Undeterred by the failure of his previous attempts to legislate Exile and Punishment for Apoplectic Taxpayers Residing In Other Territories, on Monday Jack Reed (D-RI) introduced his third amendment to ban covered expatriates — people who found financial success overseas thanks to the countries to which they emigrated many years ago, or ordinary wage-earners who in the past five years missed some of the dozens of pages of confusing tax forms that Americans abroad must file and that Homelanders have never seen.
The number of this latest amendment is S.A. 1609. It appears at page S5075 of the Congressional Record for Monday, 24 June 2013; the text is identical to the earlier S.A. 1233 we discussed two weeks ago, including in its misspelling of “principal purpose” as “principle purpose”. However, it is not an amendment to the immigration reform bill itself, but rather a second-degree amendment to Patrick Leahy (D-VT)’s border security amendment S.A. 1183 — in a manner heavily reminiscent of Carl Levin’s FATCA, which after its repeated failure as a standalone bill was moved as an amendment once he finally finally find somewhere to sneakily insert it. The Senate already invoked cloture on S.A. 1183, and scheduled it for a final vote on Wednesday (tomorrow).
I’ll leave it to Tim or others to comment further on the parliamentary procedure implications of this. As he mentioned earlier, even if the amendment passes, the House might still “blue slip” the whole bill if they agree that permanent exile for ex-citizens or other provisions of the bill violate the Constitution’s Origination Clause requiring that all bills raising revenue come from the House. However, note that this version of the amendment, unlike S.A. 1252, does not include the provisions of the original Ex-PATRIOT Act that would hit covered expatriates with an additional 30% tax on U.S.-source capital gains (like that already imposed on non-resident aliens present in the U.S. for half the year or more).
They really hate people who leave to live elsewhere don’t they? What if other countries did the same as this? Those who immigrate to the U.S. and do well can never go home again and are hit with high expatriot taxes paid to every other nation in the world other than the U.S. In what world does someone sit down and think up something like this. It can only come from someone who believes the U.S. should do this because they are so special. Really believes that.
Eric
you might want to keep an eye on the Senate Floor Twitter feed. This particular amendment would appear to not have the same problems as the previous two however, by leaving the determination to the secretary of Homeland Security it would appear to be just as ineffective as current law.
http://gov.mtopgroup.com/ref/art1/senate-live.htm
Given the literally hundreds of amendments I would still say the odds are low of this getting approved. I also not this third amendment does not appear to have the support of Bob Casey or Chuck Schumer.
If anything it would call into question the veracity of the publically released name and shame list as that is how the Secretary of Homeland security is supposed to determine how to deny visas not by and direct communication from the IRS.
@Tim – I’m on the name-and-shame list, and I’m very far from being a covered expatriate.
The immigration bill is an odious piece of work. In addition to the hatred of expats, it’s not treating potential new citizens all that well either and Mexico will get its own version of the Berlin Wall to stare at (small wonder the new president there is looking to partner up with Canada sans US influence).
One of the provision in the bill, apparently, prohibits those who make use of the amnesty from being eligible for Obamacare. So employers who hire them can safely not provide healthcare options and avoid the IRS tax. I am sure that low wage service sector businesses are busy gearing up their lobbyists to push that idea. Great for America. Indentured servitude and it makes the currently employed Americans targets for replacement with this even cheaper labor force. Win/win.
Why anyone in their right mind would choose to emigrate to the US when they could go to any number of more hospitable countries just baffles me.
@YogaGirl
Some people can’t tell the Jim Jones kool-aid from the other.
@ A broken man on a Halifax
have you been advised of any consequences of having your name in the Federal Register?
for entering of traveling through the US
I renounced 2012-03-01 and was entered for the quarter ending 2012-09-30, even before the 8854 was due for submission and my total assets were less the $100K
@Patricia –
I haven’t been advised of anything, except for the whole here-be-traitors-in-the-villiage-square routine. My point was that although the name-and-shame list is very opaque, it’s a separate issue from who is and isn’t a covered expatriate. Like you, I was published long before the 8854 was due. Actually in your case before the form was even available.
