A new law signed by President Obama last month makes it much harder for U.S. citizens to evade taxes by hiding money in offshore accounts. Foreign financial institutions will now face a 30% tax on their U.S. investments if they refuse to provide information about accounts held by U.S. citizens.
None of this is a
I reported in a post earlier this month that as an IRS amnesty deadline approached, more than 7,500 U.S. taxpayers had voluntarily disclosed their secret offshore accounts. Lynnley Browning reports in a November 18, 2009 New York Times article that the IRS received a flood of additional disclosures just before the deadline expired. The final number of U.S. taxpayers
It seems that U.S. lawmakers are likely to give the IRS increasing support in its recent assault on offshore accounts.
More than 7,500 U.S. taxpayers have voluntarily disclosed secret offshore accounts to the Internal Revenue Service in connection with a recent amnesty program. The program did not provide any forgiveness for tax evasion. It simply provided possible
In March of 2009 the IRS began a six month amnesty program with reduced penalties for those who come forward and acknowledge they been have unlawfully hiding assets– and failing to pay applicable taxes on those assets. The amnesty program is part of a broader effort by the IRS to crack down on U.S. citizens who are
Finn M. W. Caspersen, heir to the Beneficial Corporation fortune, was a patron of Harvard and Princeton and gave away tens of millions of dollars to charity. He was active in New Jersey politics. Mr. Caspersen served on the Dean’s Advisory Council at Harvard Law School. As Lynnley Browning wrote in the New York Times
Last week, the Swiss banking giant UBS agreed to turn over information on American clients suspected by the IRS of using Swiss accounts for tax evasion. On Wednesday, August 19, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that the agency is looking at other banks and intermediaries in Switzerland in addition to UBS.
The IRS Commissioner was not kidding. Last Thursday the Justice
On Wednesday, August 19, UBS (one of Switzerland’s largest banks) agreed to turn over information on more than 4,450 American clients suspected by the IRS of using Swiss accounts for tax evasion. Due to provisions of a new tax treaty between the U.S. and Switzerland, it could be more than a year before the IRS has all the
