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SCMP Reporter

PRETTY brave of the American Chamber of Commerce to run a seminar entitled: ''Renunciation of US Citizenship - a tax-planning alternative?'' on July 13.

   Even braver of Price Waterhouse to provide the speaker.

   Thanks to the United States' policy of levying taxes on its citizens' earnings worldwide, we have already heard occasional whispers from US citizens about relinquishing their citizenship for tax purposes.

   ''They need all my taxes on helicopters so Bill Clinton's cronies can go golfing,'' was one complaint.

   AmCham's advertisement says: ''Some Hong Kong-based US citizens are considering renouncing their US citizenship due to rising US individual tax rates, the inability to shelter income through foreign corporations and the imminent realisation of significant property-capital gains.

   ''This presentation will focus on what the renunciation of US citizenship means from a US tax perspective.''    Given that plenty of mainlanders would be happy to risk death floating across the Pacific in an inner-tube to get to the US, it seems a bit ungrateful to just throw that citizenship away to save cash.

   The cynical friend who told us about this suggested a couple of follow-ups, possibly from the Un-American Chamber of Commerce:    ''Selling secrets and selling out your country - a taxing alternative?'' by Aldrich Ames; ''Burning the Stars and Stripes - a great new hobby''.

  Flag-rant ANDY Windebank's office overlooks the Kowloon Shangri-La Hotel, and he saw a very strange ceremony on Friday afternoon at about 2.50.

   A worker emerged from the hotel, hauled down the three flags fluttering outside the building - including the Hong Kong flag - turned them upside-down, then hauled them back up the flagpole.

   Puzzle fans: cover the next sentence and try to guess why anyone would do this.

   Got it? Worked it out?    Solution: they were the wrong way up in the first place, and had been all day.

  InKendescent IF they were handing out awards for soberly dressed directors, Kenneth Smith might not win. Or even come second.

   Still, it was nice to meet him at the annual general meeting of Semi-Tech (Global). And so nice to see his pink cap, bright jacket and tie of 5,000 colours.

   He's an academic and new to the Semi-Tech board, and we wondered how Semi-Tech's James Ting got to know him.

   It turns out that Kenneth was a professor at the University of Toronto when James was a youthful-looking student there - as opposed to a youthful-looking director as he is now.

  Monster move IT'S the end of an era. A small, often unnecessary, piece of paper is being dispensed with.

   No, not the one-cent note; the reminder notices sent out by the territory's cuddliest monopoly - Hongkong Telecom.

   Reminder notices will not be sent to those getting their bills from the new Dragon computer system, now going territory-wide, as recipient Ian Watson of Central discovered by reading the small print.

   You can tell if you've got a Dragon bill - not to be confused with Dragon Ball - by the fact that it's also in Chinese, a form of writing used by 98 per cent of Hong Kong but not, up until now, by the phone company.

   This computer system has provided some entertainment during its development which began - as the joke goes - before the New Territories was ceded to Britain.

   We know someone who received an early bill which was wrong by a factor of 10. No prizes for guessing in whose favour.

   But this is serious - if your bill gets lost, the first thing you'll know about it is your phone being cut off 12 days later.

   It is being presented as a green move. Telecom says it is also producing the envelopes from recycled paper.

   As Joel McCormick says in today's Technology Post, the end of the reminders is good news for the little birds whose woody homes will no longer be cut down.

   But it's bad news for those who have problems with their mail - their phones will be cut off and they'll have to pay a hefty reconnection fee.

   Telecom told us yesterday it was experimenting with a system that gives a reminder over the phone.

   In the final few days before being cut off, every time you pick up the phone to ring someone, you will get a little message warning of the impending snip.

  Chamber-made REMEMBER Chris Patten's quip based on the words of Sir David Akers-Jones: ''The Chinese style is not to rig elections. But they do like to know the result before they're held.''    Well, the British Chamber of Commerce elected a new chairman at the weekend.

   There was only one candidate. The result was not a great surprise to anyone.



Paying Bill's bills is just part of being American