Facebook’s co-founder stands to make about 4 billion dollars when the company goes public. Prior to that happening, he has given up his US citizenship in order to avoid paying the capital gains taxes he would owe on that income, which has been described as a “very smart idea”.
And then we come to this gem of a sentence:
“It’s a loss for the U.S. to have many well-educated people who actually have a great deal of affection for America make that choice,” said Richard Weisman, an attorney at Baker & McKenzie in Hong Kong.
Yes, they have so much affection for America that they are unwilling to pay even their historically low taxes. Meanwhile, the economy is stagnant due to austerity measures forced by congress in order to keep this poor guy’s taxes low, this poor guy who loves America so much he would rather leave it than contribute to it.
Remember, by the way, that when Facebook first started, it was restricted to colleges only. Further remember that each college had it’s own isolated network. Facebook users at a given school could only interact with others at that school. And why was that? Because Facebook was hosted on the schools’ networks. And finally, also remember that many of those were public schools. Funded with tax dollars.
It’s hard to be a billionaire these days.
520 Chestnut 
The most idiotic thing about Weisman’s comment is: if Saverin wouldn’t pay his taxes anyway, in what way has America “lost” him? What, is he going to use his awesome business acumen to turn Singapore into a world power that is going to compete with the United States? Or what, it’s not a global world, and we ain’t gonna get our Facebook fix anymore, now that he’s gone? He is still going to play the market here. He is still going to push products of dubious value in this country. The only difference between him being a US citizen and not paying taxes and him giving up his US citizenship in order not to pay taxes is that in the latter case — at least according to the Internal Revenue Code — he will be inadmissible to the United States and ineligible for any visas. Which is great — I wouldn’t want a man who deliberately renounces his obligations to the community benefit from the infrastructures that that very community paid for.
I agree!
And the real tragedy is that, when he needs to head to SF for a board meeting, he’s not going to have any problem getting a visa. Meanwhile, some student who wants to come here to get a PhD and then start a company is going to go through endless hoops.
By the way, the comments to that Bloomberg article are PRICELESS.