Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

2Dec/01Off

Lookie here…

Travel.state.gov: Possible Loss of U.S. Citizenship and Foreign Military Service (via rc3.org)

"P.L. 104-191 contains changes in the taxation of U.S. citizens who renounce or otherwise lose U.S. citizenship. In general, any person who lost U.S. citizenship within 10 years immediately preceding the close of the taxable year, whose principle purpose in losing citizenship was to avoid taxation, will be subject to continued taxation."

Ahem. So who wants to rebutt that it is, or should I say, was possible to avoid taxation by renouncing one's citizenship?

About Jim Roepcke

No description. Please complete your profile.
Comments (2) Trackbacks (0)
  1. At 01:22 AM 12/3/2001 -0500, Jim Roepcke wrote:

    >”P.L. 104-191 contains changes in the taxation of U.S. citizens who
    >renounce or otherwise lose U.S. citizenship. In general, any person who
    >lost U.S. citizenship within 10 years immediately preceding the close of
    >the taxable year, whose principle purpose in losing citizenship was to
    >avoid taxation, will be subject to continued taxation.”
    >
    >Ahem. So who wants to rebutt (http://jim.roepcke.com/3056) that it is, or
    >should I say, was possible to avoid taxation by renouncing one’s citizenship?

    Just to sum things up, Jim:

    1. It has always been possible to renounce American citizenship, and
    certainly a handful of wealthy people have reduced their tax burden by
    doing so.

    2. Legally renouncing American citizenship, however, brings a number of
    immigration-related laws into play. For example, since these folks are now
    at best legal aliens when they are in the country. Most such people, for
    example, are required by law to spend something like no more than 6 months
    in the United States (such folks usually maintain homes in Caribbean nations).

    3. What you *cannot* do — at least if you want to stay out of jail — is
    try to tell a judge that the Constitution established a confederated
    government called the united states of America, that the post-Civil War
    amendments to the Constitution created a voluntary corporation called the
    United States of America, and since you’ve never voluntary joined said
    corporation, you are not subject to taxation by said corporation.

  2. At 08:18 AM 12/3/2001 -0500, I wrote:

    >2. Legally renouncing American citizenship, however, brings a number of
    >immigration-related laws into play. For example, since these folks are now
    >at best legal aliens when they are in the country. Most such people, for
    >example, are required by law to spend something like no more than 6 months
    >in the United States (such folks usually maintain homes in Caribbean nations).

    Just to be clear here, there are laws that specifically apply to former
    American citizens specifying how much time they can spend in the country
    before they become subject to American tax law. There was a controversy in
    the mid-1980s because the IRS and the INS were not keeping track of such
    matters and there were a number of people worth hundreds of millions of
    dollars who had renounced their citizenship but were living in the United
    States for 10 or 11 months a year, and just flying to their home in the
    Bahamas for what amounted to a short vacation.

Trackbacks are disabled.

Roepcke Computing Solutions

Jim Roepcke specializes in development and mentoring for iPhone and Mac OS X / Cocoa, WebObjects, and Python.

Contact Jim for more information.

Archive Calendar

December 2001
S M T W T F S
« Nov   Jan »
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30  

Blogroll

Saved Searches

Willing to Fail

Jim Roepcke is Willing to Fail

WebObjects book

I co-authored this book

Badges

Proud Member of the Association for Computing Machinery

Listed on BlogShares

Blog Directory - Blogged

Recent tweets

Meta