So, there you have it. According to America, all Americans living abroad are “offshore tax dodgers” since they are taxed where they live to pay for the infrastructure they use.
A poll this year commissioned by the Main Street Alliance and the American Sustainable Business Council found 85 percent of small business owners oppose the “territorial” tax system pushed by offshore tax dodgers. By a margin of more than two to one, small business owners prefer closing corporate tax loopholes over cuts to education, infrastructure or Social Security and Medicare.
It’s time to end offshore tax dodging and close tax loopholes that benefit large corporations and wealthy special interests. Use the revenue to invest in strengthening the economy and creating jobs.
A residency-based tax system is pushed by Americans living abroad and anyone who pushes a residency-based tax system is automatically branded by America as being an “offshore tax dodger”, or “trash” which needs to be thrown away.
Whether you’re a small business owner cleaning restaurants in Billings or a U.S. Senator cleaning up the tax code in D.C., the first step is taking out the trash.
Why does America seek to trash its diaspora? Because it believes that they are pirates sailing around with stolen treasure.
Against this backdrop, some big business titans amazingly have the gall to advocate doubling down on offshore tax dodging, aggressively lobbying for a permanent tax “get-out-of-taxes-free” card on offshore profits — a so-called “territorial” tax system — while backing cuts to Social Security and Medicare that would wreak further havoc on the Main Street economy. In short, small business owners and our customers get trash while corporate pirates sail offshore with the treasure.
I doubt that Gy Moody, the owner of Cleaner Image Janitorial in Billings, Montana, and writer of this article realized that he was advocating for Americans living abroad to be thrown away as “tax cheats”. Yet, the impact of US policy on Americans living abroad has never been an American concern, as one fellow kindly stated to one who does not live in America:
The government is not responsible for actions of private sector organizations. To support a claim of rights violations you have to be able to demonstrate the denials were the result of an order given by a government to not provide services. Claiming that rights are being violated because a bank executive opted not to provide services will not stand up in court. The fact that you didn’t understand that concept, and see how adjusting Federal policy in response to decisions made by Swiss bank executives tells me that you’re pretty stupid and have a hard time understanding things like politics and government. It’s only a human rights issue if people are denied access to services by government decree. If people cannot access services from the institution of their first choice as a result of a private sector response to a government policy then the denial of service is the result of a corporate policy and cannot be blamed on the government.
FATCA: The end of financial privacy
The US government clearly doesn’t give a damn if Americans are harmed as a result of US policy, but it is eager to brand its expats as “tax cheats” and to throw them away as “trash”.
One of the more completely and illogical aspects of the US tax code is that US companies are not taxed on offshore profits until such profits are brought back to the USA. As we all know this is not the case for US Persons. This article seems to be directed to US companies. If any IBS members want to write a comment it would be good to set the author straight.
@Steve Klaus. thank you for your comment and requesting @brockers to comment on this article from USP point of view. sometime in 2014…when my blood pressure returns to normal after reading this ill-informed, parochial and partisan article when I can respond politely….. I might do this . for now….I will leave it”setting the record straight” to our other more vastly talented brocker colleagues as I fear any comment I made would be “moderated out” for very good reasons…………………………….
Articles like this get back to one of the core problems, which is that the narrative being pushed deliberately lumps individuals with corporations in order to enrage the homelanders. In the minds of Americans within the borders, there is virtually no difference between the expat, who very likely owes no taxes and the corporations taking (perfectly legal thanks to douchebags in Congress) advantage of their hideously written tax code.
Try pointing out to an American that what he/she does when they let HR Block do their taxes for them is no different than what corporations do when their armies of lawyers and accountants scour the tax code looking for “breaks” and you will hear howls of protest and denial.
And that’s the second problem, the narrative also disingenously links “tax evasion” with “tax avoidance”, the latter of which is legal – thanks again to the tools of Congress.
I would like to see the poll questions that were used because I am willing to bet they were worded in such a way as to promote the false narrative.
This is what happens when politicians play politics with people lives.
Where oh where IS all this money I am “off shoring” I haven’t had a vacation in YEARS. I also could use a few new carpets upstairs and we need a car. We use my spouses work car which is approved for personal use but, that gets old since I don’t have a car and we can’t take it out of town. lol..I rather like mini coopers. If ONLY I could locate my “off shore” stash!
