Update on ID Theft

How much more battering can this old hull take?

The US’s illegal taxation without representation of its expats has been an personal issue for me not for taxes, for I do not earn anywhere near enough to worry about passing the threshold of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. My chief concern was the passport revocation provision that the dems tried at least 3 times to sneak in but was finally adopted after a certain Repub Senator tried at least 3 times to slip it in.

It allows Treasury to instruct State to either deny or revoke passports of those believed to owe $50,000 to the treasury. This is almost universally misrepresented as owing that amount in taxes. The reality is it includes taxes, fees and fines, thanks to the Chief Justice who decided on his own, earlier the court decided otherwise, that Obama Care payments amounted to a tax as all payments owed to the government were taxes in his opinion.

When the passport provision was finally passed as part of another massive, thousand plus page bill, I was already aware that at least one and I believe more than one person was using my ID in the States. My immediate concern was that I would lose my passport due to the criminal activity of others. Long time readers of my Substack will recall my fear of not being able to renew my passport because of this two years ago when it expired. It seems that I was off by a couple of years.

Now, due to the problems caused by misbehaving foreign tourists and the hoards of the same peoples causing problems in Europe, Africa and elsewhere that Japan, in its wisdom, invited in,in addition to the damage Japan did to its own economy with its panicked response to covid, the government is looking for any excuse to send any gaijin they can home and increase revenue any way they can. A decision made over 2 and a half decades ago by myself and new wife based upon the information from my ward office puts my Permeant Resident Visa at risk due to a recent change. A massive and violent storm is driving me into dire straights. Another sleepless night seems to be forecast.