June 19, 2014

Dear Sir,

So (US President Barack) Obama and his Congressional Democratic colleagues seek to deny federal contracts to companies based in Bermuda because of its role in corporate inversions that are designed to avoid US taxes? Compared to the US, virtually every other country is a tax haven! In fact, the corporate inversions they criticise have taken place in Ireland and other EU countries, and not Bermuda.

I remember when people would point to the Soviet Union as a place that was so bad that they had to put up walls and barbed wire to prevent their citizens from freely escaping. These days, the US is fast becoming such a country. Corporations in the US want to leave because of high taxes, onerous regulation like Sarbanes-Oxley, federal mandates like ObamaCare, and crony capitalism as practised by the current administration in its “investments” in failed solar energy companies like Solyndra.

Individual citizens have responded to new taxes, onerous FATCA reporting and domestic spying by handing in their citizenship at a rate not seen in our lifetimes. And yet these congressmen want to point to Bermuda as the cause of their failures? Let’s call out these charlatans and frauds for what they are.

BEMUSED BYSTANDER