It began in the early 1990's when thousands of rich Americans began to leave America. They did so by renouncing their American citizenship and reestablishing citizenship in low-tax or no-tax countries. They were called tax exiles and as soon as the word got out about the trend the U.S. Congress reacted to try to stop it before the trend spread out of control. Opening an unusually filthy bag of legislative tricks Congress attempting to build a jurisdictional "Berlin Wall" of sanctions against escapees in order to keep them jurisdictional prisoners of America. It is a clever trap of words that makes clear that the U.S. government assumes that they own everyone and everything on the planet and that their jurisdiction includes the known universe.
To guarantee perpetual imprisonment of those who were attempting to flee it was necessary to create laws which threatened some sort of punishment for anyone caught escaping. But the punishment had to be creative, for how can you punish someone after they've gone away and taken whatever is worth confiscating with them? Congress realized that while they couldn't keep everyone in a physical prison, they could keep their citizens jurisdictional prisoners of the U.S. judicial system by creating law's which made jurisdictional escape from America a crime punishable in perpetuity - - even if someone has changed citizenship. Hence was born the Berlin Wall of expatriate sanctions directed against fleeing Americans. You don't get shot going over this wall, it's much more subtle than that.
Congress began its gambit in 1996 by imposing a ten-year tax on expatriated Americans. Get this, they claimed that even if you renounced your citizenship and were no longer a citizen, they would still tax you for another ten years regardless of your citizenship or your residency. What a concept! Not even the Russian slave masters of the former Soviet Union were that creative. What a work of brilliance! It amounts to saying, "Even if you escape our prison, we still own you. You are to report in periodically and give us all your belongings." Their justification for their idiocy is based on the assumption that jurisdiction of the United States corresponds to that of the entire world, and if you live in the world you belong to the U.S. government forever regardless of your wishes.
Governments don't own their people unless the people are slaves. Governments belong to the people within their jurisdiction, or they are not governments they are slave states. The proper function of government is to improve the life of individuals by increasing their freedom. If there is no increase in freedom then there is no improvement to a citizen's life. No net improvement in the quality of a citizen's life means that a government has failed in its duties. If there is sufficient decrease in the level of freedom people leave. This is not surprising nor is it new news, when governments fail in their duties people leave, just as they have done throughout history. Why live in China or Burma if they are slave states? If you can escape you do. If you cannot leave a country in which you no longer care to live, then you are a prisoner. If they use your property to keep you a prisoner how does that differ from saying you don't own your property? If the government claims that the property belonging to that individual is the property of the government then there are no property rights. Congress is in effect telling the American people that they cannot take their property when they leave, nor the fruit of their labor, nor the fruit of their future labor. It sounds suspiciously like they saying that your brain belongs to them. If this legislature proved to be effective it would mean that if your body happened to escape they would still own your brain. Jurisdictional prison - a virtual Berlin Wall for a virtual age.
If this was not insult enough, Congress added a coup de grace meant to degrade our departure by stating that expatriates who left for tax-motivated reasons could never visit the U.S. again. It's sort of like being hit with a farewell gob of spit that implies those who leave are traitors. How about if the escapee is a decorated Viet Nam war veteran? Is he still a traitor or are the traitors in Congress? How about if he is someone whose son was shot and wounded in his high school gym, or whose daughter was raped coming home from choir practice? Or how about someone who is disgusted with the filth shown on American television and in the movie theaters? What does this legislation mean to those who leave for moral reasons? Will those that leave be required to take some kind of test to show they are moral expatriates and not tax expatriates? What kind of test? If I find the actions of Congress in this matter repugnant and immoral, and I do, would that qualify me as a moral expatriate?
Despite these congressional efforts to create a jurisdictional prison, leaving America hasn't lost its popularity. Far from it. Most of those leaving are simply leaving without saying good-bye - (see IRS Loses Bid To Track Overseas Tax-Dodgers in a previous issue of this magazine). Tens of thousands of Americans have left and the US government has no way to track them. However some are still going to the trouble of renouncing despite the straw watchdog Congress created. Several thousand people have turned in their citizenship or green cards within the past few years, and over half of them did so after Congress tried to create it's jurisdictional prison.
The law that Congress created states that if the purpose of avoiding taxes is among our principal motives for renouncing, then they can collect estate taxes and income taxes on U.S. earnings and investment income for the next ten years. They don't have to prove we were motivated by tax purposes. If our net worth is over $500,000 or our income tax bill is over $100,000, they presume our motives are tax related. Libya and the United States are among the small number of nations brutal enough to tax their citizens on all income worldwide to begin with. Now Congress would like to extend their worldwide taxation clause to include a taxation in perpetuity clause. Those scientists who claim that a perpetual motion machine is an impossibility should turn to the U.S. Congress for answers.
How does this effect those who aren't worth a half a million and don't have $100,000 tax obligations? As stated elsewhere on this website most Americans have decided to slip quietly away without saying good-bye. Most often when an expatriate goes abroad they are effectively off of the radar. Those we've talked to simply restart their lives abroad, get a second passport and drop out of the American system. Those that are intent on returning should read the article Expat Tax - U.S. Taxation of American's Living Abroad in this issue. Most expatriates I've talked to have lowered their taxes to zero. As mentioned in the book Escape From America the structuring of one's expatriate tax obligations can be done in such a way as to reduce them to zero in most cases. If you can do this for ten years and not spend more than 30 days in the USA during that period you can then renounce without presumption of guilt. If you hold dual citizenship from birth you can return to the other country without presumption of guilt. If you or one of your parents was born abroad you can become a citizen of that country without presumption of guilt and so on.
For those who do feel the necessity to renounce, there are enough loopholes to prevent the virtual prison legislation from being much more than a scare tactic. Everyone who has legally challenged the presumption of guilt clause has won. The Immigration & Naturalization Service so far has not barred anyone from returning to the U.S. after renouncing. It is clear that the laws that Congress wrote were written to prevent a massive exodus not to go after those who have the courage to renounce.
If people no longer want to live in a country, any country, they should be allowed to leave with their possessions. That Congress should try to create a virtual prison is clear sign to us of what America is now becoming. It is an undeclared war zone where most elderly people have to lock themselves inside their homes in order to feel safe. Forty million Americans are murdered, maimed, raped, mugged, or robbed every year. Tens of millions of Americans live in an American prison. America has the highest prison population in the world. It is one of the most violent countries on earth. People are tired of paying so high a rate of taxes into a system that is spiraling downhill - a system that does little to increase their freedom - and into a society that is becoming morally bankrupt and vehemently wants to pretend that it is not. Could the doors suddenly slam shut trapping millions of American's inside, just as people were trapped inside the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany? It's a question worthy of speculation. When the ether wears off and more and more American's discover they've been hoodwinked there could be a massive exodus. What Congress will do to stop them is open to conjecture.
Alex Jones' Prison Planet.com: The Earth Is Being Turned Into A Prison Planet