U.S. to probe thousands more offshore tax evaders

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - The U.S. government expects to probe thousands more cases of wealthy individuals dodging taxes through offshore bank accounts, on top of the high profile case against UBS AG, a U.S. tax attorney said on Monday.

"We expect over the next couple of years, in addition to the UBS cases, to have somewhere between 4,000 and 7,000 more cases coming to us with. These are from banks and governments cooperating," said Kevin Downing, a senior tax attorney of the U.S. Department of Justice, in a lecture in Singapore.

Some private banking clients are choosing to take cash from Swiss accounts and carry it by hand back to the United States, to avoid an electronic trail, only to be caught by U.S. law enforcement officers and penalized for tax evasion and illegal smuggling of money into the country, Downing said.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6421T020100503

overseas bank accounts last year. our accountant told us to file our FBAR on time no matter what- that they would be using it as a net for those with offshore accounts and addresses- i am disgusted by other americans i know that i suspect are evading taxes. we already get a nice expat write-off (we don't use the highways much living in another country, etc...) but we are still happy to pay our fair share.

hope they catch the guilty and leave us little honest fish alone!

because of the guilty folks, they have made taxes a nightmare for anyone with active overseas investments.

we have to submit the FBAR which tells the government about our foreign bank account details. not part of our taxes, but due at the same time- i am sure they compare the two if we pop up on an audit list. it wasn't enforced really until last year. sorry if a few bad apples have made it rough for you.

The US is one of the few countries in the world where expats have to pay full federal income tax even though they use almost none of the services that other citizens use. It's a disgrace.

http://taxes.about.com/od/taxhelp/a/ForeignIncome.htm

Nov 3 2009
Generally speaking, if you live and work outside of the United States, then you can exclude all or part of your foreign wages from US taxation. To qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion, you must :

* Work and reside outside the United States.
* Meet either the Bona Fide or Physical Presence tests.

If you qualify, you will be eligible to exclude up to $91,500 annually in foreign wages. The amount of the foreign earned income exclusion changes each year, and here's the maximum allowable exclusions for various tax years.

and if you live in a country that required resident aliens to pay taxes, then there is another deduction altogether...i don't know this one as well, as the country i live in has no taxes. (lots of 'fees', but no taxes)

SHOULD go a long ways toward helping pay for many services that were cut back during the Dark Ages (Bush years):
Environmental law enforcement, Food and Drug law enforcement, Health and Safety inspecting agencies, infrastructure, green energy investments, etc. to name but a few...

Step up folks.
Do the right thing.
(Hint: most patriotic citizens do this sort of thing every year by April 15th!)

Of course the previous administration wouldn't have bothered. But it is amazing that they along with the tea bags who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes, expect to get the goods and services provided by this great country of ours and not pay taxes.

How in the heck do they thing we could run without taxes. Do they think we could just sit still and the military, the roads, all the services performed by the inspectors, the government agencies would run on their own. Or do they think we could turn them over to private companies who are almost running this country now. Have the cost double even triple and we still be able to function. I think they are all crazy. They have to be, to think we could run as a country.

Of course the super rich would love it, because a lot of them own stock in the big corporations and they think they would get richer. It is the stupids like the tea bags that ignore the fact that corporations are the cause of most of the problems today and listen to the drum beat of Fox and now CNN spewing spewing spewing about the government being too big. Just an excuse to give the lucrative business to their favorite company.

Pat "Blood Diamonds" Robertson, lemme know. The richest and worst offenders never seem to suffer the consequences, especially powerful politicians and those who hide behind pseudoreligion. Call me a cynic, but my bet is they'll do nothing new, just pick off a few pissants to make a show that they're Doing Something while the banksters and the heaviest of the heavy hitters still roam free.