Tag Archive for tax evasion

G20 Nations Agree to Automatic Exchange of Tax Information!

taxconnections blog post stock exchangeHeads of G20 countries meet today, September 5, 2013 St. Petersburg, where they will sign an agreement to counter ‘Aggressive Tax Planning’ by multinational companies. The global paradigm change in the fight against tax avoidance and evasion is set to be taken further by G20 leaders. The European Union, with its considerable expertise and experience – for example, in creating an European Union-wide system for the automatic exchange of information, or the fight against aggressive tax planning – will push for the automatic exchange of information to become the global standard.

It will, notably, support any efforts that help to ensure its swift implementation. The EU will also strongly support the OECD’s action plan to fight corporate tax avoidance worldwide, which this summit is expected to endorse.

OECD’s Action Plan to Combat Tax Avoidance

Co-operation between tax administrations is critical in the fight against tax evasion and a key aspect of that cooperation is exchange of information. Political interest has increasingly focused on the opportunities provided by automatic exchange of information. Read More

Written by | Posted in Europe, Middle East • International • United States

IRS Targets Singapore And Hong Kong For U.S. Tax Evaders!

TaxConnections Picture - Fugitive Singapore and Hong Kong continue to be the target of United States prosecutors pursuing a global campaign against evaders of federal taxes, spurred by data acquired in their crackdown on Swiss banks.

Prosecutors are trying to determine what role financial professionals in Hong Kong play in tax evasion, according to people familiar with the matter. They are examining how much taxable money was moved to the former British colony that returned to China in 1997, whether accounts were based there in name only and what banks were involved, the people said.The push follows the government’s success in penetrating Swiss bank secrecy and learning from insiders how UBS AG helped Americans evade taxes. UBS, the largest Swiss bank by assets, avoided prosecution by agreeing in February to pay $780 million and disclose account data on 250 clients. In August, it agreed to supply information on another 4,450.

The government has made it very clear that they are interested in other secrecy jurisdictions, especially Hong Kong & Singapore.

The UBS clients who used Hong Kong & Singapore corporations told prosecutors how their bankers and lawyers helped them set up offshore corporations so their assets would be hidden in accounts that didn’t bear their names, court records show. Read More

Written by | Posted in United States

Fiscal Transparency: They Really Mean It! IRS Helping Norway Catch Tax Evaders With Secret US Accounts

TaxConnections Picture - Norwegian Bank Notes & FlagJohn Doe Summons

The Department of Justice just announced that various United States federal courts have entered orders authorizing the Internal Revenue Service to serve so-called “John Doe summonses” on eighteen US banks and financial institutions. The John Doe summonses are seeking information about persons who have used specific credit or debit cards in Norway. The cards were issued by various US banks and it is highly suspected that the Norwegian citizens who set up the US accounts to which they relate were not in compliance with Norwegian tax laws.

A “John Doe Summons” is a very powerful weapon against tax evasion. It generally directs a financial institution (e.g., here, a US bank, such as Prairie Sun Bank with offices in Minnesota, for example) to produce records identifying certain persons (here, all Norwegian persons) having current or closed accounts at the institution. The summons need not identify any individual by name – the general description (e.g., all Norwegian citizens) is enough! Indeed, the John Doe summons has helped IRS catch many US tax evaders who were using offshore accounts in Switzerland, India, and Lichtenstein etc.

Norway Finding Tax Evaders In The US With IRS’ Help

The DOJ announcement provides that the Norwegian authorities have reason to believe, based upon the use of payment cards in Norway that were issued by U.S. banks, that unidentified card holders may have failed to report financial account information or income on their Norwegian tax returns. Court papers cite examples where individuals Read More

Written by | Posted in IRS • Tax Fraud/Evasion/Crimes

US Tax Laws Pushing Americans to Expatriate; OVDI “Arbitrary and Capricious” – An Interview With Bill Yates – Former Attorney, Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International), IRS, continued…

TaxConnections Picture - Tax BriefcaseThis is a continuation from yesterday’s post of the interview with Bill Yates:

Yates: Everyone in the room who knew me turned and looked at me. I’ve been involved in horses since I was five. Believe me, no one makes $50 million raising bucking horses. That is patently ridiculous. What it shows is that LGT would accept any explanation regarding the source of a prospective client’s funds or assets. Then, the UBS scandal broke. That’s when things really got ridiculous.

La Torre Jeker: How?

Yates: Well, we started seeing how European governments were shocked, I mean shocked, really, to find out that any of their banks could be involved in promoting and facilitating tax evasion. Give me a break. How could you live in the EU and not know about what was going on in Switzerland, Lichtenstein and the Caribbean tax havens, many of which by the way are British protectorates?

La Torre Jeker: So, are you saying that foreign banks had it coming to them? I mean FATCA. Read More

Written by | Posted in Expatriate • International • IRS • OVDP

Another Offshore Whistle Blower – Former HSBC Employee!

whistle blowWe first posted Whistleblower Exposes Massive Offshore Corruption!  On May 6, 2013 where the enormous value of whistleblowers has once again been demonstrated with the release of an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into off-shore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories hiding trillions of dollars in income and assets

The anonymous whistleblower sent to the ICIJ 2.5 million electronic files containing what the organization calls “the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization.”

Now we have come to discover another whistleblower, an HSBC employee who passed data  a former  to French authorities about the bank’s Swiss arm has supplied a list of nearly 3,000 secret accounts belonging to French residents or entities, hiding up to $5 billion (CHF4.8 billion) in undeclared assets.

The figure was revealed on Wednesday July 10, 2013, in a French parliamentary report. The report also described a variety of legal, technical, diplomatic and procedural issues that began almost as soon as the French tax authorities received five DVDs of data.

The report, explaining why it had taken so long to act on the data, said that there were internal obstacles over the different remits of the tax authorities and the prosecutor’s office, which in 2010 transferred responsibility for the case from the Mediterranean city of Nice to Paris. Read More

Written by | Posted in United States
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