In only the second quarter of 2013, the official number of U.S. citizens who chose to renounce their citizenship (1130) reached a level almost three times higher than the worst single quarter for renunciations under George W. Bush (416 in Q2 of 2005). But what’s worse is that the total for this single quarter, under Obama, amounts to one and a half times the number of renunciations in the worst whole year under George W. Bush (762 in all of 2005).
Obamanomics forces more wealthy Americans to renounce citizenship
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Why is this important? Well rather than answer that question directly, I’ll let you answer it, by asking you another question, which has an obvious answer. “How many of those U.S. expats do you think were poor?”
Common sense tells us that poor people don’t renounce U.S. citizenship. They can’t afford to leave behind all of the freebies that more affluent Americans provide for them, through an abusive tax and income redistribution regime. By contrast, the rich are being punished for all of the hard work that produced their success. Not only are they taxed a punitive levels, but an abusive IRS gets to choose which conflicting piece of tax code they expect the taxpayer to use and it’s almost never the one the taxpayer thought most reasonable. Yet these are precisely the people who can most easily afford to live wherever in the world they choose.
While some people see those who are leaving as unpatriotic, those who are leaving see renouncing as an undesirable, but necessary strategy, to protect what they have worked so hard to build. But the point is that the negative opinion that some may have of these expats doesn’t change the fact that they still see leaving as their only option and they’re leaving in alarming numbers.
However, there’s more to it than the fact that these expats are rich. The important fact to consider is that those who are leaving are the people who pay the lion’s share of the taxes in the U.S. and who create the lion’s share of the jobs. Without them, taxes on the rest of us will have to rise to make up the difference. But since there will be fewer jobs, those who still have jobs will have to pay even higher taxes to make up for those who no longer have jobs. (See “The Rich Don’t Pay Tax! …Or Do They?” for more on this subject. ISBN: 0615624375 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615624375/)
Today we see a renunciation total for the second quarter of this year that is more than nine times higher than the worst quarter (123) of the last year that Bush was in office. Obama inherited from Bush an expatriation rate of just 231 in all of 2008. So what this means is that just the second quarter of 2013 saw five times more renunciations than in the whole of 2008.
Expatriations have been on a dramatic rise since Obama took office, with only a slight drop in 2012, as many wealthy people put their expatriation plans on hold, awaiting the outcome of the 2012 election. But after the election, renunciations continued their meteoric climb.
It is any wonder that it’s the rich who are leaving the USA in droves?
Is it any wonder, as Obama continues to malign success and promises to further “Soak the Rich”, that the number of wealthy Americans who are leaving is setting new records almost every quarter?
However, the problem isn’t all Obama. He wouldn’t be able to create the conditions that drive our producers and job creators offshore, if it were not for our convoluted income tax system and its abusive collection agency, the IRS. Any time a government is allowed to tax income, it leaves the door wide open for an incompetent leadership to make the kind of mistakes that will drive out its best and brightest.
By contrast, if taxes were collected only on retail sales, there would be no way for the mistakes of an incompetent president to force our most prolific taxpayers to turn in their passports, in favor of one from a more wealth-friendly nation. There would be no abusive IRS that could be used by presidents from both parties, to reward or punish certain groups.
A tax system should be for collecting revenue only and not be used as a political tool.
It’s clear that we can no longer wait. It’s time that we have a tax system that can’t be used by either party to play politics, at our expense. It’s time for the FairTax. Not only will the FairTax eliminate the IRS, but it’s also a tax system that can’t be used by either party, to favor certain groups and punish others. Better yet, instead of driving job creators and taxpayers out of the USA, it will attract massive amounts of foreign investment, which will create many new jobs. As the tax base swells, the tax rate will decline. With the FairTax, the only losers will be the politicians, who can no longer use the tax code as a political tool.
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