Posts Tagged ‘Offshore bank secrecy’
Amended Tax Treaty Effectively Ends Swiss Bank Secrecy for U.S. Clients
Switzerland’s tradition of bank secrecy dates back three centuries. In 1713, the canton of Geneva enacted an ordinance that prohibited bankers from divulging any information about their clients’ transactions. Since then, the Swiss have successfully rebuffed demands to end or restrict bank secrecy from adversaries ranging from Napoleon to Adolph Hitler. But while Napoleon and [...]
IRS: Offshore Banks Will Need to Disclose Precious Metals Held by U.S. Clients
Earlier this week, I participated in to a teleconference sponsored by the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners and the International Law section of the American Bar Association. The conference addressed the expanded offshore asset disclosure requirements brought into effect by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). (For background on FATCA see here, here, [...]
IRS Admits Offshore Enforcement Efforts Leading to Soaring Expatriation Rates
Occasionally, the U.S. Congress discovers to its great surprise that the agency it created to collect revenues for the federal government, the Internal Revenue Service, engages in systematic abuse of taxpayers. In one such moment in 1979, Congress created the Office of the Taxpayer Ombudsman as a taxpayer advocate within the IRS. This office eventually [...]
IRS Makes Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Framework Permanent
U.S. permanent residents and all U.S. citizens, no matter where they live, to declare virtually all offshore accounts with an aggregate value of $10,000 or more. Income generated from these accounts is also taxable. I most recently wrote about these obligations here. U.S. citizens living abroad have a unique reporting burden, as no other civilized [...]
Swiss Secrecy Breach: Does the Punishment Fit the Crime?
If you still have the quaint idea that offshore bank secrecy laws have any “teeth” to them, think again. A case in point is the world-famous Swiss bank secrecy law. Article 47 (Art. 47) of the Swiss Banking Act, Paragraph 1 reads as follows: “Whoever divulges a secret entrusted to him or of which he [...]
Form 8938: Not a Prelude to a Wealth Tax…This Time [Part II]
In my last blog entry, I described the latest salvo against offshore financial privacy from the IRS: the requirement to file a tell-all form annually with your tax return detailing “foreign financial assets” with an aggregate value exceeding $50,000. The IRS recently issued a draft version of this Form 8938, along with preliminary regulations on [...]
Form 8938: Not a Prelude to a Wealth Tax…This Time [Part I]
Back in 2010, President Obama signed the infamous Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”). Among other provisions, FATCA provides that if you hold a “specified foreign financial asset” (SFFA), you must attach a disclosure statement to your income tax return for each year in which the aggregate value of all such assets exceeds $50,000, or [...]
IRS Makes Offshore Tax Compliance a Little Easier
It’s not often that I believe the IRS has actually done something right. I’m saying it now, in reference to a recent announcement that IRS is expanding the scope of its most recent “offshore voluntary disclosure initiative” (OVDI). It’s also extended the deadline to complete the disclosure process 90 days after the previous deadline of [...]