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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For those who thought the UBS scandal with the IRS was bad, get ready for the latest crackdown news: India. Yep, the IRS has spread its wings even further and are now pushing HSBC to disclose its members who are suspected of having secret bank accounts in India.
According to Wall Street Journal, “Thousands of U.S. taxpayers of Indian origin have opened up accounts with HSBC in India since 2002,
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The IRS is giving foreign account holders another chance to get back into the system with their Limited Amnesty disclosure program to expire in August 2011.
Last time the IRS offered this amnesty program in 2009, some 15,000 consumers with undisclosed offshore accounts fessed up, paying the IRS a collective $400 million in revenue. Hoping for a repeat, the IRS is offering the limited amnesty program again this year to give
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President Obama has decided to give the IRS an extra $1.1 billion in the 2012 budget to create an additional 5,000 jobs for the IRS to go after tax delinquents.
According to a recent Bloomberg article, this increase in the budget to $13.3 billion will allow the IRS to focus on fighting tax evasion and to seek out fraudulent tax preparers.
Furthermore, almost half of the increase ($460 million) would support the
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This week, the Internal Revenue Services announced a new program for limited amnesty to help crackdown on Offshore Tax Evasion cases.  The Wall Street Journal covered this in an educational article called: IRS Sets Offshore Amnesty, Part II.
Author Laura Saunders quotes the IRS in regards to the first limited amnesty program that ran in 2009 from March to October, “More than 15,000 taxpayers stepped forward to confess to holding offshore accounts.”  The penalties are tougher than
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The Washington Associated Press wrote a great article called: IRS reduces penalties if tax cheats come clean. “This tax season it’s best to fess up and come clean when it has to do with hidden overseas assets, says IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman.”  The International Revenue Service just announced that it is willing to give offshore tax evaders until August 31st, 2011 to settle their dispute with a reduced fine and penalty
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For those who hold offshore or other undeclared foreign accounts, it’s time to become compliant. That is the message the IRS is sending to Americans who have sheltered funds in other countries. The IRS has been putting tremendous pressure on foreign banks—with success—to disclose their American account holders. Swiss giant UBS, in the face of legal action by the IRS, finally capitulated and disclosed its American clientele, and the IRS
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This week the Swiss parliament accepted a treaty with the United States, agreeing the terms which would have UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, disclose the names of 4,450 American account holders suspected of tax evasion to the IRS. This decision comes after a three year battle between U.S. tax authorities, the IRS and the Swiss bank over the bank’s involvement in allowing American clients to cheat the tax system by hiding
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The Swiss Parliament just ratified an agreement to surrender the names of 4,450 bank clients over to the IRS, as reported today in Americans May Have ‘Mere Hours’ to Disclose UBS Accounts to IRS. And the IRS has pledged to move swiftly to vigorously pursue UBS account holders who have attempted to evade their tax responsibilities. If you think your offshore bank account may be a potential IRS target, it’s
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Jim Angle of FOXnews.com reports that Americans involved in hiding offshore funds in Swiss Bank UBS have inspired the IRS to establish a new unit which will track high-wealth individuals operating globally. The IRS is ready to get to the bottom of the $300 billion tax gap that has been haunting the federal government for the past few years.  They’ve invested $20 billion in the program in order to guarantee
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Here they go again.  Hollywood stars reminding us they are regular people just like everyone else. Fox News reporter, Natalie Crnosija recently revealed some of Hollywood’s biggest tax evaders in her article Hollywood Stars Who Owe Uncle Sam Big Bucks in Back Taxes.  To name a few: Nicolas Cage—weighing in at $13.3 million, Pam Anderson—Dancing with the Stars despite a $1.7 million tax debt, and Joe Francis, founder of Girls
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In the latest news about tax evasion charges for UBS account holders, five more has just been found guilty for hiding funds overseas.
According to Wall Street Journal, “A number of UBS clients have agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for failing to report funds held overseas or by overseas entities.”
In many cases, people who know they are facing tax evasion charges will plead guilty for a lesser penalty than
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