printThe following is excerpted from my new, weekly column, “Planet IRS”:
“You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” Those are the chorus lyrics to Hotel California,” the haunting rock classic by the Eagles.
Americans who try “running for the door”—in the evocative words of Glenn Frey, and the Dons Felder and Henley—soon discover that they “are all just prisoners here …”
Prisoners of Uncle Sam’s device.
If he can tolerate TSA assaults as he departs the country, an American who chooses to live and work overseas cannot escape the Internal Revenue Service. The United States is perhaps the only country “to tax its citizens on income earned while they’re living abroad.”
To loss of privacy and property, add the prospect of prison—and you get why, as Reuters has reported, droves of Americans are “renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards.”
On pain of criminal charges and “penalties of up to $100,000 or 50 percent of undeclared accounts, whichever is larger,” the expatriate must report his own bank accounts and all conjoint accounts—a spouse, a client, or business partners.
The victims of this shakedown are residents who have foreign bank accounts (the Canadian equivalent of a small USA 401K, in this scribe’s case), in addition to “an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad.” The aims of their pursuers, the IRS, are control and compliance. The rogue agency’s source of revenue, in this context, is derived primarily from penalties for forgetfulness or faulty filing.
All fear bankrupting fines, even imprisonment.” …
Click on the link to read the complete column, “Planet IRS.”
If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.
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UPDATE I: On Facebook, Anthony Michael Miceli writes this: “You’re one of the most honest writers that is publicly known. This and a lot of your work SHOULD be carried by major newspapers but when most are controlled by just a handful of corporations the writing and thought pool becomes the same incestuous crap ppl haven been exposed to for years.”
I reply: It takes concerted pressure from readers like yourself, AMM, to sway the editorial gatekeepers across the country. What should irk you is not that opinion such as mine (also yours) is shunned; it’s the mediocrity and piss-poor, unimaginative writing that is embraced instead. Also, to help restore standards, let us separate writers from TV show men and women. Let us restore the division of labor. Only a few people manage to straddle both worlds (Ann Coulter, for instance, who is a Republican through-and-through). Most TV showmen with a large presence, or politicians, ain’t writers.
UPDATE II: I shouldn’t, but I will. I mean, there is a need to say IT, simply because few know better. And, after all, to a contemporary journalism teacher, instructing the aspiring young writer, creativity equals, “Sharing your passion” (“I love myself, and my dog, and me again”), “showing your feelings (“I feel like Obama is trying to feel for us, but like…”). So, you need to hear this from someone who learned the hard way (from tough veterans):
The lead to this column (used to be written “lede”), the Hotel California segue, is bloody good. Just saying.
UPDATE III: An example of the above necessary division of labor: Judge Napolitano. Great orator; poor writer.
I keep fearing that Ilana Mercer will eventually be escorted to a prison camp if she keeps writing wittily subversive stuff like this …
We can’t escape the federal behemoth. All we can do is stand and fight it.
For many years, the federal government ran a surplus just on tariffs on imported goods for a limited amount of functions such as the Navy, Federal Courts, etc.
The American people have demanded a government to run their education, retirement systems, medical care, tell them what to eat-drink-smoke, gather data on our private lives, fondle us when we travel.
Even worse, the Congress runs up a deficit, the Federal Reserve taxes us via inflation, and the Congress installs back-door intrusive legislation via “tax policy” like telling us how to spend or save our own money (e.g. IRA’s, Roth IRA’s, mortgage deductions, window tax credits, Health Savings Accounts, etc….).
Land of the “FREE” !!??? – relative to Balarus perhaps – but not in absolute terms whatsoever.
It is the natural law of diminishing returns by which the tax rate is held in check – absent malevolent motives.
It is the tax law of windfall returns by which everyone is made a de facto criminal by the prolixly absurd tax codes/regulations – absent a country of freemen.
In my opinion, there is only one (non-violent) way to reign in our out-of-control, un-Constitutional, central government: take away the pig’s slop-trough. Imagine if every Constitution-loving patriot simply stopped paying federal taxes (I don’t mean filing a false return; I mean stopping all salary withholding and refusing to file any IRS tax returns).
The IRS couldn’t prosecute and imprison millions of citizens — although I’m sure they would try with some high-profile cases in order to scare the rest into submission. But if the patriots held strong, withdrawing all their bank accounts and simply refusing to pay the unlawful taxes, then the government gravy train would have to grind to a halt.
Short of armed revolution, this is the only solution I can think of to combat the criminal tyranny we are experiencing.
Most citizens have no idea of the organic structure of a legal invention. Justice is not one of the rules! Underneath the “God-given rights” blather lies a subjective, self-serving, Rube Goldberg monstrosity.
The problem lies in the corruption prone political origins of appointments of judges and the uncontrolled application of administrative law. The IRS is not the only strong-arm in the bunch. Recent activities exercising superiority by the EPA and the BATF have demonstrated that they have equally long noses.
The public is populated by and large with lazy, legal schlemiels. The primary Rule of Law is simply, that THE LAW is the percept of the highest authority presiding over a legal event – the notorious Georgia Justice Courts come to mind. If convicted, justice might be possible by a lengthy, expensive excursion through the hierarchy of inferior courts.
My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I …..
Sorry, I just love Rock and Rill!
With the collapse of any meaningful threats to America’s economic dominance on the world stage, is it not likely that the forces in America pushing the country towards civil war are actually external forces (i.e. America’s competitors)? The comment about what would happen if all Americans withheld income tax is telling. Even Islamic Terrorists would be unable to match the ensuing anarchy!