And, contrary to what Grassley says, there's nothing "immoral" about maximizing profits by avoiding taxes.
"It's not 'IRS induced.' It's 'Congress-induced.' "
Granted. Congress passes the laws and is behind the whole thing. But, it is the IRS that wealthy expatriates generally cite as their reason for leaving - not Congress nor the level of taxation, but the IRS. That is why I use that term.
Their concern, I have learned, is that their entire fortune can be confiscated with a single signature of one non-elected bureaucrat at that agency. As pointed out in the above article, the United States is the only country in the world that taxes corporations and individuals on income no matter where it is generated. That means that not only are your US based assets at risk, but your foreign assets are at risk, as well. By moving offshore and spreading your wealth among several countries, it becomes close to impossible to lose everything due to a single event.
Incidentally, I have been encouraging my readers for years, to develop and maintain an exit strategy, just in case. I began developing my own exit strategy in 1994, when I first became aware of what was going on. But the thresholds that I had set to trigger my exit strategy were so far beyond what was reasonable to expect, that I felt certain that I would never have to implement it. Today, things have become so bad that those once extreme thresholds are not only, no longer extreme, but well within the realm of possibility.
Congress induced or IRS induced makes little difference. The wealthy are being forced to leave. This does not make them unpatriotic. In fact, if anyone in this scenario is unpatriotic, it is the lawmakers who are passing the laws and the IRS agents that enforce the laws that leave the wealthy no other choice, than to take all of their money and expatriate.