The latest chapter of the IRS versus the Swiss Banks, reveals U.S. Prosecutors taking on the oldest Swiss bank of them all: Wegelin & Co.,
An article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Swiss Bank Wegelin Indicted on U.S. Tax Charges, outlines the criminal charges filed by U.S. Prosecutors on February 2, 2012 against Wegelin & Co., Switzerland’s oldest bank (founded in 1741) alleging that Wegelin knowingly aided wealthy Americans in
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An article in Bloomberg entitled IRS Called Easy on Criminal Tax Evaders in Watchdog’s Critique outlines Nina Olson of the National Taxpayer Advocate’s concerns that intentional tax evaders get more IRS help than those who weren’t intending to hide money from the U.S. government. Olson warns that future IRS collection efforts could be jeopardized due to confusion over the treatment of accidental tax evaders.

The IRS sees
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The head of the Internal Revenue Service described how the tax-collecting agency will place more pressure on tax cheats and companies that facilitate cheating. It’s time for tax cheats to worry.
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The Internal Revenue Service is “turning up the pressure” on tax cheats.
Those were the exact words from IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman when he spoke in December at the IRS/George Washington University 24th Annual Institute.
The IRS will direct much of the
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Richard Werdiger, a former client of Swiss bank UBS, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. He had hid more than $7.1 million at UBS and evaded nearly $400,000 of taxes.
Werdiger pleaded guilty in March 2011 and agreed to pay a civil penalty of more than $3.8 million for his failure to report his overseas accounts to the IRS.
From
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As a certified tax resolution specialist, I have said it many times before; it never pays to hide from the IRS. Nowhere is that more apparent than with the government crackdown on off-shore tax evaders. The creation in 2010 of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) set into motion serious U.S. efforts to combat tax evasion by U.S. taxpayers with investments in offshore accounts. Not only do FATCA regulations have
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In less than a month after the voluntary offshore bank declaration amnesty deadline expired, the results are showing that tax collection efforts from once elusive off-shore account holders appears to be working. A recent Reuters News Article – America’s Rich Losing Tussle with Taxman dated September 30, revealed that since 2008, the IRS has been successful at cracking down on off-shore tax shelters and going after Swiss banks (initially) and
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The Internal Revenue Service announced this week they received 12,000 new applications from the 2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative (OVDI) that closed on September 9, 2011. This pushes the total number of voluntary disclosures up to 30,000 since 2009.
The programs gave U.S.taxpayers with undisclosed assets or income offshore a second chance to get compliant with the U.S. tax system, pay their fair share and avoid potential criminal charges.
The IRS
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IRS.gov issued an extension to the 2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative.  The original August 31, 2011 has been extended to September 9th, 2011.
The extension is to give more time due to the impact of Hurricane Irene.  This gives delinquent taxpayers with undisclosed offshore bank accounts extra time to disclose their assets to the IRS.
There is no better time than now to get on this.  FBAR and Offshore Account Disclosure is
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Investment adviser and former USB AG banker was indicted for helping wealthy Americans hide unclaimed money from the IRS in offshore accounts. The USB AG bank, not included in the indictment, is a Swiss global financial services company headquartered in Basel and Zürich, Switzerland. Martin Lack, a Swiss resident, is accused of assisting 9 U.S. clients in transferring monies to undeclared foreign accounts. In an article by David Voreacos of
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I guest blogged on the CafeTax blog about FBAR Amnesty & The Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative (OVDI).  With the amnesty deadline coming up August 31st, I wanted to educate more people who hold foreign bank accounts that they must disclose these accounts to the IRS.
As I shared in my blog post, the headlines in the past few years have reflected the increased scrutiny of such accounts by the IRS and
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Do you have an offshore bank account? Does the IRS know about it?
Well… if they don’t now, they will. And when the IRS finds out about your offshore bank account, you can expect some serious reprecussions.
Why?
Because having offshore accounts and not filling out the proper paperwork, or not doing it correctly, is a serious crime and the IRS is cracking down on offshore tax evasion.
Tax Resolution Services recently wrote an
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The FBAR… anyone familiar with that term?  I would assume that most people aren’t, so let me explain. The FBAR is an acronym for the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts and is actually a form known as the TD F 90-22.1, a pdf directly downloadable from the IRS for your filing convenience.  Kelly Phillips Erb, aka: Tax Girl,  wrote an article for Forbes online explaining the important
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Not reporting offshore bank accounts is no laughing tax matter.  Bloomberg posted a report this week – Offshore Tax Crackdown Scorecard where well-known companies like UBS, Credit Suisse, and HSBC got the offshore tax evasion smackdown.
Brian Compton, President of Tax Resolution Services and I have been touting the necessity for FBAR and Offshore Account Disclosure for a LOOOONG time.
Seeing national news coverage is certainly shedding more light on this issue,
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The good old days of “safe tax havens” are over.
We saw this last year with the bust of UBS and the thousands of taxpayers who owed unpaid back taxes hidden in Swiss bank accounts. They all paid their dues–in the form of heavy IRS penalties.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, titled “Sacre-Bleu! The Foreign Account Penalty“, taxpayers are warned against non-compliance with FBAR restrictions. According to the article, “FBAR
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While the government is working to cut down federal spending, it’s also chomping at anything it can to get more revenue. The IRS is coming down hard on offshore account holders who are hiding assets in order to avoid tax liability.
This year, the IRS is offering for the second (and they claim the last) time, the voluntary disclosure program. In 2009, the IRS amnesty program was a huge success, bringing
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