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Senators To Unveil the 'Ex-Patriot Act' To Respond To Facebook's Saverin
An anonymous reader writes "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." See this earlier story on Saverin's plan to make the leap out of the U.S. tax system.
Reduce taxes by $67 million != only pay $67 million.
Here is a quick one
John Kerry
http://bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view/20100723senator_skipper_skips_town_on_sails_tax
Wake up America, the Democrats are NOT the Dems of yesteryear.
Sure they are!
Seems to me, the problem is that at some point people got this crazy notion that certain groups of politicians aren't selfish dicks...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
From 8 USC 1182 - INADMISSIBLE ALIENS:
(E) Former citizens who renounced citizenship to avoid taxation
Any alien who is a former citizen of the United States who officially renounces United States citizenship and who is determined by the Attorney General to have renounced United States citizenship for the purpose of avoiding taxation by the United States is inadmissible.
So, what's the point of the "new" proposed law besides political grandstanding?
I'm not familiar with all the details of this particular case, but there is a difference between paying as little tax as possible (everyone should be attempting to do this...) and committing tax fraud.
In this particular case, the person was born in Brazil, and living in Singapore, and plans to continue to live in Singapore indefinitely. Sounds like the most rational reasons for forfeiting his US citizenship to me.
And from a legal standpoint, as long as he holds citizenship of some recognized country then he is entirely free to do so. However, individuals who reside in the US, and have no other citizenships anywhere else cannot just renounce their citizenship to dodge taxes, because international law does not provide for the existence of individuals without a citizenship. So, one can only renounce ones citizenship if one already has another citizenship. (US Courts have also held that a US citizen cannot lose their citizenship without willful revocation of it, since the Constitution guarantees your citizenship. So, no act of Congress or other legislative body can dismiss a person's citizenship against their will.)
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
It's not about preventing people from leaving, it's about preventing people from leaving solely because they're doing it as a way to cheat the system that is partially responsible for where they are in the first place.
That sounds familiar. When Soviet Union was preventing Soviet Jews from leaving the country for US or Israel, the most popular argument was that those Jews have enjoyed all the benefits of the socialist society, most notably free university education (but also healthcare etc), and therefore they "owe" it to the state to repay by their work.
Eventually, USSR has enacted a law where emigrants who had university education, had to compensate the state for it before they were allowed to it. US responded by enacting the Jackson-Vanik amendment (which, by the way, is still in force today).
Small government? Small government gave us Love Canal, the Housing Crisis that only took down the entire U.S. economy and gave the world's economy the flu, Enron, the toxic sludge flood in West Virginia from the Martin County Coal Corp., L.A.'s air quality before the EPA forced them to clean it up, etc...the list is quite long.
Small government means no FDA to make sure your prescription isn't ground up beetles. It means no high fund to fix the interstate network's bridges (yep, those states are going to get right on top of that one). No NTSA to do post mortems on plane crashes because you can always trust the airlines with your safety. No SEC to make sure you aren't buying that swamp land masquerading as a gold fund.
Grandma doesn't get her SS check, you know the one, the one that prevents her from having to move in with you. Grandma also won't get her medicare, you'd pick up her medical expenses for her, right? While we're at it, lets turn the mentally ill out of their group homes, you have some extra room in yours, right?
The list goes on. Fucking grow up already.