Re: US law - World Law - Secret Banking

[Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>]

On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Michael Loomis wrote:

> Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 25-Apr-96 Re: US law - World Law -
> Se.. by Timothy C. May@got.net 

> > Those on the list about a year or so ago may recall that there are
> > proposals to in fact impose a "capital flight tax." This would make the
> > U.S. a country very much like the former Soviet Union, which forbade such
> > transfers of wealth without payment of heavy taxes.
> 
>     I have been reading this list to get an idea where Declan gets some
> of his lunatic ideas and what Rich Graves says when he is not up to
> Holocaust fetishism.  Despite Timothy's claim to the contrary, it seems
> that the basic point of this list is some libertarian notion that tax
> evasion is a good thing.

Your observation about the primary point of the list is incorrect in my
view and even if it were correct, you overlook several aspects of the U.S.
taxation system when you class all efforts to reduce or otherwise mitigate
taxation as "tax evasion."

First of all, and as one of the only western powers to do so, the United
States taxes its citizens on _worldwide income_.  While this in itself,
with a proper foreign tax credit system, is not offensive, when the Unites
States adds to this a very wide scope of extraterratorial jurisdiction and
compelled process, it becomes more than tax.  Further, the United States
implements policy it cannot directly legislate constiutionally through
taxation.

Now, all of the above might not be unusual, but when it is combined with
proposals like the expatraition tax (leave the country and pay a tax for
doing so- and by the way, there is a form of this on the books and
applicable today in the US) and strict money laundering regulations you
approach something like currency controls.

It is also worth noting that your notion of tax evasion is by no means
universal.  Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Cayman Islands, France, the
United Kingdom, all define tax evasion differently.  Who are you, or
anyone else, to say what tax evasion is, especially when it regards income
derrived outside of the geographical and economic boundries of the taxing
state?

The United States has asked for this problem by imposing a regime of
worldwide taxation on income.  I, for one, am not particularly
sympathetic.

> While I am not clear how serious of threat, if
> one at all, to a system of fair taxiation, since much of the talk could
> be simply bluff, I have been made glad for the first time for the War on
> Drugs.  This silly war--tragic in terms of its economic cost and its
> assault on liberty--at least has forces some government agencies to take
> you seriously enough to figure out how to derail your plans of tax
> evasion.

Unfortunately, and if you stick with the list long enough and absorb the
ramifications of some of the technology, I think the government has a
losing battle.  At the moment it is estimated that 10% of tax evaders in
the United States are ever caught.

It is partly the arrogance of many U.S. citizens, and the view that their
government knows the one single way to conduct economic and foreign
affairs, that empowers the United States to impose her tax and
economic policy on unconnected sovereigns thousands of miles away.

I think you have a rather narrow view of the list in any event.
Cypherpunks are about much more than the ramifications of new technologies
on the tax systems of the world.  But, if it's sexy to demonize the list
by calling us all tax evaders, feel free.

> Michael Loomis

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