And we sell what?

I have vented on the USA Tax situation in previous posts. Some readers have suggested that it is a privilege to pay taxes. (I have referred these people to nearby psychoanalysts.) Some point out that, although the situation is somewhat unfair:

“It’s not that bad. You simply pay the same taxes that you’d pay in the USA if you were living here.”

I realize, of course, that what they are thinking is more like: “Gilded expatriates like you shouldn’t be allowed to take advantage of low taxation domiciles.”

Let me simply note that the exchange rate has gone from 1.72 (when we arrived) to 1.03 (now). Thus, if I were being paid, say 172,000 Francs when I arrived, that would be equal to $100,000 for (US tax purposes). Now, the same Swiss salary is equal to $166,995 (for US tax purposes.) It looks, therefore, I like I have gotten a 66.9% raise – even though my income is unchanged. Note,that my rent, grocery, insurance and other bills don’t go down just because the US$ collapses.
So, in addition to ignoring the international taxation treaty that they (the USA) negotiated and which is agreed by every country (except the USA, North Korea and Libya), they also mishandle the economy with the sole purpose of artificially inflating my salary so that I will have to pay them more taxes.

Yet this isn’t the worst that can happen. A friend of mine who has been living in Singapore for the last 23 years, discovered a large and unexpected withdrawal from an account that he maintains in the USA. It turns out that the state of California, discovering a California mailing address for someone who filed a tax return with the IRS, constructed an imputed tax liability, added penalties and interest and then simply took the money from his account. And, because California is a fiscal mess, they’ve fired all of the people who would normally deal with the irate and aggreived citizen. Note: This is not a situation in which my friend is complaining about unfair taxation. This is a situation in which even though no tax (i.e. $0; zero, nil, zilch) is owed, the government still took the money and will not respond to telephone, email or fax messages requesting redress.

The worst news? My employer sells the systems that find these tenuous links (California mailing address, Federal Tax form filed) that allows this confiscation.

The mountain photo depicts the safest place to flee – and disappear.