Feeling Relaxed About Secret Overseas Tax Accounts? Well, Don’t Be!

The UBS settlement and the subsequent announcement that 14,700 Americans revealed their secret overseas bank accounts last year in a deal with the federal government may be just the tip of the iceberg. An article in today’s New York Times explains that a former banker from another Swiss bank – Julius Baer – is blowing the whistle on what may very well be tax avoidance schemes involving that institution. 

The Times article, by Lynnley Browning, quotes the banker, Rudolf M. Elmer, as saying, “Offshore tax evasion is the biggest theft among societies and neighbor states in this world.” It closes with Christopher S. Rizek, a tax lawyer at the law firm of Caplin & Drysdale, declaring that these allegations are “symptomatic of a generalized breakdown of bank secrecy.”
 
There will be more developments in the upcoming months about tax evasion and tax fraud, which we will cover here.
 
For now, take a good look at the Times article, “Swiss Banker Blows Whistle on Tax Evasion,” available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/business/19whistle.html?dbk=&pagewanted=print.