President Obama promised in his campaign to target wealthy Americans who “do not pay their fair share”  of taxes on the backs of the middle class and working poor.  With the swiftness of Robin Hood, the Obama administration has set out to curb what costs the US Government an estimated $100 Billion in revenue annually. 

There is an upcoming deadline of September 23, 2009 which marks the end of a type of amnesty program on the part of the Internal Revenue Service to have US Taxpayers voluntarily disclose their offshore assets and back taxes owed to avoid criminal prosecution. 

The motivation for this voluntary disclosure is the pending case against Swiss Bank UBS which has admitted to targeting wealthy Americans  to aid them in hiding otherwise taxable income offshore.  Part of the settlement to avoid criminal indictment of the bank in the United States calls for UBS to disclose the names of the Americans hiding assets in Switzerland!

Aside from this recent development with UBS, due to the state of the global economy and its effect on the national treasuries of various industrialized nations in the US and Europe, there has been increased cooperation between any worldwide tax treaty countries.  This effort to replenish eachs’ Treasuries by the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”  joint effort is essentially an effort to help police each others’ tax evaders.

So, while this latest effort might not stamp out tax evaders…it is definately making the world a lot “smaller” since “big brother is watching” a lot more easily with modern technology these days!

For any assistance with the US Tax Amnesty program, please contact our office at (305) 672-4272.