Roger Ver, a billionaire libertarian who is called “Bitcoin Jesus” in investment circles, renounced his US citizenship in March. He was apparently incensed by the idea that he should have to pay taxes in the country that has sheltered him since birth. What has the US ever done for him? You know, besides providing schools and roads and fire departments and potable water and silly little things like that? Why should he give up even a small percentage of his billions? Do they expect him to live on a mere 500 million or something?
Thinking of himself as a brave entrepreneur fighting the tyranny of taxes, Ver moved to St. Kitt’s in the West Indies and gave the country of his birth the middle finger. Now he is incensed that the USA won’t let him prance back in. He is unable to enjoy the benefits of being an American citizen just because he isn’t one anymore. In short, he wants to be able to eat at the US table but not pay for his lunch and he is hella mad that no one will let him into the restaurant anymore.
There are few things on earth that disgust me as viscerally as a greedy hypocrite bemoaning the fact he has to sleep in the bed he made.
There are some people who sympathize with his plight, insisting that the ultra-rich are practically forced to leave the US because of horribly high taxes. The only problem with this argument is that the richer you are in the USA the more loopholes you get so that the REAL tax rate on the wealthiest Americans is much less of a percentage than what a middle class American has to pay. It’s the reason for the proposed Buffet Rule. Many of the Big Industries that are supposedly ‘heavily taxed’ actually pay NO income tax.
Roger Ver and his ilk are the antithesis of common decency and social responsibly. They are the narcissistic opposites of good citizens like JK Rowling, who wrote this piece for the London Times:
“I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles. A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr. Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.”
Ver wanted to be an ex-pat in St. Kitts. Let him stay there with the other repellent members of his particular tribe.