Cryptocurrency: 1984 - Every Human TX Worldwide to be Databased and Taxed for Life

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Sep 12 22:00:35 PDT 2021


Stop using Fiat, switch to privacy capable cryptos...


Biden's Total Financial Surveillance

https://reason.com/2021/09/08/bidens-total-financial-surveillance/

What if every one of your non-cash financial transactions was
automatically reported to a beefed-up, audit-hungry IRS?

Imagine living in a world where every one of your noncash financial
transactions—a restaurant meal, a Venmo transfer to a friend, maybe
some bitcoin bought on the dips—was automatically reported to a
beefed-up, audit-hungry IRS.

That dystopia will become a reality if President Joe Biden gets his way.

Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and key Capitol Hill allies
such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) are pushing a vast, intrusive
financial surveillance system in the name of closing the "tax gap."

But don't worry: There's no need to fear if you've got nothing to hide.

    "For already compliant taxpayers, the only effect of this regime
is to provide easy access to summary information on financial accounts
and to decrease the likelihood of costly 'no fault' examinations," the
Treasury Department said this May in a nakedly authoritarian document
called "The American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda."

    But "for noncompliant taxpayers," the department continues, "this
regime would encourage voluntary compliance as evaders realize that
the risk of evasion being detected has risen noticeably."

The administration's proposed "comprehensive financial account
reporting regime" would dramatically increase the types of financial
institutions and transactions exposed to the feds' prying eyes. "All
business and personal accounts from financial institutions, including
bank, loan, and investment accounts," would be forced to "report gross
inflows and outflows" to the IRS. And not just bank accounts: The
dragnet would now include PayPal, settlement companies, and "crypto
asset exchanges," for starters.

The new domestic surveillance program, which requires congressional
approval, is one prong of a tripartite strategy for transforming the
entire global financial system into a harmonious, haven-free
collection funnel to the IRS. The second part, which has taken up the
bulk of Biden's multilateral diplomacy thus far, is getting the
industrialized world to agree on a global minimum corporate tax of 15
percent, while setting up a system to prevent multinational companies
from registering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions.

Cutting corporate taxes is "a self-defeating competition," Yellen said
in April, "and neither President Biden nor I are interested in
participating in it anymore. We want to change the game."

In July, representatives from 130 countries, including finance
ministers from the G-20 representing the world's richest democracies,
agreed in principle to a worldwide minimum corporate tax. "We have a
chance now to build a global and domestic tax system," Yellen crowed.
"The race to the bottom is one step closer to coming to an end."

The agreement still has a significant obstacle to overcome—namely, the
legislatures of 130 countries, including the U.S. Congress. But Yellen
has some cause to be cocky, because the third prong of Washington's
strategy has already been constructed.

In 2009, President Barack Obama promised to generate $210 billion in
new tax revenue over 10 years by cracking down on "overseas tax
loopholes." While the corporate-tax element of the plan was quickly
killed by lobbyists, the individual component remained in the form of
the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Built on a
foundation of American exceptionalism (the U.S. is one of only two
countries that tax citizens living abroad), FATCA imposed onerous new
annual reporting requirements on Americans with more than $10,000 in
overseas financial institutions. The law brazenly threatened
international banks if they didn't rat out their U.S. clients to the
IRS.

The results were predictable: Expats were locked out of banking
services, record numbers of mostly middle-class Americans renounced
their U.S. citizenship, and IRS collections went essentially
unchanged. But for a very small political price (no one much cares
about the estimated 9 million Americans living abroad), Washington was
able to bend an entire global financial system to its will.

An IRS with the ability to compel global transaction data sounds like
something out of a Philip K. Dick novel. Yet here we are—unless we
consciously cover our tracks.

"Another concern is that [the] information reporting regime will shift
taxpayers toward a greater use of cash," the Treasury Department's
compliance plan frets. It also notes that cryptocurrencies "already
pose a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity
broadly including tax evasion." Cash and crypto may be the last
currencies compatible with privacy.

"I promised to lead the world to deliver a foreign policy for the
middle class, and today, we are doing just that," Biden said after the
130-country agreement. Just as long as the middle class has nothing to
hide.


More information about the cypherpunks mailing list