The Tax Rebellion Begins
February 7, 2013 by Wayne Allyn Root
Hello, I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. Mr. Obama, you have a big problem. A tax rebellion has started.
Phil Mickelson is one of the most famous athletes in the world. He is worth in the vicinity of $100 million. Last year, he made almost $50 million. Yet he doesn’t want to pay California’s high taxes.
Tiger Woods is far more famous and worth far more (more than $1 billion), yet he agrees with Mickelson. He recently admitted that he left California in 1996 for the exact same reason: high taxes.
In the same week, famed boxing promoter Bob Arum announced that superstar boxing legend Manny Pacquiao’s next fight will not be in held in America. The man who makes tens of millions of dollars per fight refuses to pay Barack Obama’s higher U.S. income taxes. He is considering Mexico City, Asia, or Dubai for his next fight. Can you imagine?
Then, Tina Turner went public. She is renouncing her U.S. citizenship to become a citizen of Switzerland, which just happens to have lower taxes than Obama’s America.
But these are just the rich celebrities courageous enough to go public. This is merely the tip of the iceberg. The rich are fleeing in droves. The Obama tax-and-spend Ponzi scheme is imploding.
What changed? The technology revolution has made it possible to do business from places where the taxes are lower (or nonexistent) and where the government treats people better. Obama had better learn this lesson fast, because this tax rebellion is spreading to millions of Americans with far smaller incomes or assets than Woods’, Mickelson’s or Pacquaio’s.
The signs are everywhere that a tax rebellion has begun. The latest U.S. census showed us that the States with the lowest taxes enjoyed the fastest population growth — States like Nevada, Texas, Florida and Arizona. Not surprisingly, the States losing the most population are all high-tax States like California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland and, of course, Obama’s Illinois.
These States that Americans are running from are all governed just like Obama wants to govern the entire country. Soon, these same Americans running away from California, New York and Illinois will instead be running away from America.
Ask the co-founder of Facebook, who recently renounced his citizenship and left for Singapore (where the capital gains taxes are zero).
Ask big-time Democratic contributor Denise Rich, who recently renounced her citizenship to leave for Austria.
The trickle is turning into a torrent. Record numbers of wealthy Americans are giving up their citizenship — eight times more than before Obama became President.
Of course, we already know that only one year after the U.K. imposed a millionaire tax, two-thirds of the millionaires in England disappeared off the tax rolls.
We already know that millionaires are escaping France at a record pace because of high tax rates imposed by the new Obama-clone Socialist President of France. Even actors like Gerard Depardieu have been forced to abandon the country they love.
The famous actor isn’t alone. Requests by citizens to leave France are up by 500 percent.
But then came the coup de grace. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just announced he is leaving France because of taxes. High taxes are even chasing away the former Presidents from their own countries.
High taxes work great in France. The nation’s labor minister announced just this week that France is “totally bankrupt.” His words.
I understand all of this only too well. I’ve got my own “escape from taxes” story. I arrived in sunny Southern California in 1989. I fell in love. I thought I would never leave. I woke up every morning to walk on the beach and to watch dolphins swim from my deck.
Unfortunately, during the next decade, California grew more and more desperate. Taxes were raised again and again. There were so many rules, regulations and lawyers that it became impossible to run a business in California. So I escaped to Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is “America’s Monte Carlo.” It’s a place with no State income tax, business income tax, capital gains tax or inheritance tax, and it has the 16th lowest property taxes in America. It’s a place where the State constitution bans income taxes, limits the time politicians can meet and welcomes guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. I call it heaven.
Mr. Obama, the secret is out. Taxes do nothing for productive people (like business owners or high-income earners). Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. It’s like burning your money in the fireplace. I’m a witness. I lived in New York for 27 years, then California for a decade. What did I get for all those taxes I paid? Nothing. But I did gain something fantastic: a much higher quality of life. The money I saved paid for home-school tutors for my oldest daughter. She was accepted to Harvard University. She’s now attending Oxford in the U.K. Would she be attending the two best universities in the world if I had sent her to public school? Lower taxes changed my life — and the lives of my family members.
Science magazine reported on a study of the unhappiest people in America. They all happen to live in high-tax States. The happiest people happen to live in low-tax States. Coincidence?
Maybe these citizens are happier because the economy grows so much faster in low-tax States. The Wall Street Journal reported on a study from the Kansas Policy Institute that shows that States without an income tax have significantly higher growth (59 percent versus 42 percent) over the past 10 years. They increased the number of jobs by 4.9 percent while jobs in the rest of the States declined by 2.6 percent.
Examples abound of Americans with high incomes and assets escaping from high-tax states. Between 2000 and 2010, 551,914 people left California just for one State, Texas, taking $14.3 billion in income.
Maryland has much higher taxes than Virginia. Between 2007 and 2010, more than 40,000 residents escaped from Maryland to become Virginia residents. They took $2.17 billion with them.
But New York is the poster child. The Tax Foundation reports that 612,520 people left New York and moved to Florida in the past decade, taking with them $19.7 billion in adjusted growth income.
Overall, 1.3 million residents escaped from New York in the past decade, taking with them $45.6 billion.
You know what they say about pigs: They get slaughtered. California is certainly a pig. Just like the PIIGS in Europe (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) all chased away their richest citizens and business owners. Now they have nothing left. Their tax bases are destroyed. Add France and the U.K. to the list. They’re all going down.
If we let big-government progressives have their way, California’s sad story and Europe’s tragic story will also be America’s sad story. Obama is killing the American dream. Mickelson was only vocalizing what millions of business owners in America are thinking right now.
Here’s the reality: The high-tech revolution has killed the progressive and socialist dream. You can’t tax us to death, simply because you don’t own us. We have iPhones, iPads, iPods, smartphones, laptops and satellite TV. We can do business from anywhere in the world: from a beach in Sydney to a mountaintop in Nepal to a forest in New Zealand to a luxury high rise in Hong Kong. It’s called freedom.
Sorry, Obama, your dream is about to collapse. Ask Mickelson or the former President of France or all those millionaires missing from England or, soon, half the business owners in America.
Tax-and-spend is DOA (dead on arrival). I’m Wayne Root for PersonalLiberty.com. See you next week. God bless capitalism, smaller government and lower taxes. God bless America.
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