On June 3, 2010 Joe’s life changed forever when he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan.
As a grunt Soldier deployed with the 82nd Airborne, Joe became one of the all too many people to lose a limb and nearly his life fighting in a pointless conflict.
I told you a little about this a few months ago after I’d had the good luck of meeting Joe and his fiancée while I was traveling in the US.
His story left me dumbstruck.
Like many veterans, Joe was left out in the cold by the US government.
He had a unique medical situation due to the nature of his amputation, and the FDA refused to allow him to undergo a new procedure that could help him walk again.
Needless to say, it was perfectly fine for the government that Joe take the risk of going overseas and getting his leg blown off. But getting his leg fixed was too risky.
Unbelievable.
So after being rejected by the very government he had served, Joe set out to get the procedure done himself.
It was going to get very expensive; since the FDA had outlawed the new procedure he needed, Joe would have to go overseas.
In total he needed to raise $80,000, and Joe was nowhere near making a dent in that goal.
After spending some time getting to know him and asking some close friends of mine who are renowned physicians to help me research the procedure he needed, I told Joe that I would pick up the tab for the surgery.
I’m pleased to say that Joe’s operation was successful, and as you can see in this video, he’s now walking.
Now I’ll let you in on a little secret: one of the reasons I was able to do this for Joe is because I’ve taken every legal step at my disposal to reduce and even eliminate the taxes that I owe to the US government.
Long ago I realized that every penny I paid to the federal government was being squandered on waste, debt, and war.
I was effectively footing the bill to send more guys like Joe overseas to get their legs blown off.
And I knew that I had to do something about it. I couldn’t in good conscience continue to support such mindless destruction.
But rather than take out my frustration in a voting booth, or putting a sign in my front yard with some candidate’s name on it, I went down a different path: taking completely legal steps to reduce my taxes.
For example, there’s a section of the US tax code called the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion that allows US citizens living abroad to earn more than $100,000 of income tax free.
When you add in other benefits like the Foreign Housing Exclusion, the total can be as high as $208,800 just for one person.
This alone could save over $40,000 on federal income tax alone, not including state and local income taxes, or other types of federal taxes.
Imagine having an extra $40,000 in your pocket.
Even better, imagine having an extra $40,000 in your pocket that would have otherwise been spent on sending more people like Joe to get their limbs blown off.
I recognize this is a touchy subject. Lifelong tax propaganda tells us that “it’s a privilege to pay taxes” and that “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
And most people believe this drivel despite every objective shred of evidence showing that taxes fund war, destructive bureaucracy, and debt.
Just look at the numbers from last year’s US federal budget–
Nearly 80% of the individual income tax collected went to war and interest payments on the debt. It is the antithesis of civilization.
Is this really where you want your money to go?
Now, we’ve been programmed to believe that trying to reduce the taxes you owe is unpatriotic and selfish… that only a bunch of rich Maserati-driving assholes want to cut their tax bills.
This is such deeply-flawed thinking.
If you love your country, or at least the ideas that it’s supposed to represent, then reducing politicians’ powers to destroy it should be considered an act of patriotism.
And there is no more effective way of doing this than by restricting their financial resources.
Of course, we’re told that if we’re dissatisfied with the direction of government that we should wait for the next election and vote the bums out.
What a joke. Voting only changes the players, it doesn’t change the game.
(Especially when the entirety of the economic power is vested in the hands of an unelected central bank committee.)
But there still are some votes that do make a difference: the ones we cast with our feet and our finances.
Using the completely legal rules from their own tax code to reduce what you owe not only makes financial sense, it is an incredibly powerful, nonviolent way of affecting real change.
Now, if anybody were to ask me whom I’m voting for, I can respond with total candor: I voted for Joe.
Listen in on today’s podcast (probably the most emotional I’ve ever done) as I tell you more about Joe’s story… and ways to cast a vote that truly counts:
May 2016 Update:
Joe is doing amazingly well with his prosthetic leg and in part because of Joe’s efforts and clear medical success, the US government is starting to permit other amputees to undergo Osseointegration.
