Robert – great to see you continue you on. I am convinced that the blogs of today will be the history books of tomorrow. Your blog is giving a – play by play description – of the end of America. The fact that some will laugh when they read the previous sentence is proof.

This is a fascinating topic which spreads beyond tax. It involves politics (the dysfunctional nature of it), sociology (what kind of country is America), psychology (how can be people stupid enough to believe the Obama lie?) and more.

All these points aside, what strikes me is this:

Few (and mean very few) even understand the issue here. This is NOT about U.S. companies paying U.S. tax on U.S. profits. It’s about whether U.S. companies should pay taxes on non-U.S. profits that are in no way connected to the U.S. In broader terms its about whether the U.S. has any moral right to tax anything that is not connected to it. It’s about whether the U.S. has the right to levy taxes on citizens of other nations, on residents of other nations, on profits and incomes earned in other nations because those people may have born in the U.S.? (Yes, that’s exactly what the U.S. is doing and it’s why people are desperate to prove that they are not American.)

Yet, nobody sees the problems in those terms. Why not? Obviously because the U.S. tax code is so complicated that nobody understands it. In fact few tax lawyers and accountants understand it in its entirety (or even close).

Since the tax code can’t be understood, it makes it impossible for anybody to even participate in an intelligent discussion about tax policy. The extent of the complexity also means that the Internal Revenue Code is the best place to hide “legislative evil”, “legislation that is designed only to benefit special interest groups”” and more. So, if you are an evil person, you call up your Congressman and get him/her to do some “legislative evil” by:

1. Making a change to the Internal Revenue Code (ensuring it won’t be understood); and

2. Tacking it onto a completely unrelated piece of legislation (ensuring that nobody will know it’s there anyway) until it’s too late.

Oh my God! That’s exactly what FATCA (as one of many examples) is.

In other words complexity coupled with the form of “democracy” (dysfunctional) in America is making all this possible.

Anyway, there should be an open debate. But, the debate is NOT about Patriotism. It’s about whether:

The U.S. should be attempting to tax profits, property and people that have no economic connection to the U.S. Of course it shouldn’t. But it is trying to do just that.

The attempts to tax people, profits and property that are not connected to the U.S. are the reason why:

1. U.S. citizens abroad are forced to renounce their citizenship to even survive (the numbers don’t include the large majority who are just giving up and never returning to America); and

2. U.S. corporations are doing inversions (what some suggest is corporate renunciation) in order to be competitive.

You know, I was describing this situation to a friend who like me is a “Patriotic American” and his response was:

If that is true, I am worried about the very survival of the U.S.

It won’t survive without major change. The country is crying for change. The country must have change that “we can believe in” – the real kind, not the platitudes of election rhetoric.

To those reading this post in the year 2124 (probably in a course called “The Rise and Fall of the American Empire):

Hello.