http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2013/05/senator_rand_pauls_fight_for_o.php
From Citizens for Tax Justice:
Today Senator Paul is still blocking such treaties. Taking his efforts a step further, he has introduced a bill to repeal a major reform that clamps down on offshore tax evasion. That reform is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which was enacted in 2010 as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act. Senator Paul says he opposes it because of “the deleterious effects of FATCA on economic growth and the financial privacy of Americans.”
His arguments are entirely unfounded and the only thing he is accomplishing is to help those illegally hiding their income from the IRS. FATCA basically requires taxpayers to tell the IRS about offshore assets greater than $50,000, and it applies a withholding tax to payments made to any foreign banks that refuse to share information about their American customers with the IRS.
For a country with personal income tax (like the U.S.), that kind of information-sharing is indispensible to tax compliance, as the IRS stated in its most recent report on the “tax gap”:
Overall, compliance is highest where there is third-party information reporting and/or withholding. For example, most wages and salaries are reported by employers to the IRS on Forms W-2 and are subject to withholding. As a result, a net of only 1 percent of wage and salary income was misreported. But amounts subject to little or no information reporting had a 56 percent net misreporting rate in 2006.
So why shouldn’t foreign banks that benefit from the business of U.S. customers report the assets they deposit to U.S. tax enforcement authorities? Without such reporting, people who have the means to shift assets offshore are able to evade U.S. income taxes, while the rest of us are left to make up the difference.
Looks like Citizens for Tax Justice fears public comments.
… and vice-versa? Will Congress approve this full reciprocity?
they are listed in gotrack as one of the supporters of the bill HR2847. Also, possibly, you can track how much they gave to campaigns
It’s all the hoopla that creates this stuff from the beginning and why the OECD is got a big woodie for it all
And, as usual, with a corporate tax rate of 35%, highest in the world, everything else in the world is a tax haven. Including Sweden.
Apparently no way to leave a comment. Shame can’t point out how wrong they are with the twisted logic they use.
@Steve Klaus…
Let’s face it, these guys don’t want debate!
They have a Facebook page where this article was posted on May 13th.
https://www.facebook.com/taxjustice
“So why shouldn’t foreign banks that benefit from the business of U.S. customers report the assets they deposit to U.S. tax enforcement authorities?”
Actually, the question should be: Why SHOULD these foreign banks have to report anything to any foreign government? They’re certainly not tools for the IRS!
@mjh,
Correct!
@Mark Twain
35%? Only if they repatriate the money. Ever wonder why they leave all that cash outside the USA? Yet we get saddled with citizenship based taxation like chattel, and then get looked at suspiciously for leaving, too?
If these ‘Citizens for Tax Justice’ are really interested in tax justice, then they would welcome a debate on FATCA, citizenship base taxation, and any other such tyrannical policies.
Otherwise, they may as well be yet another astroturf group acting like a mouthpiece for the government.
mjh49783: they have some more dribble about corporate taxes on another page too, where they muddle some figures which (unwantingly) actually prove the point that the taxes and repatriation costs for corps brings in less money to the USA than other countries.