[Tailgunner Joe]

ALERT!

[Carry_Okie]

This explains a lot. Good report, thank you.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Thanks for the ping, TJ. Dang, it's getting difficult to keep track of the global mischief-makers. If I were the President, I'd say, "screw you" to the left and head on home to Texas to spend the worlds' remaining days with family and friends.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

GIANT PINGS AND BUMPS

[Taxman]

Great find -- great post. The issue of "Tax Harmonization" is HUGE!

[Whenever I see the word "harmonize," I think of "The Harmonizer" in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and the damage it caused when it blew up!]

All of you "One World" conspiracy buffs ought to get yourself educated in this matter and start beating your drums in opposition to this horrible concept, because if the world banking system is "harmonized" to the European Liberal/Socialist/Marxist model, the rest of the "One World" government provisions will not be far behind.

Dr. Dan Mitchell, Ph.D., an economist at the Heritage Foundation has teamed with Andrew Quinlan, President of The Center for Freedom and Prosperity. They have formed the Coalition for Tax Competition specifically to keep the United States from becoming a party to worldwide "Tax Harmonization."

I would seriously urge anyone who is concerned about the future of this country to visit those web sites, get educated on the issue, and join with us to prevent the United States agreeing to this Facist scheme.

The National Retail Sales Tax Alliance, Inc. is a proud member of the Coalition for Tax Competition.

[editor-surveyor]

This would crush our economy permanently.

Pass this on to every one you know; it has to be stopped.

[Great Dane]

We held a mortgage in Denmark, and sure enough every year, we would get a statement saying we should be paying taxes, we ignored it, did worry a little when we went there for vacations...... but nothing ever happened.

[F.J. Mitchell]

The Euro-socialist can't even provide their citizens free toilet paper without constant bail outs from the USA. Our citizens have for years paid ten times as much for prescription drugs, so we can carry the entire burden of financing medical research, while the socialist european nations provide their citizens cheap drugs at the expense of the USA.

When the h-ll do we stop carrying the socialist regimes on the backs of American citizens.

[Eustace]

American workers have not been important for a long time.

A book written in 1992 by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele , called America What Went Wrong tells in detail how our own government recruited businesses to leave America and relocate in other countries.

Our government helped pay for the relocations with our own tax money , I guess I should say the international banksters tax money , because that's who we pay our taxes to.

Someone tell me just what America's interests are. Because it appears that the American peoples interest and our corrupt governments interest are two entirely different things.

[RLK]

Unfortunately, some bureaucrats at the IRS and the Treasury Department are trying to make the market fall even more by driving foreign investors out of the U.S. economy.

--------------------

It's unclear to me why Americans can't invest in the U. S. economy instead of investing in foreign economies. We didn't need foreing investment in our economy 50 or 55 years ago. Why do we need it now?

[Vets_Husband_and_Wife]

Since this administration has not caved in to anything else the EU wanted from us,.. I can't see this happening. IMHO

[Centurion2000]

America is a LOW tax economy ? My God what have we become.

[HalfIrish]

Let's hope that the Bush administration will ..

Hope? Even the Bushbots are running out of that. It is painfully obvious that their man sucks. Even the brainwashed are coming in out of the fog. Perhaps it's not too late.

[RCW2001]

The proposal would compel U.S. financial institutions to collect private financial data on non-resident investors so it can be turned over to foreign tax collectors.

The above sentence alone, justified by the 'war on terrorism'...will make this a 'done deal'!

I'm surprised that 'WOT' wasn't presented as justification for this action, i.e. tracking foreign assets.

[Action-America]

Great article - up to a point.

But, de Rugy blows it big time, with this statement:

Second, America is the best tax haven in the world. Low taxes and a strong commitment to financial privacy combine to attract more than $9 trillion of foreign capital to the U.S. economy.

Gimme a break!

That's absolute absurdity.  The true facts are too easy to verify.  Here is just a partial list:

Maximum Personal Income Tax Rates	Maximum Corporate Income Tax Rates
United States - 39.6%	United States - 35%
Mexico - 35%	India - 35%
Argentina - 33%	Japan - 34.5%
Canada - 31.3%	Denmark - 34%
India - 30%	Mexico - 34%
Indonesia - 30%	Argentina - 33%
Singapore - 28%	Brazil - 33%
Hong Kong - 20%	United Kingdom - 30%
	Indonesia - 30%
	Canada - 29.1%
	Taiwan - 25%
	Hong Kong - 16%
	Chile - 15%

Note:  Since NONE of the countries listed, except the US, tax offshore personal income, their effective tax rate is really lower than indicated.  Also, most don't tax offshore corporate income and their capital gains rates are either lower or nonexistent, further lowering the effective tax rate.

And as far as privacy is concerned, many of the countries on the above list have long had better privacy laws than the US.  But, since the implementation of the massive USA Patriot Act, all but two of those countries now have far better privacy laws than the US.  In fact, over one-third of the pages in the USA Patriot Act, pertain not to tracking international funds, but to striking down many of the privacy provisions in US law.

She also mentions the amount of foreign capital that is invested in the US, but conveniently fails to note the tremendous amount of capital flight from the US.  In fact, according to the Forbes magazine lists of wealthiest Americans and worlds billionaires, since 1999, the number of US billionaires has dropped by 13%, while the number of worldwide billionaires has risen by 80%.  The people that we are most attracting as investors are those from the true high tax countries like France (41.7% corp.), Germany (45% corp.) and Italy (37% corp.).  But, Americans are taking their wealth elsewhere.

Even though the general theme of de Rugy's articles is usually very poignant, she often inserts this type of party propaganda, somewhere in the middle.  It's really a shame, because when people see such obvious falsehoods, it tends to make them discount the very valid points that she makes in the rest of the article.