Forget Travel If You Owe The IRS

forbes.com ^ | 04/07/2012 | Robert W. Wood

[freedommom]

If he were in charge of travel, the Soup Nazi might say, “No Passport for you!” In real life, travel may seem unrelated to taxes, except perhaps for those annoying airport taxes on international destinations. But a bigger tax and travel connection could keep you at home—permanently. A tax law quietly proposed a few months ago—Owe IRS Taxes, Lose Your Passport—is quietly gaining momentum. Now more people have noticed. If you owe the IRS? You’re not going anywhere if this law passes. In America, we love to tinker with our tax laws. Congress is always introducing one bill or another to tweak an already bloated and increasingly dysfunctional tax system. It’s curious how ingredients go into the sausage, often making strange legislative bedfellows. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) proposed that if you owe the IRS more then $50,000, you shouldn’t get a passport. See Sen. Orrin Hatch’s Memo to Reporters and Editors. Now this ‘we-need-the-money’ provision has morphed into Senate Bill 1813, introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). It was introduced in November and passed by the Senate on March 14 “to reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs, and for other purposes.” At best, there seems a titular connection between this provision and highway safety. Nevertheless, the law would authorize the federal government to prevent Americans from leaving the country if they owe back taxes. It was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who proposed allowing the State Department to revoke, deny or limit passports for anyone the IRS certifies as having “a seriously delinquent tax debt in an amount in excess of $50,000.” Does this apply in all cases? Mercifully no. You could travel if your tax debt is being paid in a timely manner or in emergency circumstances or for humanitarian reasons.

[tstevens]

“The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
Thomas Jefferson

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
James Madison

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow.”
James Madison

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
Patrick Henry

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
Thomas Jefferson

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.
Daniel Webster

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
George Washington

The problem is always the same. Inaction of the people is the government politicians best defense to get everything they want. Inaction keeps bad politicians in office. Inaction give mores power to the government. Inaction destroys people rights and limits their freedom. This Bill 1813 will most likely become law because most people just complain, very few people do anything to fix anything in this country. I have begun weekly faxing and writing and emailing my representatives in regards to my opposition to senate bill 1813 and the attached IRS amendment. I am doing everything I can think of to prevent Senate Bill 1813 and the attached amendment giving new power to the IRS to revoke and suspend passports from becoming law. Everyone needs to do something to make their country better, that means making sure their representatives are not destroying the country. Our forefathers would have died trying to keep America great. Nowadays Americans just sit back and watch the country deteriorate. They let politicians destroy their own country. Inaction is allowing our politicians to destroy our country. Complaining is good but please do something useful to prevent the senate bill 1813 and the amendment giving the IRS new powers to revoke passports from becoming law.