Author Archives: foxyladyhawk

Professor of law Richard Samuelson over at the Library of Liberty and Law points out a striking difference between Senator Chuck Schumer’s attitude toward the private property of dissidents and that of the “Father of our Country”. When some members of the population seemed to prefer the protection of the British rather than the freedom of the new country and were thinking of leaving:

“General Washington did not demand that such enemies of their native country, as he thought them, should pay an exit tax. The Americans were fighting to protect their property from arbitrary taxation. Loyalists were free to choose loyalty, and they were free to take their personal property with them. If there was, on principle, no exit tax demanded in the darkest days of the American revolution, it is hard to see how one could be justified now.”

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For all of us, the seed of our anger and determination to fight back, each in our own way, is the sense of betrayal by the very country that we once thought was the source and embodiment of the values we hold dear,  of the truths we hold as self-evident. We are angry because we carry those values within us, no matter where we live. So you see, those values, those truths are not dead. They live in us. Continue reading →

Petros, in view of your latest post below, I hope you take some comfort from the fact that there are many people, including those with access to public pulpits like Forbes, who are on your side.    Today at Forbes, John Tammy writes (De-Friending The U.S., Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin Is An American Hero; emphasis mine):

Saverin’s essential maneuver will at first glance hopefully get Americans thinking once again about our wrongheaded system of taxation.  As it stands now, Americans, through taxes levied on income and capital gains, are explicitly forced to “prove” their income to the IRS. Continue reading →

Numerous times  here on the Isaac Brock Society, one or another of us has talked about the physical size of the US Tax Code. The figure I remember is on the order of 73,000 pages. Today Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute responds to a critic of  his recent article  on the size and complexity of the US tax code. The critic calls Edwards a liar, informing us that the Tax Code is a featherweight 5500 pages and takes up a paltry 18 inches of bookshelf space, not the nine feet claimed by Edwards.  In response, Edwards defends his claim by distinguishing between the standard edition of the US Tax Code itself, which is the smaller version, versus the Standard Federal Tax Reporter published by CCH which includes the Tax Code, plus the tax regulations from the Treasury Department, plus rules and commentary from tax case law, and which is the document that tax practitioners must work from. This latter document is indeed over 73,000 pages.

The metric of shelf space, nine feet and counting, comes from the Taxpayer Advocate Service as a means of illustrating the burden of tax complexity for the taxpayer. CCH has a  nice historical visual of this burden.  In 1913, the 1040 form was one page, with two pages of instruction.   The 1040 is still only two pages , but this year the instruction book for the 1040 is 189 pages long. And anyone who’s filled one out lately is aware of how many other forms, with their own interminable instructions, can be spun off from this deceptively short document.

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Comments on my post about  Remaining a Dual Citizen   have led me to think I should post about the Institute for Justice.

They are a group of lawyers who spend their time fighting against laws that unnecessarily restrict individual private economic activity and defending people caught up in these laws. They have recently  launched a lawsuit   against the IRS for a new policy that forces tax preparers to be licensed before they are given IRS permission to help people fill out their tax returns. (JustMe commented on this and linked to another story  on a previous IBS post)

This has affected thousands of independent tax preparers who help many more thousands of taxpayers file correctly and remain compliant with US tax law.
As the IJ says,

“Congress never gave the IRS the authority to license tax preparers, and the IRS cannot give itself that power. That is why the Institute for Justice has joined with three independent tax preparers to bring a lawsuit in federal court challenging the IRS’s statutory authority to impose these regulations on them and other entrepreneurial tax preparers across the nation.”

We have often talked here on the Isaac Brock Society about filing legal action against the IRS to challenge its treatment of expats, citing the violation of numerous Constitutional amendments and clauses in IRS regulations, actions and penalties.   The IJ takes on more than economic freedom cases. They have “ four core mission areas:  economic liberty, property rights, political and commercial speech, and school choice” but they also work on other legislation cases. And they are a 501(c)(3) organization, so it is non-profit. I’d think that unconstitutional taxation would be a property rights issue.   Perhaps this is a resource that would be worth pursuing.

Hello Isaac? It’s me, Ladyhawk. Is there anyone here who still has US citizenship? Well, anyway, in case anyone is interested in how things are going for people like me who are still trying to make the dual thing work, I thought I’d tell you what happened when I went to the US Consulate in Toronto to renew my US Passport.

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The Constitution of the United States, being the supreme law of the land, defines the powers granted by law to the Federal government. Since the objective of the Founders was to create a nation that operates under a limited government, it was important to them to define as precisely as possible not just the powers of the government, but the limitations to those powers. It is the job of the courts to evaluate new laws that apply or expand Congressional authority, and part of that duty is to ensure that there are clear limits to Congressional power, ie, they seek the Limiting Principle. Theoretically.

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I am not a Native American or an aboriginal, but like them, I was born on Turtle Island. Turtle Island is North America. Not a country, not a residency for certain designated citizens based on an artificial border. It is a great continent with endless space that is bound only by the world’s greatest oceans. It is my home. My ancestors are buried here. My forefathers are remembered in place names all across the continent.

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James Fallows has written an article in the Atlantic about FATCA. He has indicated he will write more about its unintended consequences on US citizens abroad in the future, based on the hundreds of links he’s gotten from people in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe.

The link is:  Fatca – The Menace You’ll Hear About in 2012

I noticed he didn’t mention Canada, so I have just written him to make sure he knows about the huge effect and consequences FATCA is having here.

Here is what I wrote: Continue reading →

I was born and raised in Minnesota, one of four children of Canadian parents. Since all my cousins and aunts and uncles lived in Canada, we traveled across the border frequently as I was growing up. I spent my summers at a YWCA camp on an island in the Canadian waters of Lake of the Woods, with my sisters and my Canadian cousins. After finishing an undergraduate degree in biology, I immigrated to Canada in 1969, during the Vietnam war. I did a PhD in developmental neurobiology and Continue reading →