Also, I’d like to get one of those Canada Goose coats for this winter but, they are six hundred dollars plus tax. Oh, I said the “tax” word. Maybe am so old and addled that I can’t remember where I kept all my “off shore” fun money?? I’d like one of these “I know everything and you are too stupid to understand politics” folks to help me find my “off shore” sums!
According to some, US government policy that leads to US persons being denied banking services and being relegated to living like 2nd class citizens where we live are not legitimate reasons for renouncing US citizenship.
@bubblebustin
Actually for some- there is absolutely NO fathomable reason one could ever renounce. None! And if we were thrown in shackles in a dungeon, beheaded, threatened to have our first born sacrificed – never ever give up that blue passport.
One thing making renouncing somewhat easier in the long term is waking up to realize how much, and how deeply Americans who do not live in the U.S. are despised and to be treated as suspect just for not living there. There is some sort of deeply engrained belief system in many of them which says it’s open season the second you say you are a U.S. person not living in the U.S. You have a target on your back, you must be guilty of something for not living there and therefore any sort of demeaning language can be used against you. No amount of saying you were born there but, left as a child, or that you moved because of an ill parent or a job is going to shatter their deeply held fears of expats. Nothing you say will matter. What they think without research is as deeply engrained as the Westboro Baptist Church’s belief system however wrong and offensive it is.
I just had to laugh at the ignorance on that one article in the comments section. Really? The absolutely worst thing they can say to White Kat when they cannot come up with a reasonable response is that she is probably not desirable as a woman, to paraphrase their childish responses. Yes, of course because the absolute worst sentence you can put upon someone who is a woman is to tell them you find them undesirable. Nothing to do with her well thought out arguments going on there. How can we take these ill informed,crude folks seriously? People like this expose who they are far more than they realize. I just cannot take them seriously at all.
In the long run the more I see comments like that the easier long term it will be for me to no longer count myself among them. It’s just sad to see how knuckle dragging some of these remarks have become. Truly, sad.
@AtticusinCanada
You might know it as xenophobia, and like all phobia’s is irrational and unreasoned and require therapy, or at least some serious introspection to overcome.
Why do commenters on IBS get their knickers in a twist about obscure articles on BUSINESS taxes? This article had nothing to do with personal tax issues. There seems to be some difficulty separating the two.
@KalC, thanks for the criticism and questions. I rarely see any mention of personal expat taxes in the US media and the closest the US media ever seems to get to such is through business taxes. As such, I get the feeling that personal expat taxes are heavily related to business taxes. If personal expat taxes change, then that change will result from changes to business taxes. If such was not the case, then we would see more mention of residency-based taxation for individuals. Yet, instead, such is only discussed with business taxes.
There are very few articles that only address the issues for individuals being published out there. A few. Also, some of the business articles attempt to paint FATCA as just wonderful or at least infer that it is. Who knows who will read about these issues who hasn’t yet heard about FATCA later and later on end up googling to find what we’ve written. I’ll take every opportunity as I have time to let others know the nature of what FATCA is. Many, articles originally were also aimed at the worries banks had. That seems to be a real concern of the FATCA regime. Whatever they have to do to make it work for banks. They’ve controlled the narrative. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to take that back from them.
Well, the way I look at American homelanders is that a) they are out of work, morally bankrupt, money-grubbing “hands in other people’s pockets”, Obama free-stuff loving jack-wagons who have absolutely no problem with getting American expatriates to pay for their (homelanders’) fiscal incompetence. That sound about right to everyone?
Volksbank in Austria is closing expats’ checking accounts.
“Banks lock out Americans over new tax law”
http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/15/news/banks-americans-lockout/index.html
Instead of protecting Americans abroad, Uncle Sam is enlisting foreign banks and governments to harrass expats into repatriating their assets and their asses back to to the Homeland.
Even illegal aliens get better treatment than Americans abroad.
“California to allow driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/0913/California-to-allow-driver-s-licenses-for-illegal-immigrants
Mass renunciations from Americans abroad (with accompanying one finger salutes) are on the way!
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