Why Tax Citizens – America’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Café Moi

America has an obsessive-compulsive disorder. The rest of the world thinks so, based on America’s seemingly non-sensical, misguided, and random behavior. Examples are long and storied: the failure to adopt the metric system, the insane void of gun control, a refusal to fund the United Nations yet an expectation to run the organisation by its lonesome, a fetish for free trade yet a near communist obsession with cheap oil and food, and the list runs on. These are decisions most of the rest of the world has made; because they make sense. Such a patient cannot accurately judge their own actions and motivations, so don’t bother arguing this point if you are an American living in the 50: I won’t listen to you just as you won’t listen to me.

I am focusing on income tax. Americans believe all its citizens must pay income tax. It is a value grounded…

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#FATCA Hearings (4/26/2017) – a very brief introduction

Café Moi

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (#FATCA) is a law requiring all foreign financial institutions (FFI) to provide the United States’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with financial account details of any American Persons who has accounts with it. If a FFI does not comply, then it is subject to a 30% withholding tax on all its American transactions.

There are arguments for and against #FATCA, and even though I am fully against it, I will try to present both arguments.

Argument For

• The United States has suffered from tax evasion where its citizens and residents park their nest eggs abroad tax free. FATCA forces other countries to report these monies to the IRS. Estimates of taxes that will be recovered vary from $250 million a year to $792 million per year. The actual amounts received in taxes to date is only about $400 million.
• Since implementation in 2010, the Treasury…

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