The Global IRS

by Will Grigg
Oct. 24, 2012

One of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto demands imposition of “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” Another mandates the “Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” A third calls for “Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.”

The first two of those provisions makes the third inevitable. A century ago, the U.S. government, following that totalitarian formula, created Federal Reserve System and imposed the income tax. Two years ago it enacted the “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act,” or FATCA, through which it claims universal jurisdiction over the bank accounts of U.S. citizens. This means that the U.S. government claims the authority to confiscate the wealth of Americans who seek to protect their earnings by depositing them in foreign bank accounts.

Because of FATCA, Swiss banks are beginning to refuse deposits from U.S. citizens. The IRS claims the right to seize 30% of a Swiss bank’s U.S. income if it fails to disclose information on a single American customer. This has driven many Americans doing business in Switzerland to renounce their citizenship, which is tragic – but hardly surprising.