Bloomberg is reporting today that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will be holding a hearing on a crackdown on offshore tax evasion. According to Sen.Carl Levin, offshore tax avoidance costs more than $100 billion a year. The hearing will focus on the status of ongoing investigations into Swiss banks and their US clients which include Credit Suisse Group AG and 14 other banks.
Since 2009, over 70 taxpayers and nearly three dozen bankers, lawyers and advisors have been charged with cheating the IRS through hidden accounts. Through the OVDP and OVDI programs, more than 43,000 Americans have avoided jail time and have paid $6 billion in penalties, fines and back taxes. Many leads from these participants have resulted in the building of criminal cases that previously, would have avoided detection due to Swiss privacy laws. Lawyers indicate that these leads are generating examination of tax havens outside of Switzerland.
Lawrence Horn, a tax attorney at Sills Cummis & Gross in Newark, New Jersey said “If I were Senator Levin, I’d ask the Justice Department, ‘You did this program with the Swiss and 106 banks signed up for non-prosecution, so will you take that prototype to other countries with a history of unreported bank accounts, such as Israel, India, Singapore and Hong Kong?”
The schedule for CSpan is not yet up for February 26. If you’ve got the February blues, maybe you can cheer yourself up watching Uncle Carl in action!
Offshore Tax Evasion: The Effort to Collect Unpaid Taxes on Billions in Hidden Offshore Accounts
Dirksen Senate Office Building
February 26. 2014
09:30AM – 05:13PM
Wow, $36 billion estimated lost by the US?
Well the bank bailout of 2008 is estimated to have cost $25bn
And the top 10 Hedge Fund managers earned about $8bn in 2015, taxed at 15%.
And what did the Iraq war cost, $10bn a month? Or a total of $1.1 trillion?
And of course even tax-evaded money comes back into the economy, paying sales taxes and making business run.
Seems they don’t make a very convincing case for setting up a huge worldwide financial control apparatus.
For some perspective, the $36 billion amount is 1.08% of the expected US Federal budget revenues for FY 2016 of $3.340 billion.
A 2013 Reuters article said that the total annual “tax gap” for the US was between $385 billion or $450 billion, dependent on the definition:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/16/usa-tax-gap-idUSL2N0HB0IN20130916
At any rate, an academic has estimated the offshore component and it is far, far lower than the amount crowed by the windbag, former Sen. Levin.