F&^%$#@ FATCA

You know I’ve been trying to downplay the Bad Government News in favor of more positive freedom boosting.

Every once in a while, though, some governmental savagery, idiocy, or abuse (but I repeat myself) must make its way here.

One of those governmentisms is the woefully named FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

One reason it’s turning up here is that it’s playing, or about to play, serious havoc on people who thought they were taking a huge step for freedom when they either moved offshore or set up offshore accounts to protect their resources.

In short, FATCA is turning Americans abroad, and American money abroad, into pariahs. That process has been well underway for quite a while (as expat friends tell me), but as Daniel Mitchell explains at that link, it’s about to get worse.

I heard the first stirrings of trouble on an email list that serves expats in Panama, but even there most people aren’t aware what’s soon to hit them. I owe a hat tip for the Mitchell article to someone who has already been hit, but I don’t think he’d care to have that particular hat tipped in his direction.

I’ll just say that he’s an American businessman who spent much time and money setting up perfectly legitimate offshore accounts. Not to evade the IRS. Not to scam anybody. Not to do anything illegal, immoral, or fattening. Just to legally preserve legally earned wealth. He did his homework, traveled to meet his bankers in person, studied the law, and was careful to cross every “t” and dot every “i” his government demanded he cross and dot. He chose to do business with a country known for its friendly, secure banking. Yet he’s now been notified by his foreign banker that — simply because he’s an American — he has to close his accounts.

Just because he’s an American. For no other reason.

That will entail a costly trip and the loss of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, in assets. All because he’s apparently a FATCAt in the eyes of our increasingly rapacious government. Magnify his experience by hundreds of thousands.

Worse, FATCA isn’t just going to turn individual Americans into unwanted masses and drive even more of the wealthiest to renounce their citizenships. It’s setting up the nation for — yet another — major economic fail.

Mitchell has more. Read it and watch your ass.

The sad thing is that a few years from now, when FATCA has inflicted its malign influence on the U.S. economy, most people will bemoan how bad things are getting. But they’ll have no clue. They’ll have no concept that FATCA is yet another factor in the ongoing political sabotage of the U.S. by its own alleged leaders. Like the people in Atlas Shrugged, they’ll sense some terrible wrong, some malaise, as it’s fashionable to say. But they’ll never know its nature.

Yeah. And they’ll probably demand that government DO SOMETHING about it.