Although the major media has not taken notice of this phenomena, it has not been lost on Congress. In fact, fear of increasing wealth expatriation led Congress in 1996, to quietly pass the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which claims the right of the United States to tax the earnings of former Americans for 10 years after they renounce their US citizenship and become a citizen of another country. Congress then followed that absurd law with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996, which denies wealthy expatriates the right to ever return to the United States after they renounce their US citizenship.
But, instead of slowing down wealth expatriation, these two acts actually increased it. Although the significance of those two acts was lost on the average American and the major media, the wealthy saw them for exactly what they were - attempts by the US government to limit what private individuals could do with their own wealth. They saw those acts as yet another section in the virtual Berlin Wall of laws being erected by the US government, designed to keep wealth here where they can tax it at punitive rates and exert control on how it is invested.
The result is that many wealthy Americans chose, rather than to meekly accept that they were trapped here, to flee before things got even worse. Most people who learned of this wealth flight simply considered that line of thought to be paranoid. The USA Patriot Act and the above proposed punitive legislation is proof positive that they were not paranoid. They were right.
But, because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, they were forced to take ALL of their wealth with them or risk it being confiscated by the IRS to pay that 10 years worth of taxes. So, not only did those acts actually cause and increase in expatriation, rather than a decrease, it had the additional negative effect of forcing these expats to take ALL of their wealth with them when they leave, thus exacerbating an already bad situation.
But what will happen now that the major media is beginning to take notice? Wealthy investors drove the market down sharply upon news of a boiler explosion in New York last week. What do you think they will do as the level of wealth expatriation becomes public knowledge?
Every time Congress passes more wealth punitive legislation, expatriation jumps. The USA Patriot Act, the Reversing the Expatriation of Profits Offshore Act and the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act of 2002 would be enough to make more that a few wealthy individuals and corporations leave. But, now that the major media is taking notice, wealth expatriation could very well skyrocket.
The important thing to remember is that expatriation of the wealthy is not generally undertaken by choice. They are not, as Sen. Gephardt so erroneously calls them, "unpatriotic". Rather, the wealthy are leaving, because Sen. Gephardt and others in our government have left them no other choice. It isn't wrong or unpatriotic to protect what you have earned from confiscation. What is unpatriotic is for Grassley, Gephardt and others in Congress to use their power to try to control wealth that they did not earn, thus putting all Americans at risk of financial collapse.
For more info on capital flight and the serious threat that it represents, see the Tax and Economy section of Action America. In particular, see the recently updated, "Tick-Tick-Tick - The Economy Bomb".
Wealth is leaving the United States as a direct result of repressive laws passed by Congress. It can be stopped or even reversed. But, that cannot happen as long as there is an agency like the IRS, tasked with looking into every American's personal finances and threatening corporations with an incomprehensible tax code. Things have now become so bad that the only thing that has a chance of reversing this trend is the repeal of the 16th Amendment and the implementation of a National Retail Sales Tax.
That's one of the scarier statements I've read in a long time. "Covert efforts by corporate expatriates"? How Orwellian is that?
Having been previously unaware of this Neal bozo in Congress, this one statement has moved him to the top 5 of my "101 Pinheads" list.
Apparently, the easiest and most effective way of keeping companies from moving - cutting taxes - would never occur to a rat like this.