Eric…
When I look for page S5075,
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r113:FLD001:S05075
Nothing shows up for text? What am I doing wrong…
@Just Me: Seems like THOMAS somehow skipped page S5075 entirely. But if I click on “printer-friendly display” in that link you gave and Ctrl+F for “renounce” I can still see the text of Reed’s amendment in there, so I guess their system just made some error. In the PDF version from the Government Printing Office it’s there in the right place:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/citation.result.CREC.action?congressionalRecord.volume=159&congressionalRecord.pagePrefix=S&congressionalRecord.pageNumber=5075&publication=CREC
Hi Brockers. I can’t remember if anyone has posted this link but just in case of not.
…….
http://blogs.angloinfo.com/us-tax/2013/06/23/1243/
fascinating and sad.
Eric,
I was able to find it on page S.5074
@Eric and Tim…
Thanks for the help
I’m really starting to wonder why I even paid the “exit tax”, if I’m barred from return and all my future investments in the U.S. will be taxed 30% automatically.
At least those Kuwaiti citizens that hold U.S. passports will be punished. /sarc
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/197691/reftab/36/t/New-rules-to-bring-Kuwaitis-with-US-passport-in-tax-net/Default.aspx
Kuwait’s been pushing their citizens since last year to get rid of any dual citizenships they held by accident of jus soli:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/08/19/kuwait-to-add-to-u-s-state-department-renunciation-backlog/
There were lots of complaints at the time from people who didn’t realise what a favour their government was trying to do for them by forcing them to get out of the US tax system. I was talking with an old college buddy of mine last year and he was really annoyed about the dual-citizenship crackdown even after I pointed out all the US tax stuff to him (with which he was 100% non-compliant).
Incidentally this chat with him was on Facebook. I hope I set off all sorts of red flags and alarms at the NSA for engaging in an unpatriotic, anti-American conversation with a tax-evading, money-laundering Arab Muslim who had free access to the United States 🙂
@Eric
They did say at one point that either we’re for them or against them. By choosing to leave the greatest country in the world, I guess that I’m choosing to be against them.
I know I’ll likely not be a covered expatriate anyways, but gee whiz. Banishing people for expatriating? Really? With an attitude like that, why would I even want to come back?
While they’re at it, they can stick my name on the Federal Register, too.
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A Swiss commuter newspaper carries a story on the proposed Reed-Schumer amendment called “USA banishes its own citizens”. Google translation into English is attached:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.20min.ch%2Ffinance%2Fnews%2Fstory%2FUSA-verbannen-ihre-eigenen-Buerger-23930080
Original German:
http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/USA-verbannen-ihre-eigenen-Buerger-23930080
Here’s also the news release at Reed’s website:
http://www.reed.senate.gov/news/release/reed-offers-amendment-to-prevent-ex-citizen-tax-dodgers-from-reentering-the-us
I just wish that they would “strip US citizenship from Americans Abroad” and “bar them from the country”. That would solve my wife’s problem immediately. She could ask for amnesty with the Canadian government and obtain her Canadian citizenship due to the human rights violations that the US government has inflicted on Americans Abroad.
But of course, the Americans want their “extortion monies” and if they did that, they would forfeit the “penalties” so they would never do that. Maybe we should tell Jack Reed to add “strip US citizenship and bar” into his amendment. It could be that despite how odious he is, maybe he could be the “best friend we have” in escaping the “thief in the White House”.
@The_Animal
Amen to that!
The Senate passed the immigration bill without any of these amendments. It’s over, for now.
Thanks for the update, Shadow Raider.
JP Morgan makes a half million on food stamps, and all are encouraged to apply
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/01/Report-JP-Morgan-Makes-Over-Half-A-Billion-Dollars-Off-Food-Stamps
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/01/jp-morgan-s-food-stamp-empire.html
THis one ties it to immigration – a bit more biased
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-more-illegal-immigrantsthat-go-on-food-stamps-the-more-money-jp-morgan-makes
Royal Gazette from Bermuda:
Preventing ‘taxpatriation’: US citizens who renounce their citizenship for tax purposes could face obstacles
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20130629/COLUMN07/706299989