America is one of the few nations to tax citizens who live and work abroad. Indeed, no other industrialized nation imposes a second layer of tax on its expatriates. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced legislation, the Working American Competitiveness Act (S. 3496), to eliminate the worldwide reach of the IRS. By creating a territorial system for labor income, the DeMint legislation will put American workers and U.S.-based multinationals on a level playing field with competitors from other nations. This is a welcome move, particularly since American expatriates were just hit with a tax hike.

If policy makers created a level playing field by making Section 911 universal, more Americans could find jobs in the global economy, U.S. companies would become more internationally competitive, and U.S. exports would substantially increase.

The Internal Revenue Service has proposed a regulation (133254-02) that would require U.S. financial institutions to report bank deposit interest paid to certain nonresident aliens. The IRS admits that the information is not needed to enforce U.S. tax law, and instead seeks to collect the information so it can be provided to the tax authorities of 15 specified nations. But since nonresident alien depositors easily can shift their funds to other jurisdictions if they wish to protect their privacy, the regulation has attracted considerable opposition. Critics fear the regulation would drive capital from the U.S. economy and undermine the competitiveness of American financial institutions.