Badger Comments On Dr. Laura Snyder’s Paper: “Can Extraterritorial Taxation Be Rationalized?”SEAT "Stop American Extraterritorial Taxation" is an organization created under French law to provide education and advocacy about the reality and problems of U.S. citizenship taxation. It was founded in…
— Isaac Brock Society (@isaacbrocksociety.bsky.social) 2026-05-25T18:39:37Z
SEAT “Stop American Extraterritorial Taxation” is an organization created under French law to provide education and advocacy about the reality and problems of U.S. citizenship taxation. It was founded in 2020. Since that time SEAT has done excellent research, writing and advocacy.
In 2023 SEAT President Dr. Laura Snyder published a paper called “Can Extraterritorial Taxation Be Rationalized?”
Strongly recommend reading Laura Snyder’s paper. Here is the abstract:
Abstract
There exist multiple rationales for the U.S. extraterritorial tax system. The rationales seek to explain why overseas Americans should be subject to worldwide taxation by the United States.
This paper challenges those rationales: The allegiance rationale is outmoded and rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court; the benefits rationale has been discredited; the membership in U.S. society rationale is belied by the exclusion of overseas Americans from critical beneficial aspects of the U.S. economy, the U.S. tax system, and federal assistance; the “worth the tax cost” rationale disregards human rights and the realities of renunciation of U.S. citizenship; and the administrability rationale ignores that the administration of an extraterritorial tax system requires resources beyond those required to determine domicile – resources the IRS does not have.
Ultimately, all the rationales are theoretical. They do not confront the reality of the actual extraterritorial tax system in place today. They do not contend with the full scope and complexity of the actual system, or the system’s multitude of intractable problems and injustices.
Note: “This is an article published by the American Bar Association Section of Taxation in The Tax Lawyer journal in the Spring 2023 issue.” Keywords: Extraterritorial Taxation, Citizenship-Based Taxation, Residence-Based Taxation, Citizenship, Expatriation, Exit Tax, FATCA, IRS, Human Rights, Equal Protection
On May 24, 2026 long time Brock commentator and contributor, Badger published the following insightful comment about Dr. Snyder’s paper:
“Not sure where to put this, but well worth sharing.
A great recent summation of the issues re US Extraterritorial Citizenship based taxation and which counters favourite (illogical, inconsistent and internally contradictory) rationales repetitively peddled by supporters of US CBT. The footnotes/links in this article are also very valuable:
I absolutely loved that it noted recent examples in which much vaunted ‘extraterritorial’ benefit rationales for US CBT were tested in reality and failed – ex. during COVID when the US motherland showed zero concern for the wellbeing of US citizens outside the US (ex. right next door in Canada) and in fact threatened to *impede the purchase and delivery of vaccines and N95 masks to Canada – despite the common knowledge that millions of US citizens and their families live right alongside and across the border from the US ( https://aaro.org/living-abroad/how-many-americans-live-abroad ).
A particularly salient example of the hypocrisy of CBT in practice since in my renunciation/relinquishment interview the consular official raised the spectre that giving up US status would mean being deprived of US protection forevermore. Well that ‘protection’ was tested in real life during COVID, and was shown to be non-existent in practice – even for those who retain US citizenship in Canada, just next door. No US citizenship exceptions. Neither US citizen status nor any amount of US tax forms filed or US tax paid from ‘abroad’ made any difference when a real crisis hit.
*See ex.,
“………..The New York Times has reported that Trump’s order will stipulate that other nations will not get U.S. supplies of the Pfizer vaccine until Americans have been inoculated — but some experts have questioned whether such an order would have any practical effect on contracts the drug maker has signed already with countries like Canada.This would not be the first time Trump has tried to deny medical products to Canada during the pandemic.
In April, he tried to prevent U.S.-based 3M from honouring contracts with Canadian buyers of American-made N95 masks vital to limiting the spread of the virus……….” John Paul Tasker · CBC News · Posted: Dec 08, 2020 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-trump-threats-pfizer-vaccine-1.5832954″
Thanks to Badger for the insightful comment about Laura’s paper. But, more broadly, thanks to Badger for her incredible commentary going back to the creation of the Isaac Brock Society in 2011.