Tax evasion is riskier "The Swiss are saying that this is the end of Swiss banking as they knew it"

[karynnj]

UBS will be identifying some client names and the IRS is investigating 19,000 customers' files. This article speaks of UBS even suggesting customers hide outside the US jewels and other high priced items purchased with UBS credit cards (hidden from US regulators) from money hidden in their banks. This may be the time when things are coming together to end the hypocritical unpatriotic unfairness of some the wealthiest people in this country evading taxes this way. Fear of getting caught and being exposed should be a deterrent, but there are many signs that laws will be tightened after investigations.

"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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/business/worldbusiness/19ubs.html?hp

Jack Blum, who is John Kerry's former staffer who led the effort exposing BCCI, was one of the witnesses at a July 24, 2008 Finance Committee hearing on hiding assets in the Cayman Islands. Especially in his discussion with Senator Kerry, he spoke of this as an international problem needing an international solution. It is not just the US that loses tax revenues from some of its wealthier citizens - every country does. http://www.senate.gov/~finance/sitepages/hearings.htm

In December 2008, Senator Kerry spoke of using the SFRC to investigate the general issue of using offshore. Here's he speaks of it at the end of a response to a broader question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ZlrbkdBNk

In January, Senator Kerry hired a reporter who has written books on BCCI and A.Q. Khan as chief investigator for the SFRC.

Douglas Frantz, a former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, has been chosen to be chief investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as it reorganizes under its new chairman, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

Frantz was the managing editor of The Times from 2005 to 2007 and has also been an investigative reporter for The Times, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. He was the Istanbul, Turkey, bureau chief for the New York Times and a reporter there for the Los Angeles Times.

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

[pkz]

1. They are going to name names

About 17,000 American clients concealed their UBS accounts from the IRS, hiding total assets of roughly $20 billion, U.S. officials said.
UBS will release the secrets.

[karynnj]

5. That has to be a really big deterrent to FUTURE off shore tax evasion

The idea that your name could be in the newspapers and you could face jail should stop many wealthy "pillars of their communities" from being greedy enough to think that they are above paying all the taxes they owe. (Consider that they are doing this even though the extremely high pre-Reagan tax brackets no longer exist.)

[roguevalley]

26. They should have to forfeit that money, the bastard traitors.

[Wapsie B]

2. Today Switzerland, tomorrow the Cayman Islands.

You can run but you can't hide. Isn't that what they say?

[karynnj]

7. I hope so - it is just wrong that people think they can do this

[Wapsie B]

8. Yes it's very wrong. It's as if some feel entitled to live by a separate set of rules

and let us underlings flounder. Oh wait, this is America. What am I thinking? Separate and unequal is our way of life.

[zbdent]

3. hmm ...

Bush41
Bush43
Cheney
Rove
Madoff
Murdoch
Limbaugh
Coulter
O'Reilly

nothing to see here ...

[Frustratedlady]

4. That will provide a new stimulus of its own.

Take the $780M settlement and add it to the billions in back taxes, penalty and interest...plus the various island hideaways and we may not have to borrow any more from the true patriots to get us out of trouble.

[karynnj]

6. Interesting way to look at it

In addition, it could lead not just to those one time payment, but a steady stream of new tax revenue that always should have been paid. I hope the 19,000 names are passed on to the states as they likely were defrauded as well.

[LiberalFighter]

9. But but but but they earned their money. Why should it be taxed?

:sarcasm:

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[blm]

11. manufacturing in the US was deliberately collapsed - Jackson Stephens and GHWBush saw to that

when they set up their deals with Chinese industrialists in the 70s. WalMart was the global fascist agenda's testing ground to see how much fascism they could get by with the American people.

[TayTay]

12. I wonder if the end results will be

the end of coddling the wealthy because people stop being afraid of them and their threats to take their financial toys and go elsewhere. This is a form of extortion held over the heads of regular taxpayers who play by the rules and pay their taxes on time.

Why is it okay for the wealthy to not pay their taxes? Why should extortion be allowed to become public policy?

[blm]

13. Brava...and why should extortion be applauded and desired by any citizen of a democracy?

.

[karynnj]

16. I agree and I think the vast majority of people in this country

would and should be outraged that the wealthy even contemplate cheating their own country. It is ironic that the party that has relatively little problem with this had the nerve to question our patriotism. Patriotism is NOT threatening to move their legal residence out of the country.

[karynnj]

14. Are you seriously suggesting that we need to coddle the already

pampered super upper class - because if we make them pay taxes they will just leave us to live elsewhere? Now, they likely can find a banana republic willing to let them come and not pay taxes, but name a single first world country that will do so. There are none in Europe.

