Tax dodgers scramble to come clean amid crackdown

[formercia]

Source: Yahoo



By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 51 mins ago

WASHINGTON – A deal with Switzerland settling U.S. demands for the names of suspected tax dodgers from a Swiss bank has a lot of wealthy Americans with offshore accounts nervously running to their tax advisers — and the Internal Revenue Service.

"They are very frightened," said Richard Boggs, chief executive of Nationwide Tax Relief, a Los-Angeles-based tax firm that specializes in clients with tax debts exceeding $100,000. "You have the super rich who are not used to being pushed around and they are finding themselves in unfamiliar territory."

The U.S. and Swiss governments announced a court settlement last week in efforts by the IRS to force Zurich-based UBS AG to turn over the names of some 52,000 Americans believed to be hiding nearly $15 billion in assets in secret accounts.

--snip--



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090815/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tax_haven_crackdown

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:popcorn:

[PassingFair]

1. 52,000 Americans believed to be hiding nearly $15 billion

How about we just GIVE the contents of the
52,000 accounts to the 52 MILLION Americans
without health insurance.

Problem solved.

Let them stay anonymous and just give us the money.

If not, I want their names published, and I want the
IRS to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the
law!

It's been a LONG time coming, but it looks like the
wheels just keep turning on these tax cheats.

[mudplanet]

17. Hear, hear.

[Psephos]

33. $15 billion is enough to run the government for about 70 hours

Which means our salvation does not this way lie.

However, it does send a message.

[PassingFair]

34. It could pay premiums for a lot of people for a small time.

I really want these people exposed.

[Warpy]

2. I would love to see that list of names published

along with their contributions to politicians.

[glinda]

37. Good one!

[shraby]

3. Next up, Cayman Island and other offshore accounts.

If this were a more perfect world that would be the agenda.

[tomm2thumbs]

5. Cayman is an embarrassment on the world's ability to be a level playing field

along with other tax havens. You'd think a movie like 'The Firm' would have shed some light on it, yet it is still sitting pretty. Irony that other tiny countries push around the United States though financial means that they don't try with military means, and yet which is more powerful in today's world?

[karynnj]

23. It already is in the SFRC

That is one of the areas that Senator Kerry has people investigating. Even in 2008, Kerry, in a Finance Committee meeting had an extended back and forth discussion with Blum, who had been the lead investigator on Kerry's BCCI investigation. To view it, scroll down to July 24th and click to view the Cayman Island hearings. What is clear is that Blum and Kerry felt this was an international problem that required an international solution - suggesting that SFRC should have hearings or investigations.

Bach in February when the UBS story previously surfaced, the NYT reported:

UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, agreed on Wednesday to divulge the names of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping federal investigation into its activities.

It is unclear how many of its clients’ names UBS will divulge. Federal prosecutors have been examining about 19,000 accounts at the bank, but UBS ultimately may disclose the identities of only a few hundred customers.

But to some, turning over any names at all heralds the end of the secret Swiss bank account, whose traditions date to the Middle Ages.

“The Swiss are saying that this is the end of Swiss banking as they knew it,” said Jack Blum, an offshore tax specialist. “Nobody will trust the security of the Swiss bank account.”

Kerry spoke of this being an issue on his SFRC agenda late last year - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ZlrbkdBNk

To do this and other things, Kerry hired a top investigative journalist, who wrote a book on BCCI. (BCCI involved money laundering for international criminals and terrorists - this is essentially the same thing, but for purposes of tax evasion.)
Here is a link on Kerry's hire.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-frantz8-2009jan08,0,3263189.story

[lunatica]

4. advice to the super rich...

from the same article

"Peter Zeidenberg, a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Washington, said he, too, is he seeing more people with undeclared assets seeking information about their legal options.

His advice: "I don't think you have much of a choice but to come forward. ... I think the landscape is permanently changed."

The IRS long has had a policy that certain tax evaders who come forward before they are contacted by the agency usually can avoid jail time as long as they agree to pay back taxes, interest and hefty penalties. Drug dealers and money launderers need not apply. But if the money was earned legally, tax evaders can usually avoid criminal prosecution."

