits from 19 government agencies, and environmental groups will bring lawsuits at multiple stages.

A lifeguard is fired for saving a man outside his zone of the beach. A community soup kitchen was shut down because it served potluck meals and had no kitchen to be inspected. Day care centers have to offer two sets of blocks with at least 10 blocks a set (who counts them each day?).

You get the idea. You’ve almost certainly encountered this sort of thing in your daily life. “Legal rigidity trumps everything,” Howard writes. “Law has crowded out the ability to be practical or fair.”

American laws and regulations tend to be over-detailed and to rob government officials of all initiative and, therefore, responsibility. Case in point: The 2,700-page Obamacare, with a 28-word definition of “high school” and a (so far) 7-foot-high pile of regulations.

How did this democratic nation come to be saddled with, as Howard puts it, “a government run by clerks and jerks”?

Howard traces it back to Progressive and New Deal legislation, which gave regulators wide latitude to enforce vague laws. In response, Congress in 1946 passed the Administrative Procedures Act, which tended to produce bureaucratic bloat and paralyze government action.

The biggest changes came in the 1960s. Southern segregationist officials purported to follow the law, but in fact blocked equal rights for blacks. The response — effective in breaking segregation, but a disaster otherwise — was a distrust of all officials and detailed rules that robbed them of discretion.

At the same time, the just-born environmental movement used new statutes and court decisions to bring lawsuits to achieve the goal of BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).

These were liberal initiatives, but conservatives also got into the business of tying officials’ hands. Corporations came to seek detailed regulations that would provide them “safe harbor” protection against prosecutions and lawsuits. K Street lobbyists with ties to both political parties developed a lucrative vested interest in complex laws and regulations.

Howard wants to undermine this “rule of nobody.” Get rid of all the detailed instructions and trust the common sense of responsible individuals to make decisions promptly in line with social norms.

He notes that in 1988, Australia got rid of detailed nursing home regulations (so many square feet per resident) and substituted general standards, including “homelike environment,” “privacy and dignity.”

Academics who decried this reform were surprised to find that nursing homes improved under the new standards. Regulating by principles rather than rules replaced arguments and nitpicking with cooperative conversations and consensus.

Howard would like to reconstruct the federal government along similar lines. Laws with budgetary impact should sunset periodically, to prune the legal code of the underbrush planted by now-defunct legislators.

Presidents should be freed from the entanglement of detailed restrictions and 1970s legislation barring them from not spending funds and hamstringing advisory committees.

Judges should be empowered to dismiss invalid claims quickly. Someone should be given the authority to conclusively and speedily decide environmental issues. Congress should set up commissions to propose simplified legal codes on everything from education to entitlements to the environment.

Pretty radical stuff, and both liberals and conservatives will fear potential changes. The current president has low credibility and a demonstrated incapacity to compromise.

I’m not sure I’d trust Howard’s inevitably elite-dominated commissions. But his central insight — that ordinary Americans can be trusted to behave responsibly — is a good starting place in reforming government.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

 

This is exactly what I have been bitching about for years,,government gone wild.

Some folks believe that the federal government is the dominating structure of this country, they have been indoctrinated to fear the Federal Government, that is not how it should be working,, the federal government needs to be fearing the ''PEOPLE'' of this country.

The indoctrinated need to be re-educated, they need to understand what is country is,, this country has a Constitution that limits the federal government, WE NEED TO GET THE MONEY OUT OF THIS GOVERNMENT,, and get the ''PEOPLE'' back in this government.

 

no aces what you promote is the "right" way of it
you say that the republican or your party is any less of a criminal than the left
you claim that obama is worse than bush
you want to believe that white is better than black
grow the fuck up you childish asshole


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You have no idea what the fuck I talk about, if you did,, you wouldn't have replied the way you did.

