Democrats Mocked Over Bill to Tax Billionaire Who Gave Up U.S. Citizenship

After billionaire Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (left, in photo montage) drew global attention to the growing number of Americans giving up their U.S. citizenship to preserve their wealth and escape burdensome IRS regulations, two Democrat Senators outraged by the accelerating trend introduced the “Ex-PATRIOT” Act to get revenge — and, of course, to confiscate more wealth for the government to squander.
Critics of the legislation, dubbed the "Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy" Act, mocked the lawmakers and even the idea as “petty,” saying it would likely be unconstitutional, too. However, other analysts warned that U.S. policy makers were embarrassing the nation as well as traveling a dangerous path toward totalitarianism and even “banana-republic” status. And it should be halted immediately before the situation spirals completely out of control, critics said.

“What comes after Banana Republic? Because America is it,” wrote a popular analyst with the financial site ZeroHedge. “One wonders just how much taxpayer money was spent to pay naming consultants to come up with this witty acronym for a law that can only be classified as utter idiocy. Here is our suggestion for the follow up law: The ‘GULAG’ Act: Get Ur Laughable A$$es Gone.”

Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y., center in photo montage) and Bob Casey (D-Penn., right in photo montage) unveiled the controversial legislation at a press conference on Thursday. If passed, it would impose massive new penalties going back 10 years on anyone who has renounced or is seeking to renounce their U.S. citizenship. Among the punitive measures would be a new 30-percent capital gains tax — double the usual rate — for the rest of a person’s life.

On top of that, the legislation would allow the IRS Commissioner to determine whether somebody gave up their citizenship for a “substantial” tax purpose, going back a decade from the date of enactment. If the senior tax bureaucrat makes that determination — and it would be presumed that rich Americans left to avoid taxes unless the ex-citizens could provide solid evidence to the contrary — targeted individuals would be barred from ever entering the “Homeland” again.

“The nationalists of left and right despise the idea of someone leaving the jurisdiction they themselves belong to in favor of another one,” observed best-selling author and liberty-minded pundit Tom Woods, a long-time critic of the out-of-control federal government’s perpetually expanding power grabs. “This bit of childishness is a case in point.”

Americans who sever their ties to the “Homeland” are already required to pay a hefty so-called “exit tax” for what the government considers to be the privilege of renouncing one’s citizenship. But for an entity that is more than $15 trillion in debt to the Communist regime ruling China and the big banks — not including tens of trillions’ worth of unfunded liabilities — that 15-percent tax on all assets is apparently not enough.


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