Speak Out: USA 's #1 Thug: Federal Government

Posted by FreedomFadingFast on Thu, May 7, 2015, at 9:33 PM:

U.S. Federal Government: Snooping on and ripping off it's citizens for 239 yrs.

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Americans Living Abroad Set Record for Giving Up Citizenship

Thursday, 07 May 2015 03:49 PM

More Americans living outside the U.S. gave up their citizenship in the first quarter of 2015 than ever before, according to data released Thursday by the IRS.

The 1,335 expatriations topped the previous record by 18 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Those Americans are driven to turn in their passports in part because of laws that have expanded bank reporting and tax compliance requirements for expatriates.

The increase in early 2015 follows an annual record in 2014, when 3,415 Americans gave up their citizenship.

An estimated 6 million U.S. citizens are living abroad, and the U.S. is the only country within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside.

In many cases, those choosing to give up their citizenship have limited connections to the U.S. and have lived outside of the country for most of their lives. Anyone born in the U.S. automatically receives citizenship, and people born abroad to U.S. parents are typically citizens as well.

For some the decision is easy, because they perceive little benefit from holding U.S. citizenship. For others, the choice is more complicated.

'Highly Distressing'

"The cost of compliance with the complex tax treatment of non-resident U.S. citizens and the potential penalties I face for incorrect filings and for holding non-U.S. securities forces me to consider whether it would be more advantageous to give up my U.S. citizenship," Stephanos Orestis, a U.S. citizen living in Oslo, wrote in a March 23 letter to the Senate Finance Committee. "The thought of doing so is highly distressing for me since I am a born and bred American with a love for my country."

London Mayor Boris Johnson, who had a tax dispute with the IRS, said earlier this year that he would give up the U.S. citizenship he received because he was born in New York. His name isn't on the IRS list. Eduardo Saverin, a Brazilian-born co-founder of Facebook Inc., gave up his U.S. citizenship in 2012.

U.S. citizens who live abroad can exclude as much as $100,800 in earned income and in many cases can receive tax credits for payments to foreign governments.

Tax Cheats

The U.S. has increased efforts to catch tax cheats after the Swiss bank UBS AG paid a $780 million penalty in 2009 and handed over data on about 4,700 accounts. That has led some banks to forgo doing business with people who have ties to the U.S.

One of the primary U.S. moves took effect last year as asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act kicked in. The measure, known as Fatca, requires U.S. financial institutions to impose a 30 percent withholding tax on payments made to foreign banks that don't agree to identify and provide information on U.S. account holders.

It allows the U.S. to scoop up data from more than 77,000 institutions and 80 governments about its citizens' overseas financial activities.

In establishing the 2010 law, Congress and President Barack Obama in effect threatened to cut off banks and other companies from easy access to the U.S. market if they didn't pass along such information. It was projected to generate $8.7 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Bloomberg News via Newsmax

Replies (7)

  • America, love it or leave it. Still more wanting in than out.

    -- Posted by Old John on Thu, May 7, 2015, at 10:12 PM
  • America - no problem. But then we're not talking about America, we're talking about the Federal Government. Two different things.

    -- Posted by FreedomFadingFast on Fri, May 8, 2015, at 6:41 AM
  • I'm so danged proud of our U.S. House of Thugs.

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    House Lawyers Attempt to Block Insider Trading Investigation

    By Melanie Batley

    Friday, 08 May 2015 13:51 PM

    Lawyers from the House of Representatives have filed a petition to block a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of congressional insider trading on the basis that lawmakers and their staffs should be constitutionally protected from such investigations.

    According to The Intercept, a legal team appointed under the authority of House Speaker John Boehner has said that the insider trading probe violates the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch.

    The SEC launched an investigation after House Ways and Means Committee staffer Brian Sutter told a lobbyist about an impending Medicare decision. The information was allegedly shared with clients, resulting in hedge funds trading on health insurance stocks that were to be affected by the upcoming legislation.

    House General Counsel Kerry Kircher called the SEC's probe a "remarkable fishing expedition for congressional records," and insisted that it did not have the jurisdiction to issue a subpoena to Sutter, according to The Intercept.