 

i know your bullshit revue like i know my own bathroom
you blame everything on the president that you dont like and say its all one sides fault and call me a liberal
you act like you are better than i am and you call me names
you think that saying its obamas fault makes it real but it doesnt
you go to walmart and waste fuel and electricity and bitch that it costs sooooo much
you buy doritos and marie calandars and need a cardiologist by age 18
you go to mcdonalds and sue when you get fat but you scream when someone else does it

i know you well
you are an american or more precisely a MOTHER FUCKIN GOD FEARIN GUN LOVIN FREEDOM LOVIN KILL EM ALL AMERICAN
but you are still ignorant
you have no idea of poverty or real need
you do not even know how to be a man

 

No you dont.

You damned right I do, whether it this current $0.29 piece of shit, or the prior $0.29 piece of shit, it doesn't matter to me,,it's their signature that is placed on the final legislation or regulation that is enacted.

AWWWWW,,, poor baby.

I haven't been proven wrong yet.

It does cost too much,, too many regulations attached to all those companies that produce the energy needed to survive.

I will eat what I want, I will but what I want, my lifestyle is my decision.

The only fucking thing that I eat from McDonalds is the sausage egg and cheese biscuit.

I am 6' 1'' at 180#, and I could give 2 shit about someone else eating habits.

As I have shown you,,,you barely know yourself,, let alone me, or anyone else.

You have no idea about me, my history, my future, you on the other hand, are the quintessential victim playing fool,, good luck with that.

 

ok lets prove you wrong
the real crisis in the american health care system was started in the "new deal" era but it wasnt until much later that a president sold the people to a corporate assfuck
what president did that and in what year and to what company?
hint it was not obama

 

WHOA,, wait just a second, ACA is Obama, it's his signature legislation, proven recently to be full of specific federal government overreach regulation and legislation.

You can blame this in prior 'presidential leadership', if you want, the ''New Deal'' did not create this ACA horseshit.

Now, to your actual question, I do remember reading this somewhere, sometime ago, so you are not totally off base with this, but,,,what Obama is doing now, is Obama's doings, along with the extreme leftists.

 

answer the fucking questions or shut the fuck up

 

OK,.

 

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/a-brief-history-universal-health-care-efforts-in-the-us

 

and yet you still deflected the real answer
you must be a politician
now answer the fucking question

 

Your question has no real answer, the Great Depression created the true crisis for health care during that era, the progressive era tried to enact a ''NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM'', the ''NEW DEAL'' unsuccessfully, attempted it again, all in all,,the federal government created a false narrative, to create a social entitlement, and today we have another false narrative told to the people based on political lies, all of this nations problems are based on overreaching federal government.

Those are the facts, you dont need to believe them, matter of fact I know you wont, because you are sucking off of the system, you are the ''victim''.

 

Taxes are lower, usually much lower, in the United States than in most other industrialized democracies. Rich Americans who leave to avoid paying taxes should be required to leave their wealth on this side of the border.

 

Ex-patriation should come with a 90% tax penalty on all assets and a refusal to allow any international company that hires an ex-patriate to do business in the United States.

The ones who are greedy are the multi-millionaire and billionaire assholes who want to profit from the United States but do not want to pay their fair share of taxes.

Take $90 million in penalties from someone with $100 million in assets and see how fast they want to leave the country.

Assholes.

 

People make their money. The govt. does nothing to help them make. The govt. had its hand out for every penny they can squeeze out of a person.
If a person wants to go to another country and take their money with them it is their right. Our freedom to travel is becoming less and less every day. The govt. is putting every restriction they possible can in the way.
What gives the govt. the right to take all of the money away from a person if they decided to leave the country?

 

The money a person makes does not belong to the govt. It belongs to the person who worked for it.
why should the U.S. try to stop people from leaving this country. There job is more in the line of keeping people from sneaking into our country.
If a person wants to leave they should be free to do so. They should be able to take all of their belongings when they do.
No matter what some people think, the govt. does not own everything. The people own the country.