No mercy for those who have $100,000 or more in investments outside Canada. Ouch. Hey IRS: I live in Canada. I am exposed to enough capricious, confiscatory tax rules that I don’t need yours too. The Canadian taxman suffices. This is why I renounced US citizenship. Get used to it. There are a lot more people right behind me.
Headline from the Financial Post:
Craig Carter has written an interesting post entitled, “Secular Politics Infiltrating the Church: Hell’s Scheme to Bring Down Evangelicalism.” There I’ve entered into a rather lengthy discussion with a self-proclaimed progressive who apparently believes himself to be Christian. I reproduce here my comments and his responses. I think it demonstrates that while progressives claim to care about people, they really despise people and are more concerned about re-engineering society to make it more equal–who cares who dies or suffers along the way, just so long as the rich can no longer parasitically leech off of others. I responded first to his manner in which he responds to Craig Carter and Gordon (another correspondent), while mercilessly libelling the Tea Party. Later, I explained how progressive, with their need to enlarge the state, had forced me to renounce my US citizenship, resulting in my suffering the loss of my birth right. The reason that I insist on telling my story about how I’ve suffered is that I still can. Those whom the progressives around the world have murdered can no longer tell their story.
Peter W. Dunn said…
That’s amazing Steve. You praise Craig and Gordon for civil tone of their responses to you, and then insult the Tea Party, libelling them as liars. Wow. An entire movement of people who want smaller government libelled as liars. You called Ron Paul demonic.
I think you should read my blog Steve: The Righteous Investor. You could start with this: Worship the invisible God or our modern Idols: which?
You wrote:
“Progressives are not trying to replace a deity through gov’t, as you suggest, but progressives do not believe in a theocracy. We believe that ended with Jesus. The gov’t should meet the needs of all people, not just those who are wealthy or favoured by majority status.”
Well with these lines you have proved Craig Carter’s main point in the post. Because a god or an idol is what we have faith in to meet all our needs. You suggest that it is government. I suggest that Jesus is still alive and that it didn’t end with Jesus but he still lives in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. I’m not advocating theocracy–like the progressives who believe in big government that meets all our needs–I believe in small government that doesn’t suck up all the oxygen in the room and thus allows other institutions, like the family and the church, to breath a little too. But you advocate government as panacea and that ultimately is evil.
The socialists, of course, reject God as Jehoveh Jireh, because they believe in government-jireh, which provides everything we need. Who needs faith in a God who strictly prohibits in his Ten Continue reading
Wesley Snipes is in a Federal prison. The reason is that the IRS needs to make victims out of some in order to make compliant sheep out of the rest. This website, Freesnipesnow.com says that he is innocent.
I think it is a perverse form of justice when the law chooses to make an example of you so that others will be compliant. Funny thing is that liberals* who don’t believe that the death penalty is a deterrent, think it is perfectly fine to punish a man more severely than he merits so that others will fear and will comply with the tax law. (*Liberals: The majority of Federal bureaucrats are democrats. Their jobs depend on it.)
In my book, any man that goes to a US federal prison unjustly is a hero. Conrad Black is a hero who is suffering his punishment for conducting and selling a business in a manner that conformed to Canadian law (non-compete payments are normal up here) and because he committed an act in Canada (clearing out his office) that a jury decided was an obstruction of US justice. The arm of US justice is long indeed. Black is a hero. Snipes is a hero. Juries found both Black and Snipes guilty on the basis of the testimony of a scoundrel. But the Feds don’t care about justice; they just care about convictions and breaking legs. Just ask Scooter Libby or the late Senator Ted Stevens.
The IRS and the Federal justice system are the villains. If you break the legs of one man, the others will be sure to pay their gambling debts:
Time has come to kill the behemoth. States need to outlaw officers of the Federal government in their jurisdictions. I’m just glad that I live in a country away from their reach.
Leftists always claim to be on the side of victims, the poor, and the marginalized. Often these so-called victims are criminals, the worst elements of our society, who are sociopathic in behavior, e.g., substance abusers, and are unable to function in normal society. Some Christian leftists claim that since Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor”, these poor are the true church. They are the focal point of God’s love and care, not the “rich”. And you, because you are middle-class or “rich”, you belong to the oppressors. It doesn’t matter how many good jobs you provide and how many families depend on you, you are an abuser.
When you turn the tables on these leftists and claim, “I am a victim”, they ignore you, mock you, claiming that you are an extremist or mentally ill. But those of us who pay taxes are being robbed regularly by government. We work hard and we risk our capital, and the government expects its pound of flesh and strips us of our wealth, and then gives it to the “poor”–such as the banksters or the people who refuse to get a job and call their welfare cheque their “pension”. This is abuse and we are oppressed victims. We are like the people in biblical times called the Am haEretz, the people of the land, who were oppressed by Roman tax collectors.