[drm604]

15. DLA Piper

Hmm... It's interesting to see DLA Piper mentioned in connection with this. Rachel Maddow has been reporting on them (and has received a legal threat from them) in connection with Dick Armey and anti-healthcare front groups.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#32424387

Very possibly a coincidence but I find it very, very interesting.

[lunatica]

19. Good catch!

All roads lead to Dick Armey lately. That and to C Street.

I love what Rachel Maddow is doing lately!

[drm604]

20. To be completely fair

DLA Piper is a huge international law firm so, beyond the fact that very wealthy people probably tend to move in the same circles, this could be entirely coincidental.

It just stuck out when I saw it mentioned and they might be worth some further investigation.

Sourcewatch.org has an entry on them. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=DLA_Piper

A Google search of Sourcewatch turns up 50 or 60 other articles that mention DLA Piper. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22DLA+Piper%22+site%3Asourcewatch.org

[glinda]

38. There are NO coincidences.

[lunatica]

6. Aah! Karma

Sometimes it hurts.

[FreakinDJ]

7. Even with all the Wealthy Elite tax breaks they still cheat

I have no pitty what so ever for these people

Sure let them take advantage of the current IRS amnesty program but make damm sure they pay Full Income Taxes on the assets

[glinda]

39. There is no wonder how they got so rich.

[MineralMan]

8. Taxes and penalties should equal the amount held in those

accounts. It's that simple. Fraud against the USA. Give the miscreants a choice. Forfeit or face trial, with jail time and fines that would exceed that amount.

Publish all names as a public document.

Commit tax fraud and pay the price...simple.

[laughingliberal]

9. Would be nice to see Bush the 1st's policies reversed

Remember? He told the IRS to leave the wealthy alone and go after the middle class.

[formercia]

10. It's not good enough to be 'Filthy Rich.'

According to Poppy, you get to keep it all. Fuck the peasants and fodder units.

[BR_Parkway]

11. Be really nice if he was one of the accounts disclosed

[lunatica]

18. I hope they have to pay interest accrued on their defaulted taxes

It should be calculated from the day they opened their accounts. That could maybe double or triple what they owe, wiping out their hidden accounts and then equaling the amount in their non-hidden accounts and assets.

[katkat]

24. more than that

IRS penalties increase quite quickly. I would hazard a guess it's even faster than those accounts are earning money. So with luck, the IRS (that is, the U.S. taxpayer) gets those accounts and more.

[mbperrin]

12. "not used to being pushed around" "frightened"

Let me shed a tear for them.



Nah. Can't even squeeze ONE tear out.

Tear their throats out and feed the carcasses to the fish. (I know, I have nothing against fish, but they don't seem to be too picky about what they eat, really.)

[lunatica]

16. You mean 'feed em to da fishes', right?

nt

[mbperrin]

30. Yep. Sorry, here in west Texas, a bathtub is a body of water.

Gotta stick to language I know.

Leave 'em for the coyotes.

[Imperfect World]

13. Tax cheaters should be in jail.

I don't understand why Obama has Timothy Geithner, a repeat tax cheater, heading the government agency that enforces the tax laws.

But it does reinforce my decision to vote for Mike Gravel instead of Obama last November.

[katkat]

25. dear little troll

Dear little troll Imperfect World,

Making a mistake on your taxes does not equal salting zillions away in a Swiss bank account.

[Iggo]

31. Nice twist, man.

Welcome to DU.

Enjoy your stay.

[caseymoz]

14. Score one for the Obama administration Justice Department!

There is really no way to get the wealthy to pay taxes when they can merely hide income and assets. This could represent a major change to the way this country is run.

However, 52 thousand people with a total of $25 billion comes to about $288,000 each. Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are many more havens now. These cases must continue.

[TerribleLarryDingle]

21. It's about time

The big fish have the most to hide. Get 'em!

[lunatica]

22. What percentage of 309,162,581 (US population) is 52,000

The number for the US population is calculated for next year which is a census taking year.

