And Now: Ex-Patriot Act
May 17th, 2012Wow. The full text of this should be interesting.
What’s next? Punishing the family members of people who flee?
Via: ABC News:
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.
In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut this week. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap the benefit of tax savings by becoming a permanent resident of Singapore, which levies no capital gains taxes.
At a news conference this morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” – “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” – Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”
The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.
The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again.
I find Saverin’s blusterings about being a “global citizen” somewhat unconvincing, but he has lived in Singapore for over two years at this point (a move which I expect was carefully strategic). And I for one can say that if the U.S. is supposedly the “First World,” Singapore is “Zero World”: it’s as least as nice as the nicer parts of California, and in some cases far more impressive. Singapore’s airport alone looks like the setting for an anime film set in 2030. When I was there several years ago, I kept expecting to see androids and flying cars. A friend who is a civil engineer who does a lot of work in Asia has said the same: “The U.S. simply doesn’t realize how quickly it is falling behind… When I come back home, it seems increasingly shoddy by comparison.”
Of course part of the reason most in the U.S. don’t realize that it’s falling behind is so few U.S. citizens who can afford it travel abroad. And if you get what you know about the world from Fox News, well… .
The problem I have with Saverin’s renunciation of his U.S. citizenship is that it encapsulates the way the wealthiest in the U.S. have quietly seceded from the rest of society. The overclass is, in reality, its own country, and they think U.S. patriotism is for suckers — or, at best, just a way to pump up their shares in Lockheed-Martin and Boeing.
All that said… the “Ex-PATRIOT” Act is the shrill scream of a senescent empire. It is the kind of law that drives people to crime (in this case, full-on tax evasion). I think Saverin should send Mssrs. Schumer and Casey Asian-themed fruit baskets (don’t forget the star fruit and durians!), just to rub it in: “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”
People enmeshed in “The Combine” of government simply don’t get it. If taxes were less onerous, people wouldn’t go to such lengths to avoid paying them… But the threshold of what feels like “reasonable” taxes is far less than what a global empire needs to maintain itself…
i wonder how to factor in the relinquishing of the gold backing for the dollar in any historical overview of our tax rates but i’m pretty sure it’s a major factor. with that said, though, any overview of our tax rates, even this skimpy and simplistic one, offers perspective.
http://ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html
four billion dollars sounds like a lot (of dollars, and it is) but will it still a year or two from now? if i had 4 billion dollars i’d start my foundation now rather than later.
whether in tax rates or altruism or empire, the clash of power & good is always immediately before us. this documentary on the rockefeller dynasty underscored that tremendously for me:
The Rockefellers (Full)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz0ODZiKavs&feature=related
there were lots of interesting (to me, anyway) tidbits in it as well as the meta stuff:
for one thing, the univ of chicago was begun by he. i have always noted how many things turn upon that institution, and how many neo-cons came from it. obama too for that matter.
1911, he lost the anti-trust case, but gained personally from it to the tune of having himself 2% of the US economy. that whole era seems to be being replayed out now again 100 years later.
& so on.