The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is currently having a nice little chat about how it can best use the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion to double-tax non-US economies.
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, it says, “is designed to prevent a US taxpayer who moves to a high-cost country from paying more taxes than a similarly situated taxpayer in the US, since the standard deductions are not adjusted for a higher cost country.” Oddly, it makes no mention of compensating individuals who pay more taxes in other countries so that everyone pays the same.
Since they allow comments and might publish mine, I contributed my 2 cents, for what it is worth:
In 2001, during the dot-com crisis, I couldn’t find work in the US and thus moved to Switzerland to work instead of collecting unemployment checks or food stamps. I did not move because of taxes or to pay less or more in taxes, but rather to earn money to pay debt interest, to buy food, to buy clothing and to buy shelter. I migrated to acquire the basic essentials required for survival.
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