More Americans renouncing citizenship

tell me it's not true, what is the progress re the decision on the canal. are there environmentalist there fighting this. i can't post blogs anymore, i guess i am just too extreme aka abbie hoffman, andy kaufman, and that other jewish comic who was censored, not to mention jim morrison

Maybe the number overall is increasing but if so its is so smalls as it is still hard to measure. Even if you measure it complete correctly the number of people who do such a thing is so small as not to effect any tax collection basis. That certain people will opt out of such a system is not a surprise to the people who make the rules but rather assumed by them; they already know they will lose certain people on the high end and they calculate the profit from he people in the middle.

Well heck, somebody has got to pay for all those expensive war toys.

A couple of years ago actually met one of these guys-- a US-born, white, anglo-saxon male, helicopter pilot, ex-US Army, who flies in Saudi Arabia. He showed me his Grenada Passport, as well as the US Visitor Visa so that he could visit his folks in the Southeast from time to time.

Interestingly, I believe the first $80K was exempt for US Citizen non-residents. A few years ago, the Bush Administration started making noises about eliminating that exemption, with the explanation that US Citizens still benefit from US Foreign Policy and diplomatic representation (so give me your money).

At around this same time the IRS also announced that it was intending to tax foreign airline crews for that portion of time that their flight would have been inside US Airspace (no other country does this). Needless to say, it caused an uproar in the Airline Industry (both for it's unfairness and difficulty to administer), and several countries announced that they would do the same to US pilots (so imagine, if you will, American Airlines pilots paying income tax to Cuba, or Northwest Airlines pilots paying income tax to the Islamic Republic of Iran).

I take it as a sign of desperation in the USA.

There are some really good articles on how to avoid (legally) income tax if you are a US citizen on www.escapeartist.com. Taxes here in the US are rediculous and getting worse! I gotta get ou of here!

are you thinking of renouncing your citizenship?

I was recently at a ceremony in Chicago, where more than 300 persons from many different countries all recieved their citizenship. There will always be people who want to take a shot at the American Dream.