John Galt | Obamacare | Why I’m an Expat

The Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act, also known as ObamaCare, became law on March 23, 2010.

With the passing of this act, America took yet another step towards socialism. As if America wasn’t enough of a nanny state already –> over half of all Americans pay no tax whatsoever and rely on some sort of social service.

American politicians have taken still more from the healthy producers, in order to redistribute the wealth inefficiently through a gigantic governmental healthcare scheme.

In America, almost all incentives to work are gone and if you do own your own business you:

Pay a huge amount in taxes
stand a substantial risk of being sued and losing everything (unless you use protective legal entities, often times the best protection is found using a foreign legal entity – and conducting trade outside of America so that you can’t easily be sued)
are not well received as an entrepreneur (other countries value entrepreneurs, even providing citizenship and passports for entrepreneurs in Singapore, New Zealand, Ireland and more.)

If you decide to work hard and be a producer in society, you will be called a greedy, capitalist by those who rely on someone else to provide the real value.

Unfortunately, only the producers in society see it this way. The 50% of society who pays nothing in taxes, the 30 million on food stamps, and the millions upon millions on government programs like housing, foodstamps, and now Obamacare feel entitled to government services.

If you don’t own your own business, or if you don’t work at all – you get free food (foodstamps) free or reduced cost housing (gov. subsidized housing) free healthcare (Medicaid) and more. Jeez, being poor is looking better and better every day!
And therein lies the problem: when you remove the incentives for people to work – society starts to slide backward. People stop working, stop being accountable, and start looking for a handout. Instead of creating something of value, they start asking:

Who is John Galt?

When a place becomes so inundated by taxes, government oversight and bureaucracy that it makes little sense to work, the drivers of an economy, will always leave for a place which rewards their skill and ingenuity.

America was once a place of freedom and entrepreneurship – a free market economy which was once the best place in the world to start a business. Now it has grown into a socialist society where everything is controlled by the nanny state. The producers are cast out, and the men and women of intelligence and wealth must look elsewhere for greener pastures.

Fortunately, the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. It is easier than ever to run a business from anywhere in the world, especially with a tax-free international business company.

The United States government actually pays more people on salary then it receives in taxes. It is an enormous, inefficient cancer on the American people, that will grow and grow until it kills the host. The problem is that the government of the United States was founded on the ideals of freedom and liberty – with words like

Congress shall pass no law

The government was intended to be small, with the constitution being a document that the people could use against the Government. Nowadays, the American Government is overwhelmingly large, and the answer seems always to be to make new laws that force Americas to do things, or inflict penalties if they don’t.

For instance: the Obamacare act mandates that all Americans must pay for private health insurance coverage starting in 2014.

And unless the individual meets this mandate, they will pay a tax penalty of up to 2.5% of their income, to the IRS.

More taxes. You are being forced to do something, or else you pay more taxes. There are a few exceptions:

You have no money. If you are below the poverty line, you get Medicaid.
If you have a religion that doesn’t allow it.
If you are incarcerated. If you are in jail, you don’t have to pay.
If you are an Ex-pat. Meaning “not lawfully present in the United States”.

If you are an American living outside the US “not lawfully present’ this means that if you are outside of the United States for at least 330-days in any 12-month period or that you are a bona fide resident of a foreign country for an entire tax year. This means you also qualify for them to a foreign income exclusion, which means you can get over $95,000 in earned income – tax-free in 2012 – and exclude from your tax return. (more if you are married)

This would be the second flag of flag theory, tax residency, and it can have a dramatic effect on your net worth.

Due to the new laws in the US, the tax effect of being an Ex-pat just became more profound, and yet another reason why you should use flag theory to help you legally minimize taxes, increase your freedom, your privacy and your wealth.