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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

There's no such thing as financial privacy when you, by virtue of being a citizen of a country, consent to be taxed on income and investment. Your financial actions may not be necessarily public to your fellow citizens but they absolutely and without possible argument must be to your tax assessor, and this exists to hide transactions from them. Of course it's illegal.

You can revoke that consent, as it is possible to become a citizen of no country, but I wouldn't recommend it.

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>>this exists to hide transactions from them (tax assessor)

Not true, this tool exists to provide privacy on an otherwise public ledger. Your tax assessor has no right to know about a transaction as soon as it occurs. A crime is only committed if you don't voluntarily declare it at a certain point in the future.

LE laziness and citizens conceding territory unnecessarily is creating a nanny state.

There's no such thing as consent when you're coerced.

My poor, so-very-put-upon friend: you can choose to leave.

But there is a collectively hashed-out social contract you accept by staying, and it should be of no surprise that the law takes that contract as table stakes and acts according to it.

Tell it to Rosa Parks.

At which point did Rosa Parks transfer her money using an immutable public ledger?

Comparing your financial scheme to Jim Crow isn't the most distasteful thing I've seen on HN, but it's up there!

> your financial scheme

It's not my financial scheme, it's the social contract.

Rosa Parks publicly broke the law and was publicly punished for it, because that's how civil disobedience works. In doing so, she engendered significant public sympathy and acted as a spur to change minds and, eventually, laws.

Comparing that to hiding your financial transactions so you avoid KYC is genuinely embarrassing.

US Citizens can't leave. They must pay tribute to the United States globally and beyond until they die. Income earned in outer space is taxed as income earned in country.

Yeah, that's the price of retaining your American citizenship, which is among the most valuable in the world to have if you ever have a "I need to call my consulate" problem. But you don't have to retain your American citizenship--there are a lot of countries out there!

Granted, that's assuming you're a valuable enough contributor to society that you'll find another country interested in taking you, one that won't similarly have expectations around "people in a society should pay taxes", but that's a you problem.

It’s really hard to get rid of American citizenship.

It's not that tough. You just need another citizenship, $2_350 to pay the renouncement fee, and an appointment at a USA consulate/embassy to formally renounce. You also need to pay an exit tax if you have a net worth of $2 million+.

But they can? You can always give up your citizenship as many have.

Or you can choose to live in a country that has a tax treaty with US; either way you get to deduct local tax rate paid so you're not double taxed.

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