Beware: if you have unpaid taxes then the United States government will confiscate your passport. It seems Donald Trump’s wall will certainly be meant for both keeping people out and keeping people in.
According to a new report by the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. government will soon pass a law to revoke or deny your passport if you owe more than $50,000 in taxes. Beginning in January, the State Department will prevent Americans from being given new passports and rescind current passports if they have tax debt.
In 2016, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will create a list of Americans who have violated the new rule, which will include the $50,000 threshold of unpaid federal taxes, penalties and interest. It will also be adjusted for inflation.
The penalty will come with a few omissions:
– Taxpayers who are resolving their tax debt.
– Taxpayers who are contesting the tax collection.
– Taxpayers who are traveling for humanitarian reasons.
Officials say the federal government can save approximately $400 million over the next decade. It’s believed the rule could affect roughly seven million U.S. citizens who are living overseas.
The most interesting part of this new rule is that it’s buried somewhere in a new highway funding bill. The rule was initially passed by the House and Senate. Congress is scheduled to pass the bill and get the president to sign it into law sometime next month.
Here are a few excerpts from reports:
“In most cases, the passport provision would apply if a taxpayer is subject to a lien, which advises creditors of a debt to the IRS, or a levy, which gives the IRS the authority to seize assets,” the Journal reported.
“You don’t get to go in front of a judge first to have a fair and impartial hearing over whether or not the government’s tax allegations are accurate. The language in the law is very clear: they can simply revoke your passport if you owe them money in their sole discretion,” wrote Soverign Man’s Simon Black, Zero Hedge reported.
“Critics of the measure claim there will be no judicial review and no due process if the passport revocation rule retains its current form,” HNGN.com reported.
“Americans abroad need their passports for many routine activities of daily life, such as banking, registering in a hotel, or registering a child for school, and mistakes could be disastrous,” Charles Bruce, an American lawyer with Bonnard Lawson in Lausanne, Switzerland, who advises American Citizens Abroad, an expatriate group, told the WSJ.
As we reported last month, a record 1,426 Americans gave up their citizenship in the third quarter of this year.
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