New law HR 22: If you owe taxes, your passport will be confiscated
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In the former Soviet Union and Maoist China, citizens were prevented from free travel within their countries, as well as the freedom to leave their countries.
On December 4, 2015, while the media whipped Americans into a frenzy over the San Bernardino mass shooting of 2 days ago, Obama quietly signed into law H.R. 22, a bill that would make the former Soviet Union and every totalitarian state proud.
H.R. 22: FAST Act (also called Hire More Heroes Act of 2015) renders Americans whom the IRS maintains to have “seriously delinquent tax debt” no longer free to leave or travel outside the United States.
As Simon Black, founder of SovereignMan, points out:
A bankrupt government has just awarded itself even more power to destroy people’s freedom in the name of plundering wealth from the citizens.
They made it happen quietly over a weekend when everyone was distracted with a violent shooting….
Buried deep within its [HR22] 400+ pages is a provision giving the government the authority to revoke your passport if they believe in their sole discretion that you have “seriously delinquent tax debt”….
So this provision is now officially law and will be formally codified in section 7345 of the Internal Revenue Code.
There’s no judge. No trial. It’s a simple administrative procedure. Like that… poof… you can be stripped of your passport.
H.R. 22, Section 7345(a) states:
In general.—If the Secretary receives certification by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue that an individual has a seriously delinquent tax debt, the Secretary shall transmit such certification to the Secretary of State for action with respect to denial, revocation, or limitation of a passport pursuant to section 32101 of the FAST Act.
H. R. 22, Section 32101(a) states that “Subchapter D of chapter 75 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at the end” Section 7345 of H.R. 22.
H.R. 22, Section 7345(b) defines “seriously delinquent tax debt” as “an unpaid, legally enforceable Federal tax liability of an individual” which:
- has been assessed,
- is greater than $50,000, and
- with respect to which a notice of lien has been filed and “a levy is made pursuant to section 6331.”
Worse still is the fact that H.R. 22 includes a “get out of jail free clause” for government officials if they make a mistake in denying or revoking your passport. Section 7345(e)(3) states that:
“The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of State, and any of their designees shall not be liable to an individual for any action with respect to a certification by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue under section 7345. . .”
That means the United States government can revoke your passport on the grounds that you are “seriously” delinquent in paying your taxes, and even if it turns out you had paid your taxes, you cannot hold accountable those officials who mistakenly had revoked your passport.
H.R. 22 was sponsored by Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), with 118 co-sponsors. The FAST Act became Public Law No: 114-94 on Dec. 4, 2015.
Simon Black observes:
If you still think the government is there to protect and support you, it’s time to take a hard look at reality….
These people are flat broke. And you are nothing but a dairy cow to them, locked in a pasture to be milked dry as they slide further into bankruptcy.
This is not some wild conspiracy theory. This is their own law, one that they passed when you weren’t looking.
Their own numbers show that they’re bankrupt, and that the trust funds they’re managing on your behalf for programs like Social Security and Medicare are either underfunded or out of cash.
Did you know that a few weeks ago, the bankrupt Greek government started demanding its taxpayers report their gold, jewelry, and even cash stashed under their mattresses?
New law HR 22: If you owe taxes, your passport will be confiscated