QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong,
President Trump is claiming that he has come up with health care programs for employees that have lowered the cost below Obamacare. Do you think this is a true statement? Trump also claims he is coming up with even lower health care costs. Amazon, JPMorgan and Warren Buffet are creating healthcare services for their companies that will lower their company costs. Do you see that health care costs are being disrupted and will go down overall in the future?

Thank you for your comment.

ANSWER: Obamacare was done for the hospitals so they would not have to hand out free care to illegal aliens. The Clintons made student loans not dischargeable for banks. It just seems like the socialists can always ben bought. That is probably why the HATE Trump so much.

There is no question that healthcare costs can be reduced by 50% or more. They have risen far more than anyt5hing else in the economy. During the 1980s, we provided health care to employees and their entire family. The cost was perhaps $3,000 a year. It is nothing more than a giant money-laundering machine. My insurance doubled under Obamacare laws and my coverage declined. If we stop the corruption of buying politicians, we could actually be so much better off. This is one reason they are so intent upon getting rid of Trump. They do not like it when they dod not own the politicians. Trump says some things that are off-color, but at the same time, you at least know how he thinks. That is still better than someone who lies to your face and then stabs you in the back

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, you obviously have a database on Italy that is without comparison. Nobody else even had a chart on the Italian lira you recently published on the blog. I know you are well aware of the revolutions in Italy and the history. I was wondering do you have any forecast for the next revolution? It seems that the five-star movement may perhaps be the beginning. Any hint about the future?

VDM

ANSWER: Well to give you a target year where it can begin will be 2021. The Five-Star Movement is indeed the prelude. However, the attempt to stay in the Eurozone will be the undoing of Italy. The most threatening issue in Italy that will lead to revolution is most likely an attempt to raise inheritance taxes as being suggested by Brussels.

Culturally, Italy has the lowest inheritance tax in all of Europe. The German inheritance tax rates range from 17% to 50%, depending on your relationship to the decedent. In Italy, the Italian Inheritance Tax (Imposta sulle Successioni) is applied to all the assets worldwide belonging to the deceased if the person is a resident of Italy ONLY. If the person lives outside of Italy, then the tax is applied ONLY to assets in Italy. Where everyone else has generally inheritance taxes of 15% or higher for the immediate family, Italy that rate is just 4%. Here is the breakdown:

• 4% to be paid for transfers to the surviving spouse and children, with an exemption of Euro 1,000,000 for each beneficiary
• 6% to be paid for transfers to brother and sisters of the deceased, with an exemption of Euro 100,000 for each beneficiary
• 6% to be paid for transfers to relatives within the fourth degree of relationship to the Deceased, and other relatives on the spouse side up to the third degree (no exempt amount is available)
• 8% to be paid for transfers to any other (unrelated) parties.

So why do I say that inheritance taxes are the greatest threat to Italy? Rental income in Italy is extremely low. People have plowed their savings into real estate BECAUSE of the inheritance tax. Many have numerous properties and rental income just pays for the taxes and maintenance. If the inheritance tax is tripled, as Brussels suggests, what you will see in Italy is the biggest crash in real estate in modern history. This will be like taxing your bank account by 50%+. Many people use real estate, as they do in China, as their savings. In 2017, part of the very reason why the Five-Star Movement won was also the drastic imposition of property taxes in Italy. If it is your primary home, there was a 2% stamp duty to buy it. A second home was hit with a 9% stamp duty tax. However, if you say it is your primary residence to pay only the 2%, the government will check you for the first 5 years and if they determined you do not live there for the minimum 6 months, the penalty imposed will be 20% of the value of the property. Effectively, that is the imposition of a sales tax when you buy the home. You then have an annual property tax between 0.4% and 0.7% of a property’s fiscal value (valore catastale), the rate being decided by the local municipality according to a property’s size.

The tax reforms that have begun post-2016 are already creating political unrest. A change in the inheritance tax on top of the changes in 2017 to the property tax threatens to undermine the real estate market and that will come back and further bankrupt the banks. It is simply beyond the contemplation of how these people in power only look at their theories and are so desperate for taxes, they are blind to the consequences they are setting in motion.

