By Lowell Ponte, Special for USDR
Tax day, April 15, reminds us of just how overtaxed we have become, and how a circular cage of taxes on earning, spending, investing and saving is being created to snare us.
If you earn money to live on, you face income taxes nationally as well as from 41 of the 50 states.
If you buy anything, you face sales taxes in all but five states – and some local sales taxes in even in those five.
In Washington, D.C., politicians now talk enthusiastically about imposing a national European-style sales tax, an easily-increased Value-Added Tax (VAT) to soak both companies and consumers.
If you invest what little money you have left after paying all your other taxes, get ready to pay capital gains taxes, which the current Administration aims to increase.
One thing Americans could do tax-free was to save their remaining money in the bank….but not for much longer, as we explain in our latest book, Don’t Bank On It! The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking.
We owe taxes on interest the bank pays us, of course, but nowadays banks pay almost zero – the result of a deliberate Federal Reserve policy that economists call “financial repression,” being used to herd Americans into riskier investments such as stocks.
Our banks may soon be imitating Europe, where savers are beginning to be paid less than zero – “negative interest rates” – on their accounts. Depositors instead have to pay their bank for the honor of lending it their money, interest-free.
Taxing Bank Deposits
Near-zero bank interest has meant near-zero taxes on our savings – until now.
A new political scheme to tax bank accounts, according to the Australian Financial Review, might be locked in place in Australian banks as soon as January 1, 2016. [1-4] This could quickly be copied by other tax-hungry welfare states, including ours.
This bank deposit tax will likely begin at a low percentage, to create a legal precedent, but it is expected to grow rapidly, as the income tax did in the United States.
Like many modern taxes, this planned tax on bank accounts is being framed as a tax on the banks, not on individual customers. Its cost, however, will be passed on to depositors in the form of higher fees or lower interest paid on their accounts.
This tax on bank deposits is projected from its start to raise around $500 Million each year, purportedly for a “Financial Stabilization Fund” to help protect banks from collapse in future financial crises.
In the United States, such designated taxes are often diverted to fund other politician wishes. Hundreds of billions in gasoline taxes went to the Highway Trust Fund, then was shifted elsewhere by the same politicians who complain that “our highway infrastructure urgently needs more spending.” Such politicians even looted $2.66 Trillion from the Social Security trust fund, leaving behind only I.O.U.s that must be paid for with ever-heavier taxes on future generations or the denial of benefits to today’s older generations.
Truth be told, our spendaholic politicians loot whatever pools of public or private money they can grab to pay for their out-of-control spending addiction.
On November 16, 2014, President Barack Obama at the Brisbane, Australia meeting of the G-20 global economic powers agreed to a new financial doctrine called the “bail in.” We explained and documented in detail what happened there in a free White Paper.
In a nutshell, President Obama agreed that you no longer own your bank accounts. The United States now regards your bank account as an asset that, in effect, belongs to your bank and can be seized by the government to pay bank debts and obligations.
Is it any wonder why so many people are turning to smarter, safer and more secure ways of protecting their money?
Escaping the Cage
As we document in Don’t Bank On It!, the bank we used to trust to safeguard our money has become one of the riskiest places to put it.
A precedent was set for seizing bank accounts under the “bail in” doctrine in Cyprus, where people awoke one March 2013 morning to find their banks locked and ATM access to their accounts shut down. President Obama has embraced such bail ins.
Now we have a similar new legal precedent being set in Australia for taxing your bank accounts….for your protection, of course. America might quickly adopt this, too.
A circular cage is being built through which you will be taxed when you earn your money, spend your money, invest your money, and possibly (very soon) save your money.
You are already losing money every day that you have a bank account paying less in interest than you are losing to inflation, a deceptive form of taxation.
Get ready in the near future to pay the bank a fee, and the government a tax, just for the honor of having a high-risk bank account that pays you nothing.
We were taught that thrift is good, but real thrift now means freeing your savings from today’s banks. Don’t Bank On It! and our free White Paper will show you how to escape the tax cage being built by politicians to snare you and your hard-earned money.
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