[katkat]

27. teeny

A number practically invisible to the naked eye. About 2/100 of 1%.

Which reminds me that it would be interesting to see a graph of number of U.S. individuals vs. their assets and how it has changed over time. I believe the change would be pretty drastic during the past 10-20 years.

[lunatica]

29. Thanks for answering

I think something will show up after next year's census. It'll probably show a huge change from anything that happened last Century. We've fallen a very long with Bush.

[karynnj]

32. Here you go - though it only goes up through 2004

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Because it starts in 1983, you miss the increases in the portion the wealthy have in the early Reagan years.

Here is a John Kerry Senate speech from 1993 that has statistics going back further.

In many ways, we are witnessing the most rapid change in the workplace in this country since the postwar era began. For a majority of working Americans, the changes are utterly at odds with the expectations they nurtured growing up.
Millions of Americans grew up feeling they had a kind of implied contract with their country, a contract for the American dream. If you applied yourself, got an education, went to work, and worked hard, then you had a reasonable shot at an income, a home, time for family, and a graceful retirement.
Today, those comfortable assumptions have been shattered by the realization that no job is safe, no future assured. And many Americans simply feel betrayed.
To this day I'm not sure that official Washington fully comprehends what has happened to working America in the last 20 years, a period when the incomes of the majority declined in real terms.
In the decade following 1953, the typical male worker, head of his household, aged 40 to 50, saw his real income grow 36 percent. The 40-something workers from 1963 to 1973 saw their incomes grow 25 percent. The 40-something workers from 1973 to 1983 saw their incomes decline, by 14 percent, and reliable estimates indicate that the period of 1983 to 1993 will show a similar decline.
From 1969 to 1989 average weekly earnings in this country declined from $387 to $335. No wonder then, that millions of women entered the work force, not simply because the opportunity opened for the first time. They had no choice. More and more families needed two incomes to support a family, where one had once been enough.
It began to be insufficient to have two incomes in the family. By 1989 the number of people working at more than one job hit a record high. And then even this was not enough to maintain living standards. Family income growth simply slowed down. Between 1979 and 1989 it grew more slowly than at any period since World War II. In 1989 the median family income was only $1,528 greater than it had been 10 years earlier. In prior decades real family income would increase by that same amount every 22 months. When the recession began in 1989, the average family's inflation-adjusted income fell 4.4 percent, a $1,640 drop, or more than the entire gain from the eighties.
Younger people now make less money at the beginning of their careers, and can expect their incomes to grow more slowly than their parents'. Families headed by persons aged 25 to 34 in 1989 had incomes $1,715 less than their counterparts did 10 years earlier, in 1979. Evidence continues to suggest that persons born after 1945 simply will not achieve the same incomes in middle-age that their parents achieved.
Thus, Mr. President, it is a treadmill world for millions of Americans. They work hard, they spend less time with their families, but their incomes don't go up. The more their incomes stagnate, the more they work. The more they work, the more they leave the kids alone, and the more they need child care. The more they need child care, the more they need to work.
Why are we surprised at the statistics on the hours children spend in front of the television; about illiteracy rates; about teenage crime and pregnancy? All the adults are working and too many kids are raising themselves.
Of course, there is another story to be found in the numbers. Not everyone is suffering from a declining income. Those at the top of the income scale are seeing their incomes increase, and as a result income inequality in this Nation is growing dramatically. Overall, the 30 percent of our people at the top of the income scale have secured more and more, while the bottom 70 percent have been losing. The richest 1 percent saw their incomes grow 62 percent during the 1980's, capturing a full 53 percent of the total income growth among all families in the entire economy. This represents a dramatic reversal of what had been a post-war trend toward equality in this country. It also means that the less well-off in our society--the same Americans who lost out in the Reagan tax revolution--are the ones being hurt by changes in the economy.
You might say that we long ago left the world of Ward and June Clever. We have entered the world of Roseanne and Dan, and the yuppies from `L.A. Law' working downtown

As you can see from the chart, the % the bottom 80% has - has continued to shrink.

