US Taxpatriates
Compiled by the Internal Revenue Service
!!! ATTENTION !!!
Updates and additions to these lists are now being maintained on the site for the book:
"The Rich Don't Pay Tax! …Or Do They?"
http://therichdontpaytax.com/blog/?page_id=736
Updates to this page will be added only as we have the time. Please visit our Taxpatriate Lists page at http://therichdontpaytax.com/blog/?page_id=736
for the latest updates. Thank you.
John Gaver
Updated February 9, 2014
The the list below contains links to the US Government's official lists of Taxpatriates (people the government arbitrarily believes to have renounced their U.S. citizenship for tax purposes) as compiled quarterly by the IRS and required under 26 USC 877(a)(1). Under this law, the people on this list were to be taxed for ten years after they renounced their citizenship. That wasn't slowing expatriations of the wealthy, so Congress enacted Public Law 110-245, which imposed the first ever U.S. Exit Tax on expatriates.
Also, in a vain attempt to further discourage the perfectly legal act of formal renunciation of one's citizenship, the government, under 8 USC 1182(a)(10)(E)), may now deny people on these lists, the right to ever be allowed back into the USA for any reason. While that's a scary sounding law, it appears that the government was afraid of the amount of blowback that they would get, if they actually tried to implement it. As a result, there appears to be no record of it ever actually being applied to any expats. It was obviously meant to scare prospective expats into staying within IRS jurisdiction.
As you can see by the chart below, none of thse things have worked. Abusive tax policy toward the wealthy appears to trump scary laws and onerous exit taxes, just as it did in Nazi Germany. Many wealthy Jews chose to leave everything they had behind, to start over in another country, rather than submit to more years of abuse by the Nazi's. Turns out, they were the lucky ones. The question that this raises is, will history show that those who are leaving the USA now, the "lucky ones"?
We present links to these lists, to demonstrate just how far our government will go to control us. If you think that it can't happen to you, just imagine how many people on these lists thought the same thing, prior to 1996, when these lists came into being.
[NOTICE: The Government Printing Office appears to be restructuring their website. This may cause some of the links on this page to be broken, though only temporarily. We check this page about once a month and will update any broken links that we find at that time. We will continue to do so, until all of the links fit the new pattern. Thank you for your patience.]
Even facing such penalties, wealthy US citizens have continued to leave the US at an alarming rate. But since Barack Obama assumed office, formal renunciations have spiked 1300%.
But what these lists fail to show is the vast and increasing numbers of wealthy US citizens who are just "dropping out" - taking ALL of their wealth and leaving the US without ever renouncing. They just disappear off of the US tax rolls and appear on some other country's tax rolls. The INS estimated the total at over 300,000 per year and rising, in their "2000 Statistical Yearbook" and that was prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Tax haven countries are recording significantly larger numbers of US applicants for permanent residence or second citizenship every year.
Keep in mind that most of those expats are wealthy, since poor people can't afford to leave. In fact, millions of poor illegal immigrants risk their lives in the back of sweltering trailers or crossing Arizona desert every year, to take advantage of our increasing welfare state. It is the wealthy, who are leaving and they represent lost US investment dollars and subsequently, LOST US JOBS.
Instead of reducing the number of taxpatriates, these oppressive laws have actually increased taxpatriation. For example, after the 1996 enactmant of the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (26 USC 877(a)(1)), wealthy expatriates began taking ALL of their money with them, to prevent it from being taxed for ten years after they leave. However, as mentioned above, that law has now been superceded by an even more onerous exit tax that was a part of the Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act (H.E.A.R.T.) (Public Law 110-245) (8 USC 1182(a)(10)(E)), which subsequently drove expatriations to new highs.
But all of this pales to the effect of Obama's attempts to punish success. Obama has doubled down on these prior attempts to punish success and as a result, the "small flood" of taxpatriates predicted by the Forbes Magazine article, "The New Refugees" (Nov 21, 1994 v154 n12 p131(5)) has now become a tremendous flood. Also see the Forbes article, "And don't come back." (Nov 18, 1996 v158, n12, p44(2)) that tried to intimidate successful people, to keep them from leaving. It didn't work. But it shows how desperate the tax and spend crowd on both sides of the aisle have become. See the article, "The Economy Bomb," for more information on these numbers.
When big money is forced out of the US, it is the average citizen who has to make up the difference in higher taxes. The Income Tax and US government attacks on wealth is costing you money in more ways than you know!
US TAXPATRIATES
(Remember, the people on these lists are just the very few who chose to let the government know that they left, by renouncing their citizenship.)
The following chart, derived from the above government reports, represent just the very few, who are willing to tell the jailer where they are going, after their "escape," by formally renouncing their U.S. citizenship. But there is another increasingly popular way to lose one's U.S. citizenship that does not involve formal renunciation, but rather involves an act intended to lose one's U.S. citizenship, such as taking a foreign citizenship that requires the individual to swear sole allegiance to his new country. The names of people who have lost their citizenship in such a way don't appear on the above lists.
Furthermore, for every expat who formally renounces, hundreds more just quietly leave. Some US Census data that we have uncovered, reveals that the Census Bureau expected more than 300,000 US citizens and permanent residents to permanently leave the USA every year through 2005, with it increasing steadily, thereafter. However, a 3-year Zogby study, released in 2008 places the number at over 3 million and that was before the Obama Spike in formal expatriations.
Whatever the number is, when government punishes the wealthy, simply for the sin of being successful, should we be surprised if the wealthy, who have the wherewithal to live anywhere that they please, choose a more wealth friendly country, as their home?
(Although the Forbes articles mentioned above have expired from the Forbes web site, they are maintained in text format in several other places on the web. We try to keep our links up-to-date, but with the size of Action America, that is not always possible. If one of the above links should be broken please let us know, so we can point that link at one of the several other archives. Thank you.)
Copyright 2019 John Gaver
All rights reserved
See related articles and supporting documents:
1986-2008 IRS Collections Data by Income Category
Obama agenda drives record expatriation
Tick - Tick - Tick / The Economy Bomb
Tax Freedom Day Builds Case for FairTax
US Tax Freedom Day Clock Web Widget
UK Tax Freedom Day Clock Web Widget
US Tax Freedom Day Clock
US Tax Freedom Day Clock Widget (for Mac)
UK Tax Freedom Day Clock Widget (for Mac)
The Privacy Factor
More Attacks on the Wealthy
US Taxpatriates List
2000 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration & Naturalization Service (6.2mb PDF)
2003 World Wealth Report (Press Release)
American Citizens Residing Abroad (US Bureau of Consular Affairs)
Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (26 USC 877(a)(1))
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 USC 1182(a)(10)(E))
Heroes Earnings Assistance & Relief Tax Act (Public Law 110-245) (8 USC 1182(a)(10)(E))
The Economic Impact of Replacing Federal Income Taxes
with a Sales Tax (CATO)
Fair Tax Act of 2011 (H.R. 25)
Americans for Fair Taxation
National Retail Sales Tax Alliance
Recommended Books:
The Rich Don't Pay Tax …Or Do They?
The Fair Tax Book
Fair Tax: The Truth
How to Hide Your A$$et$ and Disappear
Escape From America
See Expatriate sites:
The Sovereign Society
Escape Artist
Expat World
Second Passports
Contact your Congressman here.
