President Obama to close tax loopholes, Swiss banks comply

Excerpt:

Today in a joint announcement with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, President Obama proposed closing tax loopholes that have been in the U.S. tax code for years. The tax loopholes allow corporations, businesses and some individuals to hide their income in overseas locations so they don't have to pay U.S. taxes.

The president said that the current U.S. tax code allows businesses and certain individuals to avoid paying taxes legally. He said that the tax code gives preferential treatment to corporations that create jobs overseas.

"The way we make our businesses competitive is not to reward American companies operating overseas with a roughly 2% tax rate on foreign profits, a tax rate that costs tax payers 10s of billions of dollars a year. The way to make American businesses competitive is not to let some citizens and businesses dodge their responsibilities while ordinary Americans pick up the slack. Unfortunately that's exactly what we're doing."

The president continued, "We will stop letting companies that create jobs overseas take deductions on their expenses when they do not pay any American taxes on their profits."

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Earlier this year, the Department of Justice put pressure on Swiss banks to reveal American assets held in Swiss banks by issuing a deadline to do so before losing their U.S. operating license. UBS bank in Switzerland has already complied with the request, handing over client details.

The right-wing Swiss People's Party and the center-right Radical Party have expressed outrage. Toni Brunner, president of the Swiss People's Party said, "We are a sovereign state, and other countries should not be able to tell us what to do," he said. It's time to enshrine banking secrecy in our constitution."

Swiss banks take their banking secrecy very seriously, however, the secrecy doesn't extend to protecting those who break laws. Tax fraud is a crime and those who commit tax fraud by hiding their income in Swiss banks are not protected by Swiss banking secrecy laws.

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To read the entire article along with more info on Swiss banks and the video I posted to youtube, go here.