Comment by chasd00
2 days ago
> In your opinion, what is the best approach, if any, to attempt to address it?
There aren't many options for fighting the tax man, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". You're only option is to leave the US for somewhere better.
I guess you don't know about how taxes work for Americans? Living abroad typically changes nothing, they still owe tax.
Maybe an American can chime in here on this...
Correct, the US is one of the few countries that tries to collect (Federal) income tax from all citizens regardless of the country they are currently living in. To be fair, when you can prove that income is entirely foreign (not a single US company in the chain of ownership) that income becomes almost entirely deductible and the tax reporting essentially just a census on how well US citizens are doing from an income standpoint globally. (For people that want economics analyses of US influence in global politics, that census can be handy to spin.)
I think the root problem with how the US currently spends its tax dollars is the above "vote with your wallet" belief in the first place. "Vote with your wallet" implies that the rich deserve more votes. That's not (representative) democracy, that is oligarchy. Right now the US has two political parties that are both "vote with your wallet parties". They both act like they are bake sales that constantly need everyone's $20 bills just to "survive", but as much as anything they are trying to make US citizens complicit in agreeing that the rich deserve more votes and should control more US policy.
I think the only real solution to a lot of US ills is drastic Campaign Finance Reform.
Minor correction, expat income is deductible up to (currently) $130k under the FEIE. After that it's taxes as usual. There's also an array of other mandatory forms like FBAR for foreign accounts, and the nightmare that is form 5471, with absolutely wild allowances for the IRS to impose penalties, often with no statute of limitations and per-violation fines. For example, a US citizen with multiple bank accounts and a mistake in FBAR reporting for multiple years running will be liable for the (iirc) $10,000 fine for each bank account, and each year (e.g. 4 accounts, 8 years, $320,000 fine).
Living and doing business overseas is as a US citizen is a high risk endeavor.
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Unfortunately, campaign finance reform would possibly require a constitutional amendment, or at the very least a big shift in how the supreme court views things (so, not likely in my lifetime), since the current jurisprudence is that limiting campaign donations is a violation of first amendment rights.
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Yes, many countries have significant limits on campaign donations. Even third parties are restricted from advertising on behalf of a party, and so on.
So no company can simply donate large sums of money, nor can any single person.
The goal is that individuals will be the largest donors, not companies, and that as everyone is capped in the same way, advertising will be a more level playing field. We don't want money in politics. At the same time, we want all parties to get their message out there, their message heard.
It's not perfect. There are issues. But this business of democracy should be taken seriously.
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For the ultra-wealthy, leaving the United States is rarely the preferred strategy; instead, they use their immense resources to legally reshape the tax code and utilize complex loopholes. Billionaires like the Koch and Scaife families historically avoided massive estate and gift taxes by creating "charitable lead trusts" and private foundations. This allowed them to pass fortunes down to their heirs tax-free, provided they donated the interest to charities (which they often controlled) for a set period. A powerful approach is to fund political movements to slash taxes for the top brackets. For example, a coalition of eighteen of the wealthiest US families spent nearly half a billion dollars collectively to successfully lobby for the reduction and eventual repeal of the "death tax" (estate tax), saving themselves an estimated $71 billion.
And, of course, in the ancient world, free citizens of Greece and Rome considered direct taxes tyrannical and usually avoided them, leaving such burdens to conquered populations.
So I guess taxes are uncertain, but only for the oligarchy.
The US people serve as the conquered people