The United States Senate is investigating Apple for allegedly negotiating a “special tax deal” with the government of Ireland as part of its effort to keep its massive cash hoard (currently valued at over $145 billion) overseas. In fact, Apple has chosen to take out loans to pay for its […]
Category: Offshore Accounts/International Tax Disputes
Four years ago, US tax probes into UBS found the bank aiding wealthy American clients evade paying federal taxes by placing their funds into secret Swiss bank accounts. The settlement, one of the largest in history, consisted of UBS paying over $780 million to the United States and, most controversially, […]
Let’s be honest, no one likes to pay taxes. But this aversion to giving up some of our hard earned money is usually offset by our desire to maintain a well-ordered society and infrastructure. Nevertheless, the “bad guy,” so to speak, in each country is usually the tax collector. In […]
Historically, privacy was always a basic feature of Swiss bank accounts. The premise was that no government had the right to know the contents of accounts or other information about their holders. Today, however, the privacy protections that formerly came with Swiss and other foreign accounts are changing profoundly. The […]
The U.S. Treasury Department continues to move forward on trying to get foreign governments to provide more information about Americans with foreign accounts. Treasury says it is merely implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which Congress passed in 2010. To many commentators, however, these efforts often seem like […]
The registration deadline for interests in foreign bank accounts is June 30. This means it is now less than a month away. For holders of foreign accounts, this date is akin to the filing deadline in April for individual tax returns. You’ve got to get FBAR on your radar or […]
Life, as the saying goes, is full of choices. For holders of foreign bank accounts, those choices continue to require up-to-date information and an awareness of effective tax strategy. Offshore account enforcement is a key area of emphasis for the IRS. The agency recently joined with European countries in an […]
The IRS is going after assets held in foreign accounts like never before. First it was not one but two iterations of the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative (OVDI). Coming soon is a new law called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). FATCA is an offshore account enforcement law passed […]
The Internal Revenue Service issued new guidelines in early June regarding its voluntary disclosure program to mitigate penalties for failing to report income in Swiss bank accounts and other offshore locations to avoid tax liability. Some U.S. taxpayers will have 90 days beyond the August 31, 2011, deadline to disclose […]
With the rollout of the 2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative (OVDI), the Internal Revenue Service is offering “incentives” through reduced penalties to those who have either knowingly or unknowingly failed to report income from monies in foreign bank accounts. This is the second such initiative in the last few years […]