&gt; Rightly or wrongly, the US position is that you need to pay taxes to someone. I think the intent of the laws is at least arguably reasonable, but the execution isn&#x27;t great.<p>You do pay taxes in (for example) Hong Kong. It&#x27;s just not as a high as the US rate.<p>&gt; Making it more like $200k would allow more highly paid &quot;normal workers&quot; to avoid the penalty, while still hitting the very wealthy purely looking at the tax dodge.<p>That would certainly make sense. Personally, I think a more thorough analysis of income <i>sources</i> is also in order: if you&#x27;re genuinely working for a foreign company as a foreign employee, I think that should be treated differently than a wealthy person who is just avoiding US residency for tax purposes, despite the majority of their income coming from US sources.