Unfortunately, 2021 will be 3 waves of 51.6 years from when in 1866 Victor Emmanuel allied himself with Prussia in the Third Italian War of Independence. He eventually entered Rome on September 20th, 1870 and set up the new capital there on July 2nd, 1871. The next wave brings us to 1918 which is the final unification of Italy when the Terre irredenta joined the Kingdom of Italy. Going into the next wave is when you had the National Front (Fronte Nazionale, FN) form which was a neo-fascist political party in Italy during 1967. The peak of that wave was 1970, which marked the National Front’s failed coup attempt launched in December 1970, with the group disappearing soon afterward. This brings us to 2021 for the peak of the next wave. Each wave has brought political change so we are more likely to see a crisis unfold in Italy and this may lead to the crisis in the Euro

QUESTION: Hi Martin,
in reference to the mailing of 500k in bank drafts to the US by a Canadian in Canada – I am wondering what your thoughts are in wiring > 50,000 (CAD) to a US brokerage account, as a Canadian citizen? Do you think there may be potential confiscation or holding of wired funds on either end ( to or from the brokerage account back to Canada) being a Canadian citizen?

A

ANSWER: When wiring money internationally, if it is going to an institution or business, then there is no problem. If you try to send money to an individual, that is when all rules are off. What I would do is ALWAYS test the method first. Sen like $1,000 and make sure it goes through OK.

They do not seem to mess with wires to businesses yet. Everything seems to turn on individual

An Ottawa man, David Saikaley,  acting as executor of a will obtained a bank draft for $500,000 and mailed it to family members in the United States to settle an estate. Bank checks are regarded as “cash” and the money was seized by customs. Almost a year later, the money is still stuck at the border. This is highlighting the Hunt for Money which has simply gone totally insane. Governments now assume ALL money is illegal gains and they will confiscate 100% forcing the burden to you to PROVE it is yours and was obtained legally. If you are ever going to send money to someone overseas, you can mail a check from your account, but NEVER get a bank check/draft. If you are in the USA and try to wire money to an individual overseas, you will quickly discover the limit is not $10,000, but $3,000.

NEVER send anything of value internationally using FedEx. They will be extremely difficult to deal with, to say the least in trying to get things through customs. Even when the valuable item is not subject to tax, they want you to still fill out all sorts of forms to receive it plus give them your Tax ID number so the government will know you just received something worth whatever.

As if that is not bad enough internationally, now they want a PHOTO ID just to mail something domestically. What comes next? A DNA sample because the PHOTO ID is a possible fake? Where does all this insanity end? The only way to end this confiscation of money from innocent people is to ELIMINATE income taxes and customs duties.

The various governments are becoming so desperate for cash, we are losing ALL our liberty just for the privilege of being born. Whatever happened to the rights to that were articulated by Thomas Jefferson:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

COMMENT: 

Dear Marty,

Hope you are doing great. Recently you may have heard Cristiano Ronaldo, the best football (what you guys wrongfully call soccer 😉 ) player in the world has left Spain’s Real Madrid and signed for Italian Juventus. There are many reasons behind this which involve broken promises of a better salary and especially lack of support on his situation with the Spanish tax department which has been very aggressive on him and other football players lately; now it has surfaced he is even planning to cancel a construction of a hotel of his own in Madrid, sources point to the tax witch hunt as the main reason for this decision as well. This way Spanish La Liga has lost one of the two best players in the world who happened to each play for one of the two biggest clubs in Spain, now the most important football match in the world has lost a lot of appealing as well.

It’s incredible how governments destroy all good things in their despair to find money, not realizing they only dig themselves deeper into trouble. Btw, Cristiano sold about 520,000 Juventus jerseys with his name only on his first day at his new club making around 52 million Euro which is half what Juventus paid for his transfer and way more than the extra 18,8 million the Spanish government is demanding from his pockets, if you add what the guy generated in publicity and TV audience one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that running him out of Spain was not a wise business decision.

JC

REPLY: Those in government NEVER make wise business decisions. All they ever do is envy people in the private sector. You generally have two types of people who work in the bureaucracy (excluding Department of Justice). They tend to be there because they are afraid of risk and seek government jobs because there is ZERO chance of getting fired. The other person is there to punish the world for their own lack of talent. Far too often they will hunt down people with money to abuse them as much as possible as a pay-back to society for their own failures. The Department of Justice is either a parking place for people who CANNOT find a real job in the REAL WORLD, or they are there to win prosecutions and then pretend to be selling their experience to get those big paying jobs. They are either looking for such a job or they enter that field and then become a politician. As Nigel Farage said: Politicians are dominated by lawyers, but they are the failed lawyers

