As 7,500 Reveal Secret Bank Accounts in 70 Countries, IRS Hunts for More | ABA Journal - Law News Now
As 7,500 Reveal Secret Bank Accounts in 70 Countries, IRS Hunts for More
Posted 8 hours, 56 minutes ago
By Martha Neil
As 7,500 Americans came forward to reveal, before a partial amnesty
deadline today, undeclared accounts in 70 countries, the Internal Revenue
Service is gearing up for an enhanced effort to find more.
It has opened offices in Beijing, Sydney and Panama City and plans to hire
800 more employees, reports Bloomberg. Additional staff will be deployed to
eight existing foreign offices including Barbados and Hong Kong.
Although a recent drive to crack down on United States residents who have
been evading tax by hiding assets offshore has been largely focused on
secret account holders at Swiss bank UBS AG, intensified future efforts to
identify tax evaders and those who have helped them cheat the U.S.
government will have a much broader scope, says Internal Revenue
Commissioner Douglas Shulman.
“We’re going to be scouring the 7,500 disclosures to identify financial
institutions, advisers and others,” he said during a conference call with
Bloomberg and other media. “This entire effort is not just about UBS and a
single country.”
The amount of the accounts revealed under the amnesty program, which
ends at 5 p.m. today, ranged from $10,000 to $100 million, the Wall Street
Journal reports.