megimoo
03-23-2009, 02:09 PM
Cracking Down on Tax Cheats
Yet Another Levin Bill To 'Stamp Out Offshore Tax Evasion By Americans'
"I suppose Levin will look the other way from the crooked Congressmen and Tax Cheating nominees in his noble campaign to rout out tax cheats.If he stated in the Congress and the White House he could run his investigations for a full century and die in office at the task !"
Tax havens are waging economic warfare against the United States and honest, hardworking American taxpayers. Each year, the U.S. Treasury loses an estimated $100 billion in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses.
Recently, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, held a hearing on tax haven banks. We examined two banks, the actions they took to help U.S. clients evade U.S. taxes, and the suspected tax cheats who opened secret accounts at those banks to avoid paying their fair share. As a result of our investigation, one of the banks announced that it would stop opening secret accounts for U.S. clients and would instead report those accounts to the Internal Revenue Service.
The subcommittee’s investigation began in February 2008 when a global tax scandal surrounding LGT, a private bank owned by the Royal Family of Liechtenstein, prompted nearly a dozen countries to launch investigations into tax evaders whose secret accounts were revealed.
Liechtenstein is a tiny nation whose 35,000 citizens would fill a third of the University of Michigan football stadium. Despite its small size, its 15 banks boast of combined assets that exceed $200 billion. Those banks also operate behind a wall of secrecy that hides not only the assets and actions of their clients, but also actions taken by the banks themselves to help clients evade taxes, dodge creditors and defy court orders.
LGT officials refused to testify before our subcommittee, but Swiss bank UBS, one of the world’s largest financial institutions and a public company of international renown, agreed to appear at our hearing. UBS has an estimated 19,000 “undeclared accounts” in Switzerland for U.S. citizens with an estimated $18 billion in assets that have been kept secret from the IRS. At the hearing, UBS announced before the cameras that “UBS will no longer provide offshore banking or securities services to U.S. residents through our bank branches.” It also promised to cooperate with IRS efforts to identify the 19,000 U.S. clients with undeclared accounts.
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=301331
Yet Another Levin Bill To 'Stamp Out Offshore Tax Evasion By Americans'
"I suppose Levin will look the other way from the crooked Congressmen and Tax Cheating nominees in his noble campaign to rout out tax cheats.If he stated in the Congress and the White House he could run his investigations for a full century and die in office at the task !"
Tax havens are waging economic warfare against the United States and honest, hardworking American taxpayers. Each year, the U.S. Treasury loses an estimated $100 billion in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses.
Recently, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, held a hearing on tax haven banks. We examined two banks, the actions they took to help U.S. clients evade U.S. taxes, and the suspected tax cheats who opened secret accounts at those banks to avoid paying their fair share. As a result of our investigation, one of the banks announced that it would stop opening secret accounts for U.S. clients and would instead report those accounts to the Internal Revenue Service.
The subcommittee’s investigation began in February 2008 when a global tax scandal surrounding LGT, a private bank owned by the Royal Family of Liechtenstein, prompted nearly a dozen countries to launch investigations into tax evaders whose secret accounts were revealed.
Liechtenstein is a tiny nation whose 35,000 citizens would fill a third of the University of Michigan football stadium. Despite its small size, its 15 banks boast of combined assets that exceed $200 billion. Those banks also operate behind a wall of secrecy that hides not only the assets and actions of their clients, but also actions taken by the banks themselves to help clients evade taxes, dodge creditors and defy court orders.
LGT officials refused to testify before our subcommittee, but Swiss bank UBS, one of the world’s largest financial institutions and a public company of international renown, agreed to appear at our hearing. UBS has an estimated 19,000 “undeclared accounts” in Switzerland for U.S. citizens with an estimated $18 billion in assets that have been kept secret from the IRS. At the hearing, UBS announced before the cameras that “UBS will no longer provide offshore banking or securities services to U.S. residents through our bank branches.” It also promised to cooperate with IRS efforts to identify the 19,000 U.S. clients with undeclared accounts.
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=301331