A lot of people have emailed in about the outrageous taxes being imposed on those who own boats. A number of people are complaining about California that they sail there and dock in San Diego briefly and go visit Mexico and then get a property tax for having a boat even when they are not citizens of California. This is really getting insane. A number of cities are doing this and they shift the burden to you to object. I have mentioned before where I was given a parking ticket in a private lot in front of Starbucks in New Jersey. Of course, it was illegal. They also know you will not take off a day from work to go to court to object and a $50 fine is not worth hiring a lawyer. So what happens? You pay the fine. They are doing this to boaters and they order the marinas to report the boats docketed there and they treat them as if you are a citizen and just send you a bill for $900 or more

Politicians are truly amazing. When they need money, they are never short of ideas of things to tax. New Jersey is proposing to now tax water from the tap. The proposal is being submitted by State Senator Bob Smith D-Middlesex. Of course, Smith is trying to say it’s not actually a tax and calling it a “user fee” even though you already get a water bill. A “user fee” would be a flat rate. He wants 10 cents per 1,000 gallons so it functions more like a tax than a one-time fee like getting a driver’s license. Smith obtained his J.D. in 1981 from the Seton Hall University School of Law. The only thing law teaches you is how to call a pig a cow and get away with it. It is probably inevitable that they will figure out a way to tax the air for making it clean.

They have in a way managed to tax sex as well over the centuries. In Nevada, they have proposed a $5 tax every time a prostitute performs a service. This is nothing new. The Roman Emperor Caligula (37-41AD) inaugurated a tax upon prostitutes per client (the vectigal ex capturis). There was the bachelor tax which was a punitive tax imposed on unmarried men. The Lex Papia Poppaea was introduced in 9 AD by emperor Augustus (27BC-14AD) to encourage marriage. Penalties were therefore imposed on those who were celibate, with an exception granted to Vestal Virgins. (Ulp. Frag. xvii.1). The law also imposed penalties on married persons who had no children from the age of twenty-five to sixty in a man. Women were taxed who had no children from the age of twenty to fifty (Gaius, ii.111)  (Tacit. Ann. xv.19). As strange as that may sound, New Jersey and Michigan proposed a tax on bachelor men to change their behavior. They would also tax people without children within the member states of the Warsaw Pact to produce children for the army.

There have been plenty of ingenious excuses to impose taxes. When it comes to taxes, politicians just always show their creativity. California wanted to tax per mile a spacecraft traveled in the air after launch. Taxes are supposed to be about using services. They create a road and you pay to use it. Taxing space shots was really insane for they created nothing. Another issue that is probably unconstitutional turns on taxing people who have no right to object in a democratic process. Taxation without representation is what California began by taxing sports players for playing a game in California. Now many states have followed suit. The same process is underway in Europe. It was California which first imposed the Jock Tax back in 1991 as retribution following the Chicago Bulls beating the LA Lakers in the finals. The politicians wanted to punish Chicago and boldly said that the next time “His Airness” (Michael Jordan) played in Los Angeles, the money he made on those games was officially subjected to the California State Income Tax. Since that time, half of the states in the union have followed California and adopted a Jock Tax, taking a cut from high-paid heroes. So they get to tax your income for services you do not use and you have no right to object because you cannot vote in that state. That is taxation without representation – the reason for the American Revolution.

This clever way of figuring out things to tax has been going on since colonial days. Before income taxes, England imposed the Window Tax of 1696. They taxed you per window you had in your home. This was imposed in England, Scotland, and Great British Empire and enforced throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The wealthy had bigger houses and a lot of windows. This tax directly led to the bricking up of many windows you will still see to this day. But they also altered society with the Window Tax in many ways creating row housing. That way you had fewer windows. Once Britain adopted the Window Tax, it spread around Europe. You will see old buildings in Poland with the windows still bricked in to reduce the taxes. If you get to visit Kraków, just walk the street in the old city and you will see more windows bricked up than open on some streets.

In Philadelphia, they also adopted the Window Tax being part of the British Empire. You see row housing in the old city to avoid the Window Tax. The clever minds of greedy politicians did not stop there. The term taking a “step up in life” came about because they also began to tax the number of steps you had into your house. The more steps, the higher the tax. So if you had more steps, that meant you were rich.

The Global Warming crowd is supported by the government because it provides the excuse to invent taxes. They argue that the number one producer of methane gas is cows who are causing global warming more so than cars. Now cow flatulence is the leading cause of global warming because of a cow’s slow digestion, mixed with a gas-producing diet of greens. Hence, to somehow reduce global warming, they claim that storing thousands of cows in one location creates large clouds of methane.  To somehow make global warming OK as long as you pay a tax, Ireland, and Denmark, along with other EU nations, have begun taxing cattle owners on cow flatulence. The argument is that cows are responsible for 18% of the greenhouse gases causing global warming. Now Ireland is taxing farmers $18 per cow while Danish farmers pay $110 per cow. None of this reduces global warming, it just creates more revenue for the politicians.