    "Communications with lobbyists, of course, are a normal and routine part of committee information-gathering," said a legal brief filed last summer, adding that there "is no room for the SEC to inquire into the committee's or Mr. Sutter's purpose or motives."

    The Intercept said that Wall Street firms often hire specialized "political intelligence" lobbyists to glean insider information about government decisions to use in trading strategy, but little is known about the dynamics of the practice because it falls outside the parameters of traditional lobbying law.

    "This is hardly the first time Congress has moved to undermine its own ethics rules. In 2011, congressional Republicans quickly abandoned their promise to post the text of bills online 'for at least three days,' before voting on them," The Intercept said.

    In 2012, Congress passed the STOCK Act, a measure meant to prevent insider trading among lawmakers and their staffs.

    "We all know that Washington is broken and today members of both parties took a big step forward to fix it," Ohio GOP Rep. Bill Johnson said upon passage of the law, according to The Intercept.

    -- Posted by FreedomFadingFast on Fri, May 8, 2015, at 7:22 PM
  • Yep, so proud I'm about to bust.

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    WH Admits Illegals Issued Work Permits After Judge's Injunction

    By Sandy Fitzgerald

    Friday, 08 May 2015 13:34 PM

    Attorneys for the Obama administration acknowledged late Thursday that they had broken a Texas court's injunction on immigration by issuing thousands of work permits, and could face possible sanctions in the case.

    The acknowledgment was filed just before midnight in the Brownsville, Texas, court of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, reports The Washington Times.

    Hanen on Feb. 16 issued the injunction to temporarily block President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration, ruling in favor of about two dozen states that are claiming in court that the president acted beyond his authority in issuing the order.

    The Justice Department's attorneys told the court that the Department of Homeland Security, which has been officially named as the case's defendant, informed them on Wednesday that about 2,000 applications for three-year work programs were issued after Hanen ordered the injunction.

    Further, reports The Times, the permits were allowed after Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and other top Obama administration officials told Congress the program had been stopped and Hanen's orders were being followed.

    The government is working to remedy the work permits, the attorneys told the court, and Johnson has ordered an investigation into the matter.

    However, The Times reported that Homeland Security officials plan to try to revoke the three-year permits and reissue them as two-year documents.

    Meanwhile, Hanen was already considering sanctions after the attorneys acknowledged misleading him about more than 100,000 amnesty applications that were approved between Obama's order in November and Hanen's injunction in February.

    The attorneys also corrected another number, saying that although they had reported 55 applications as being approved after the judge's injunction, actually 72 had been approved.

    Last week, the Obama administration surrendered documents about how it got initial processing of more than 100,000 applications wrong, but said the documents are privileged communications that neither Hanen nor Texas, the lead state in the lawsuit, should be allowed to see.

    Obama's amnesty order was an expansion of the "Dream Act," which allows young adult illegal immigrants a two-year deportation stay and permits that enable them to work in the United States.

    The expansion allowed illegal immigrants who were parents of U.S. citizens and people who have green cards to apply for the same program, and the two-year period was expanded to three years. Homeland Security almost immediately started issuing the three-year applications.

    The Justice Department attorneys apologized for giving the wrong impression, and presented documents that showed the approvals were to have taken effect last November.

    -- Posted by FreedomFadingFast on Fri, May 8, 2015, at 7:25 PM
  • -- Posted by FreedomFadingFast on Mon, Jun 1, 2015, at 8:34 PM
  • Barack Obama running for president in 2008:

    "I take the Constitution very seriously," he said. "The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America."

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    Barack Obama in August of 2013:

    "The Obama administration released a previously secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that it used to justify the bulk collection of every American's phone records.

    The National Security Agency failed to report privacy violations that are serious infringements of constitutional rights. Beyond these blatant violations, the foundation of the programs is itself illegal.

    Under this relevance standard, the administration has collected the details of every call made by every American, even though the overwhelming majority of these calls have nothing to do with terrorism. "

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    He was against it before he was for it?

    -- Posted by not_sorry on Tue, Jun 2, 2015, at 7:59 PM
  • Dug, Meanwhile the FBI has spy planes in the air checking on where common and Theorist go and who they call. :)

    -- Posted by Old John on Wed, Jun 3, 2015, at 9:24 AM

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