Consider that Charlie Engle went to prison for mortgage fraud while not a single bankster went to jail. I’d sure love to put my mortgage broker in jail, but I’m sure he’s still free. I won’t mention his name to protect the guilty, but he received over $5000 in fees for his claim that my brother’s business could earn more than three times its historical cash-flow in SBA loan papers for a commercial building that he couldn’t afford. As my brother’s partner, I lost a lot of money on that deal. Yet Engle goes to jail, and the big fraudsters are free. And so are the Congressmen who pass the unjust laws and receive sweet-heart loans from the banksters.
Today I read an essay on “Morality and the IRS” which claimed that many people are so frightened and demoralized by their treatment at the hands of IRS that they commit suicide. Indeed, it doesn’t take long to find stories to that effect. Joe Stack who flew his plane into a IRS building in Austin, TX, left a public suicide note explaining that the IRS drove him to self murder–and the leftists who run the media call those who sympathize with Stack “extremists in the patriot movement“. One IRS agent testified to the Senate Finance Committee in 1997 that she knew of at least five suicides but thought that the number could be much higher. If the IRS threatens a person with prison and fines, or steals from their bank accounts and garnishes their pay cheques, then it can really cause a lot of domestic havoc, marital discord, and personal suffering. I know. My own wife is tired of hearing of my woes and is not above threatening me. Such tribulations could lead the weak among us to Selbstmord.
The socialists want this. They want big government that takes care of us cradle-to-grave. They begrudge even our little savings accounts, such as the TFSA, where we are allowed to gain interest without taxation–even though the pathetic returns from interest accounts don’t even keep up with organized government robbery called “inflation”. And yet government does a very bad job of providing services, and we would be much better off if they would just get off our backs and let us fend for ourselves.
The IRS–and probably every other revenue service in the world–is no better than the mafia. Consider that American citizens are required to pay taxes to the USA no matter where in the world that they happen to live. Non-residents cannot receive US healthcare, grants, education, or whatever the service might happen to be, because they don’t even live in the United States. But this taxation is justified because they receive “protection” from the US government. It makes me think of how Richie Aprile offers protection to Beansie (See video below: viewer discretion is advised because of foul language and violence). Yeah, the US government has the right to tax me here in Canada because it is protecting me from all the bad guys out there who want to harm me or steal from me. Wait a second, the only ones who are constantly threatening me work for the government. You see! The government has become a criminal organization and I am victim. Well, excuse me IRS sirs. I am now under the protection of Canadian organized crime. In order to make that clear, I’ve lost my right to live in the United States of America. Poor Beansie, Tony Soprano didn’t protect him from Richie. Hopefully, the Canadian mob boss will do a better job for me.
The Globe & Mail tells us that Conrad Black has just been sent a 70,000,000 (on 116,000,000 income!= 60% tax rate) bill from the IRS. This is as he is about to have his felony conviction overturned by the US Supreme Court. Judging by the comments section, the readers of the Globe & Mail are ok with this. But supposing Black paid his taxes as a Canadian resident, there is no way that he would owe any taxes in the states, because the rates here are higher, and Black, who shouldn’t have to file personal tax for his income by virtue of being neither or a resident nor a citizen of the US, would be in any case entitled to the foreign tax credit, which is a dollar per dollar tax deduction for taxes paid in another country (in this case Canada). Canadian taxpayers should be furious because this is a blatant attempt to steal their tax dollars. If Black is required to pay in the US, he would then file amendments to his Canadian tax and get a refund from the Canadian government. No! I presume that the money has already been collected and spent here by the Canadian federal and provincial governments. The IRS is not entitled to a penny. In any case, the message from the IRS to foreign investors is clear: keep your money and your butts out of the US lest we imprison you and send you an exorbitant tax bill. My investments are all in Canada as a result of the current investment climate in the US. It is not an investor friendly region anymore.
Note: Black’s defense is that he wasn’t a US citizen or resident during the period in question. A few others related to the same case have been sent very large bills: Forbes comments:
McCallum [attorney for Radler] said U.S. tax jurisdiction extends only to U.S. citizens, permanent U.S. residents with green cards and people from other countries meeting a “substantial presence” test, generally defined as spending 183 days or more a year in the U.S. McCallum said a U.S.-Canada tax treaty specifies “tax-breaker” criteria to be used in identifying a sole country for taxing jurisdiction.
So the case will hinge upon whether Black stayed longer than 183 days during the years in question (i.e., more than half of the year so that the US has more claim than any other country). It would appear to me that Black’s case is one of competing jurisdictions and that the CRA better make sure that they don’t get ripped off by the IRS.
The Righteous Investor 