They imposed taxes on spirits and cigarettes to encourage people to stop drinking and smoking – so they claimed. However, when the governments realized that stopping smoking is costly for them as tax revenue declined, they then imposed like New York City taxes on e-cigarettes. Sweden and other EU member states have suddenly realized they have a similar problem with people switching to electric cars. OMG, tax revenue will evaporate into the clean air. Now they are looking at taxing the electricity that replaces fossil fuels.

In the USA, Oregon and Illinois want to tax per mile you drive under the same excuse that electric cars are reducing their tax revenue. California is now investigating taxing people per mile they drive. They always do these things AFTER an election and NEVER before. The I-95 interstate federal highway up and down the East Coast is another e4xperiment where they are tracking cars and how they travel so they can impose a tax on per mile you drive.

Then you have state pensions in trouble. How to make up the difference? California wants to add a tax to cover state employee pensions. Then you do not even realize that phones and electricity are taxed by federal, state, and local governments. You just never see the breakdown.

Then there are airfares. In the USA, the number of agencies who have their hands out for taxes you never see is amazing. They ensure that your ticket is generally anywhere between a 20% tax to 100% doubling in the price of airfare. This is one reason why airlines are charging for checked bags and just about anything that use to be free for if they are not part of the ticket, then they are not taxed. It’s a bit overwhelming to consider just how many governmental departments and agencies are directly involved in the nation’s commercial aviation system that you have to pay for. This long list includes — but is not limited to — the U.S. Department of Transportation; its subsidiary, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); Customs and Border Protection; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service; and the National Transportation Safety Board. Furthermore, commercial airports throughout the United States are operated on state, county, and city levels, as well as by independent port authorities and operators. So when you are standing in abusive lines and forced to take your shoes off in the USA and no other country, remember, you are paying for that privilege. Just the very basic starting fees are:

•  Domestic Passenger Ticket Tax: collected for FAA; 7.5% of ticket price
•  Domestic Flight Segment Tax: collected for FAA; $4 per segment, defined as “a flight leg consisting of one takeoff and one landing by a flight”
•  International Arrival Tax: collected for FAA; $17.70
•  International Departure Tax: collected for FAA; $17.70
•  September 11th Security Fee: collected for TSA; $5.60 one-way for flights departing the United States, but not to exceed $11.20 round-trip
•  Passenger Facility Charge: collected for “commercial airports controlled by public agencies”; up to $4.50 per passenger

The more connections, the higher the tax. On top of all that, you are charged $200 to change a ticket and if you do not make the flight, you can be just out and have to buy another ticket. The airlines will not refund all the taxes included in the ticket. You will find the mind-blowing travel charges exposed by the Business Travel Coalition. The average person trying to travel will usually find up to half the ticket price on domestic flights can be just taxes. Every possible agency is involved and they all have their fingers in your pocke

QUESTION: Hi Martin,
You are unique in your insight into the growing theft of our money and dignity by the increasingly draconian authorities. Sometimes it’s hard to tell in this era of clickbait and fake news whether something you read is real. In the case of Councils, however, which universally seem to be repositories for people with no skills and not enough guts or street smarts for real politics, anything is possible. How do we, especially the elderly, defend ourselves from these rapacious thieves?

Regards,
Pete

ANSWER: I wish I had an answer for you. For governments there in Britain to proposed to charge £25.92 to help an elderly person who has fallen is outrageous. This is beyond belief. As lawyers often say, “If you hit someone with your car, back up and make sure you kill them. It’s cheaper than to have to pay for the rest of their lives for an injury.” This seems to be the policy adopted by governments. As the crisis in finance builds, we will see more and more of this sort of thing to “save” money.

In the USA, all I can do is recommend moving to one of the 7 states without an income tax. If you are elderly and need medical services, Florida is probably the best spot. They also have Homestead, so nobody can take your house and throw you out on the street. The Florida homestead exemption is a Florida constitutional provision which protects Florida residents by providing them with legal benefits and protection. Thereby, a resident’s primary home is secure from levy and execution by their judgment creditors. A judgment creditor cannot force the sale of your homestead to satisfy a money judgment. Florida is THE BEST spot to protect property.