Thousands of Americans Will Be Denied a Passport Because of Unpaid Taxes
Recently IRS officials have provided new details on the enforcement of a law Congress passed in late 2015. It requires the IRS and State Department to deny passports or revoke them for taxpayers who have more than $51,000 of overdue tax debt. Enforcement began in February.
An IRS spokesman says that 362,000 people are current tax debtors who are affected by the law. The IRS is sending their names in batches to the State Department, a process the tax agency aims to finish by year’s end. A State Department spokesman confirmed that it has already denied passports to some debtors.
IRS Division Commissioner Mary Beth Murphy said in late June that for now U.S. authorities are denying passports rather than revoking them. So, many tax debtors with current passports should be able to travel abroad, but they won’t be able to renew their passports; those without passports will be denied them if they apply.
The new enforcement is having an effect: Ms. Murphy said that one tax debtor paid $1 million to avoid passport denial. As of late June, 220 people had handed over $11.5 million to pay their debts in full, and 1,400 others had signed installment agreements, according to an IRS spokesman.
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson is critical of some of the new procedures, however. One objection is that the IRS notifies a tax debtor at roughly the same time it tells the State Department that someone qualifies for passport denial. This may not leave enough time to resolve tax issues and have the IRS and the State Department lift restrictions, she said.
Instead, Ms. Olson would like the IRS to warn debtors 30 days before the agency sends their names to the State Department. She said this is similar to what the Department of Health and Human Services requires before someone is denied a passport because of $2,500 or more in unpaid child support.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/thousands-of-americans-will-be-denied-a-passport-because-of-unpaid-taxes-1530869401 (paid subscription)
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Most excellent. 
They've got to start somewhere. Nobody likes mediocre tax cheats; only the skilled tax cheats and tax loophole spelunkers are celebrated in our society.
Maybe Trump and the Republicans are looking to Russia and North Korea for advice on holding populations captive.
Pumping up xenophobia makes a large numbers of U.S. Americans keep themselves at home, no walls required. For example, I sometimes meet people who who say they would NEVER visit Mexico, hell, they won't even visit the Mexican market neighborhoods of my own community. They believe Canada is an arctic wasteland, some hellish version of Alaska where you have to wait two years to see a doctor.
Whipping up anti-immigrant frenzy allows the kleptocrats to build the physical walls that will later confine us when the U.S. becomes a police state and the economy turns fully anaerobic and most of us essentially slaves.
Obama did no wrong, by my count, on anything. In 8 years. Though, if he had to blow up trump tower to stop trump from becoming president..maybe would have been a better outcome.
