As if it isn’t enough to have the clown we have occupying the White House and making a hash of things…

Now he wants to not just raise my taxes, but to DOUBLE them.

You heard me. In order to find some way to partially pay for Bush’s second Tax Cut For The Rich, Republicans in Congress are now seriously pushing for an end to the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

You see, the U.S. is perhaps the only country in the world that taxes its citizens living abroad, but fortunately right now there is an exclusion which allows Americans abroad to deduct $80,000, which means that us poor saps making an honest living can get away with paying taxes only once (to Japan) instead of paying double taxes (to Japan and America both). And Japan’s taxes are higher than America’s.

Read the story here in the Washington Post. Another story is here.

From time to time, we expats have been easy potential targets for this kind of tax hike, which would cripple us economically, because we are taxed without representation, as far as Congress is concerned. Yes, we can vote for presidents, but if you come from a state which has state and local taxes, the state forbids you from voting in any congressional races unless you pay full state and local taxes–despite the fact that we pay full federal, prefectural and city taxes here in Japan.

So the GOP doesn’t care if it cripples us, because we can’t vote for or against them, anyway.

One of the main reasons I am really pissed off is that the tax break Bush wants to give to wealthy people on dividends is because, get this, he claims it is double taxation. So how will he pay for it? By double-taxing hard-working middle-class Americans overseas! How’s that for irony?!

And it’s also stupid. How many Americans will be willing to work for American companies overseas if their salary gets ravaged by double taxation? How many business will be hurt by this? How many Americans will lose jobs? And for what? So that we can have another useless, ineffective tax cut for people so well off that their income is comprised of interest and dividends on substantial wealth??

Contact all relevant Senators and Representatives immediately and voice your opinion! Email them, send them letters, telegrams, whatever you can.

Names and email contacts for Senators are here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Names and email contacts for Representatives can be looked up here:

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

When I find more addresses, I will post them.