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In the 30 years I’ve been writing about developments in the offshore world, I’ve been called a lot of things: “Insightfulâ€â€¦ â€thoughtfulâ€â€¦ but also “misguidedâ€â€¦ and (my personal favorite) “pessimistic.â€
From 2006–2008, Falciani worked in HSBC’s information technology department. While there, he secretly downloaded the account details of more than 100,000 HSBC clients.
The paragons of public virtue that make up the US Congress really, really want to crack down on tax cheats. Thanks to a highway funding bill about to head to President Obama’s desk, if you owe the IRS more than $50,000, you’ll lose your passport.
I just finished a week’s visit to Vienna, where I lived from 2003-2005 while earning a LL.M (Master of Laws) in international tax law at a local university.
It might sound like a conspiracy theory spun by right-wing crazies. But judging by the increasing desperation of governments to reboot the world economy, it just might happen.
Airport security in the USA is a joke, and a bad one at that. It’s easy to create a fake boarding pass with Photoshop. And it’s not much harder to create fake identification documents.
You could be forgiven for believing offshore frauds are a thing of the past. After all, with “Know Your Customer” rules that practically require you to submit to a DNA test to open an offshore account, you wouldn’t think it’s exactly easy for scam artists to bank the proceeds of fraud.
Big Brother is alive and well at US border crossings. The latest example comes from published accounts describing the recent ordeal of the mayor of Stockton, California, at the San Francisco International Airport.
In 2013, former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden stunned the world by revealing top-secret details of the agency’s data collection practices.
A hidden danger of a government that intervenes in every aspect of its citizens’ lives is that it develops harmful alliances with the rich and powerful.
FATCA, officially known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, is probably the worst law that most Americans don't know about.
Do you distrust the banking system? Prefer to do business in cash? Complain about the encroachment of Big Brother into every facet of your life?
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I can’t help but be reminded of the truism of this week’s article title, watching Chinese stock prices drop, day after day. In response, Chinese securities regulators have banned most short selling.
When I was a teenager, I was a fan of the Rolling Stones. I bought their 1971 album, Sticky Fingers, immediately after its release. Unfortunately, the record was unplayable.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a lobster boiled alive. It was at a family gathering when I was very young, perhaps five or six years old. One of my aunts calmly picked up a happily wriggling lobster out of an ice chest and dropped it in a pot of boiling water.
It’s often not “PC” (politically correct) to point out the truth. But someone needs to do it. Here’s an “inconvenient truth†for President Obama and those in Congress who want to shut down what they call “offshore tax havens.â€
With an $18 trillion debt and $97 trillion or so in unfunded liabilities, Uncle Sam is anything but flush with money. So Congress and President Obama are looking for ways to stem the flow of red ink.
It’s no secret that governments worldwide are broke. One country after another is cutting social benefits and taking other measures to reduce government spending.
Freedom to travel is a fundamental and internationally recognized human right. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states:
Leave it to bureaucrats to decide that while some competition is good, too much is bad. In a nutshell, that’s what the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) ongoing campaign against lower taxes is all about.
Back in 1970, Congress enacted a law that became known as the Bank Secrecy Act, or BSA. But like the PATRIOT Act, the USA Freedom Act, and many other opaquely named laws Congress enacts, the BSA had nothing to do with encouraging bank secrecy.
Talk about a comeuppance. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, who helped force through Congress stricter laws against anonymous cash transactions, now faces financial ruin – and an extended jail sentence – thanks to the very same laws.
I got a good laugh earlier this month when a federal appeals court ruled that the National Security Agency (NSA) could no longer collect the phone records of all US persons – and then store them in a massive database.
Cash has never been a popular asset with the totalitarian set. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to trace. Cash makes it possible to do business “off the books.”
With an annual budget now approaching $4 trillion, it’s not surprising that the US government has quite a few departments that most of us know nothing about.
One of the most important services that I think I provide our consulting clients is to say “no†to some of their harebrained ideas. Over the last year or so, the scheme that I’ve said “no†to more than anything else involves Puerto Rico.
US citizens who expatriate – those who give up their citizenship and passport – don’t get a lot of respect.Take Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, for instance. When the Brazilian-born Saverin gave up US citizenship in 2011, it led to a political witch-hunt.
It’s bad enough to have the IRS or another government agency after you. But when Uncle Sam – or even a state or local government – hires a collection agency to chase after you, things can go downhill fast.
One of the assumptions of the eurozone – those 19 countries in Europe that use the euro as their national currencies – is that if any country left the zone, economic disaster would follow in its wake.
I’ve written frequently about FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. This one-sided law forces other countries to enforce US tax laws. If they fail to do so, they’re effectively locked out of US markets and the US dollar – the world’s reserve currency (at least for now).