Comment of the day, from Virg:
Here is an analogy on FATCA. Let’s say a country (call it country A) prohibits its citizens from eating pork. So the country A says to the other 192 countries of the world: we want to make sure our expat citizens are not eating pork in your country. Therefore all restaurants globally must certify with our country A government that they are not serving pork to any of our expat citizens. For each restaurant that does not certify with our government, we will penalize your country by withholding 1% of any payments on import-export trade to your country. In other words, you must enforce our law in your country.
Let’s call this new law, Pig Aversion Total Compliance Act: PATCA.
See also: Introducing KFOR–solving the US Federal deficit one foreign kitten at a time
@Petros- let’s make it more realistic. What if Saudi Arabia were to say that no Saudi female citizen no matter where in the world she may live is allowed to learn how to drive because it is against Saudi interpretations of Muslim law that women be allowed to drive? What if in addition to that it was necessary for all Saudi women, no matter where they may live, to have a male escort whenever they wanted to go out to shop?
When the U.S. taxes its citizens who reside in other countries it might as well go all the way and just tax all the residents of that same country. The truth is that the U.S. resident person has about as much connection with the U.S. as does his/her none U.S. neighbor.
If the U.S. is going to commit a fraud it may as well go all the way. In the end it takes a lot more than just citizenship for a right of taxation to be exercised over a non-resident person.
@Recalcitrant: SWATCA: Saudi Women Autonomy Truncated Compliance Act?
Surely an exception can be made for bacon.
A rabbi walked into a deli and pointed at the bacon and said “I’ll take one pound of that”. The clerk asked the rabbi “would you like one pound of the bacon?”
The rabbi responded, “Did I ask you to tell me what it is?”
We don’t even know what exactly is a “US person”:
@recalcitrantexpat,
When the U.S. taxes its citizens who reside in other countries it might as well go all the way and just tax all the residents of that same country. The truth is that the U.S. resident person has about as much connection with the U.S. as does his/her none U.S. neighbor.
From reading the US internal revenue code, I learned that this is how the US defines who is taxed: In principle, all people are taxed (that’s right, everyone). But these people here are taxed differently. And these other people are taxed less. And those other people there are taxed more. But these people are not taxed in these items. And these other people are not taxed if they do these things. And those people there are not taxed if they are in those places, etc.
I’ve also read the tax codes of other countries, and they are much more concise and explicit, something like: People who live here are taxed on what they earn everywhere, but people who don’t live here are taxed only on what they earn here.
@Shadow Raider- Thanks for that note. Obviously the U.S. hides behind obfuscation in its attempt to justify the unjustifiable. Living with the U.S. Congress is like being subjected to the propoganda of, Joseph Goebbels.
The HIRE act, The Patriot Act, The National Defense Authorization Act and the titles of other bills are all meant to mislead the electorate as to the bill’s true content and purpose. There is no excuse for the IRC to be so misleadingly worded other than to make sure that you can’t understand what it says.
*There was a time that Catholics could not read the Bible. Only Priests could do it. The IRS do not want the people to read their directives in such a way that only Lawyers and CPAs can do it. At a price. They have created an industry. Call them for help and they will direct you to “professional help” the people that can understand their “directives”. They are not written in plain english. For the Expats this is even worse because the help is much more expensive. And the penalties are much more severe. And because they have no representation they are an easy prey. Do you think this was the thinking of the Founding Fathers?
@MarkPinetree,
Do you think this was the thinking of the Founding Fathers?
Of course it wasn’t. From the Federalist 62, by James Madison:
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they
cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
http://constitution.org/fed/federa62.htm