Between this and your comments finding the NY Post cartoon funny, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8207636&mesg_id=8209801 , I wonder if you are a troll or lost your way to free republic.

Then again - there is this one.

"....if this "stimulus" (really public spending, bill drives inflation through the roof
without creating any permanent, private sector jobs....and you can take that to the bank...
assuming you can find one not in financial trouble.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8209111&mesg_id=8209808

Now, this is straight out of republican rhetoric. The stimulus bill is a stimulus bill - and it has both spending and tax cuts intended to stimulate.

[karynnj]

17. Just noticed the comment has been removed and he is tombstoned.

[paparush]

15. Mr. Warbucks..Mr. Warbucks..so sorry to wake you sir, but there appears to be a problem

with the Swiss accounts.

/make it so!

[karynnj]

18. kick

[DFW]

19. This will turn out to be far less of a big deal than the headlines make it to be

Our Geneva office has their account with UBS, so I hear what is going on there.

Last year, UBS already asked all non-resident Americans to close out their accounts
and safe-deposit boxes. Even if you had $567.74 in Swiss francs to facilitate your
yearly Sprüngli purchases, they made you close it out. They have had incredibly
stringent anti-money laundering laws on the books for over a decade now, and even
fully legitimate offices of American companies needing accounts to import goods
from Switzerland and pay their Swiss employees have been given unbelievable shit
to comply with disclosure laws. If you want to import Swiss chocolates into the USA
via a legitimate company account there, you practically have to prove your virginity
before being granted permission. So, many of the really bad apples have moved on long
ago. I don't know where they park their cash these days--Brunei maybe? The Caymans?
But after recent scandals in Liechtenstein and the years-old reforms instigated within
Switzerland quite a while ago, anyone with an American passport and a lot of money
in a Swiss account will have had to undergo a LOT of disclosure well before now, and would
have known that the Swiss have been reporting stuff to American authorities for many years
now. Unless you have been in a coma for the last dozen years, this will come as no surprise
to any American holding a Swiss bank account.

[karynnj]

20. Thanks for this insight

It is good that Switzerland has already moved to fix any former problem. As one who never had a Swiss bank account, this is news to me. (But I have bought Swiss chocolate :) )

[DFW]

21. I'm down there every two months or so, and speak all three major languages spoken there

You tend to get the story first hand, especially since we have an office there
(in Genève) manned exclusively by Swiss nationals. We pay their salary in Swiss
francs, of course, and so have to maintain a bank account there. It was finally
cool, since we employ Swiss citizens, but even so, we had to beg and plead just
to maintain an existing account! Otherwise, the banks in Switzerland don't even
want to know. Non-resident Americans have been politely, but firmly, told to close
out their accounts permanently.

[karynnj]

23. I'm impressed by your language skills

It is strange that the article is either very wrong or these are old accounts where they sheltered money in the past.

[DFW]

25. It probably drew on older stances of the bank.

That happens. It is very in to dis Swiss banks these days, and it would be a boring
story to write that they have gotten very good about rejecting dirty money. Who wants
to read about people cleaning up their acts, after all?

As for the languages, I am station chief for Europe for my little outfit, and I
need to interact with a LOT of different nationalities every day. I speak eight
languages in addition to English, and still get blown away by some of the people
I deal with. No one expects an American to have any language skills at all, so I
am more effective in some things than would normally be the case for the typical
"Amurriken," but when I meet up with guys who speak most of the languages I do,
PLUS Hungarian, Romanian and conversational Hebrew, I feel very inferior indeed!

[leftynyc]

27. Looks like 17000 people

didn't get that memo.

[DFW]

28. Ignored the memo out of pure arrogance is more like it

Everyone got it. Don't forget, financial felons were protected under the Bush "Justice"
Department, and they probably got used to thinking laws didn't apply to them. Indeed, under
Bush's AGs, most money laws didn't apply to anyone with a lower profile than Jack Abramoff.

If they owned or could somehow prove a Swiss residence, they were exempted from having to
liquidate their accounts, too, unless there was some kind of signal from Washington about
them. I know one or two legitimate American residents of Switzerland who are married to
Swiss citizens and really and truly do live there. They have been scrutinized, but allowed
to live normally there with a personal bank account. It's the people with NYC penthouses,
villas in Laguna Beach, the Hamptons or Highland Park, etc. that are getting the bulk
of the scrutiny.

[hatrack]

22. Can't rely on anonymity when bending yourself double to evade taxes?

What's the world coming to?!?

:eyes:

[politicasista]

24. Kick

Thanks for links. :kick:

[WinkyDink]

29. Criminals the world over lament.