[Odin2005]

26. WOOT!

:woohoo:

[Lugnut]

28. What a shame.

:nopity:

[TheMadMonk]

35. Well aren't we all a buch of gullible, easily distracted idiots.

15 billon divided amongst 52 thousand people amounts to a tad under $300,000 each.

How many of these 52k are rich list wannabes thrown to the wolves? Any realistic distribution is going to have a large proportion of that money in the accouts of a comparative few and the vast majority holding only a few tens of thousands.

The true extent of the tax rort is almost certainly in the trillions, and because most people (including it seems a lot here) can't comprehend such big numbers, it is very easy to distract them with a paltry 15 billion.

Of course these people should be investigated and prosecuted as needed, but we need to understand that the real thieves and cheats are continuing on their merry way absolutely scott free.

[Owl]

36. The poor dears may have to come clean... boo-hooooo....

[formercia]

40. A quartet of violins....

:nopity: :nopity: :nopity: :nopity:

[carrolltrust]

41. HM Revenue & Customs - DISCLOSURE - HSBC Coutts Bank $1,000,000,000 Tax Evasion Fraud - FBI Carroll

The UK HM Inland Revenue and Customs is completing an exhaustive investigation into the rapid break-up and liquidation of a multi-national industrial and philanthropic conglomerate which once boasted assets totalling over one billion dollars under the umbrella of the Carroll Foundation and the Carroll Global Corporation being one of the main world wide operating structures of the Carroll Foundation Charitable Trust which controlled over 85 corporations. The report will be passed to the HM Attorney Generals Office and Britain's Metropolitan Police Scotland Yard Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

At the centre of the inquiry is the Carroll Global Group of Companies, a family-owned commercial dynasty stretching back three generations in the United Kingdom with very close links with the Carroll families in Ireland and on the eastern seaboard of America in the State of Maryland. The Carroll Foundation Charitable Trust seemed to be in a healthy position in 1995 but had been completely liquidated by 2001.

The business spanned Europe, Australia, United States of America and the Russian Federation.It embraced vast land areas involving agri-industrial enterprises, sheep stud farms and meat processing operations in Australia within an area of land half the size of Wales. Trans-continental commercial real estate holdings with a value of over $750m, banking and financial concerns in Gibraltar and the Caribbean including a 5% holding in the Manchester Ship Canal in the United Kingdom and other substantial global share holdings in publicly quoted companies.The Gerald Carroll Trust carried interests in the late billionaire Howard Hughes Estate.

Parts of the underlying group were declared insolvent but it is thought that the Inland Revenue is not satisfied this was merely a series of routine business failures over such a lengthy period of time.

HM Queen's Bankers RBS Coutts Bank Lord Home and Stephen Green the chairman of HSBC Europe's largest bank together with named officers of the banks offshore operations are the subject of major criminal allegations of conspiracy to defraud racketeering money laundering offshore tax evasion in Britain's longest running largest organised criminal conspiracy corruption case.

Sources close to the Carroll Foundation Charitable Trust board of trustees have confirmed that compelling criminal evidence material has been submitted to Scotland Yard and the FBI surrounding the fraudulent incorporation of dummy Gerald Carroll Trust HSBC bank accounts and the resultant embezzlement of over $150,000,000, (one hundred and fifty million dollars) of Carroll Trust liquid funds located and held in offshore tax havens within the framework of an international criminal syndicate operation.

The Carroll Foundation Trust one billion dollars - CROSS BORDER - international criminal syndicate case is currently being retained within a - LOCKDOWN - at the US Department of Justice FBI Washington DC field office USA - Britain's Attorney Generals Office under the supervision of the Rt Hon Baroness Scotland QC with the Metropolitan Police Scotland Yard Westminster London UK.

Please View:
http://www.carrollfoundationtrust.org/

[Scout]

42. sock it to 'em, greedy bastards

poor rich people, not used to being pushed around, they are very frightened.

see how the rest of us have to live assholes.

:grr: