RO responds to ACA letter on RBT

Republicans Overseas is dedicated to ending citizenship-based taxation, but we are not a signatory to the letter published by the AARO on asking Congress to implement RBT (residence based taxation).

The ACA wrote this letter and circulated the draft to us, asking us to join as a signatory. We declined for three key reasons:

• Republicans Overseas will not support organizations that attack members of the House and Senate who support ending CBT. ACA attacked Congress over a non-existent proposal to eliminate the cap on ‘911’ – the Foreign Earned Income Exemption. This is poor politics, bad manners, and loses organizational credibility.
• Republicans Overseas will never accept the ACA’s RBT proposal because it includes an exit tax and a carve-out for FATCA. These are non-starters and discriminatory towards overseas Americans.
• The United States government seems likely to move to Territorial Taxation for Corporations (TTFC). If the US moves to TTFC, why would it then move to RBT for individuals? This would leave the US with an even more complicated mishmash of tax systems. TTFI (Territorial Taxation for Individuals) would align the corporate and individual tax systems by taxing all income at source. At this stage, TTFI is clearly the more logical option.

Republicans Overseas welcomes the support of all organizations dedicated to ending CBT and implementing TTFI. We continue to work with our champions in the House and Senate to fight for the inclusion of TTFI in this Tax Reform Bill.

You can read the letter here.