It's the taxes, stupid/A free country does not charge it's citizens a fee to flee.

 It's the taxes, stupid

BY JUDSON PHILLIPS | MAY 21, 2012, Tea Party Nation

Facebook made its initial public offering this week. The IPO, which made Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire overnight, also created some other controversy.

Eduardo Saverin was one of the co-founders of Facebook. Saverin is originally from Brazil, but he became a naturalized American citizen. Saverin decided to give up his American citizenship a few months ago.

Why? Because of Facebook’s IPO. By giving up his U.S. citizenship, Saverin is saving over $100 million in taxes.

Politicians went nuts over this news. Let’s face it; politicians are not the sharpest knives in the drawer anyway.

 Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania immediately introduced a bill that would impose a 30 percent capital gains tax on anyone renouncing their citizenship to save taxes.

Who would determine whether someone was doing that or not?

The IRS.

House Speaker John Boehner immediately joined in on one of the weekend talk shows saying, “If it is necessary, I will support it.”

What?

If taxes are so high that billionaires are fleeing the nation, that is a sign that taxes are too high. Ronald Reagan understood this. He wanted our taxes to be so low that we would attract capital. The not very bright people who are currently running our nation do not understand this.

If you penalize capital, it will flee. If you penalize wealth, the wealthy will flee.

If you make a nation attractive for capital, people will invest. That is what we want in America. We want people to invest in the next Facebook or Microsoft or Apple.

The only funny part of this disgraceful story is the reaction of liberals. Schumer and his buddies are shocked that people do not want to willingly pay excessively high taxes to a government that wastes insane amounts of money. That is pretty alarming.

My Comment 

A free country does not charge it's citizens a fee to flee. 

I agree 100%. I have reposted the above editorial from Judson Phillips in full and hope he does not mind. I was going to say essentially the same thing, so rather than write my own editorial on the topic, I am reposing his.

In addition to the tax policy that drives wealth from our country, there is something even more disturbing about this event.

Before the fall of the wall and the demise of the Soviet empire, the Soviets under pressure of world wide condemnation would allow a trickle of soviet citizens to depart, primarily Jews wanting to emigrate to Israel. However, the USSR imposed a so-called "diploma tax" on those leaving, sometimes as high as twenty times their annual salary.

In other times, in other places dictatorial regimes have charged people a fee to leave their country or demanded they leave all of their wealth and property behind.

A free country does not charge it's citizens a fee to flee. You should not have to buy your way out of the United States. This is a despicable concept.

Top Stories