IRS getting ready to revoke passports for tax debt

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The IRS is getting ready to revoke passports for those who owe taxes of $50,000 or more:

http://www.iexpats.com/irs-ready-pull-p ... tax-debts/

Passports would not be restored until the tax debt is satisfied.

This legislation looks good on the surface, but it runs into a major problem: The U.S. government taxes expats who live abroad on all their income every year, and demands the filing of highly burdensome tax returns and financial account info every year, no matter how long the expat has lived abroad. (The only other country with this system is Eritrea. All other countries either don't tax expats at all, only tax them for the first few years of living abroad, or only tax them on domestic-course income.)

So you're a U.S. citizen who has lived abroad for decades and wasn't aware of the tax obligation until recently (and this goes for the vast majority of expats) and you have a huge tax debt as a result. Now your passport is revoked, and you are not eligible to receive a passport from any other country. You're forked, pretty much, and can look to be deported back to the U.S.

Why are we treating our expats like this? Don't we want to enable them to go out into the world and succeed, thereby giving ordinary people in other countries a positive view of Americans?