Switzerland (swissinfo.ch)

A United States tax amnesty, part of a campaign to crack down on perceived tax havens such as Switzerland, has netted 7,500 repentant tax dodgers.

An investigation into UBS, that found that the Swiss bank had helped US citizens evade tax, helped fuel a crusade to weed out cheats who were using offshore accounts to hide undeclared assets.

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The key informant who helped U.S. tax authorities build their ground-breaking case against UBS AG (UBS), headed to prison for helping the Swiss bank's clients evade taxes, is looking to the Internal Revenue Service for a potential multi-million dollar award when he gets out.

Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS private banker who was sentenced in August to more than three years in prison, is seeking payouts on multiple fronts from the IRS, saying the agency had no case against the Swiss banking giant - or against thousands of American tax cheats - without him.

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) — Some 7,500 international tax dodgers have applied for an amnesty program that promises no jail time and reduced penalties for tax cheats who come forward, the Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday.

The tax dodgers were hiding money in more than 70 countries and on every continent except Antarctica. Accounts ranged from just over $10,000 to more than $100 million.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some 7,500 wealthy Americans turned over information about hidden overseas assets, including some valued at more than $100 million, ahead of a tax amnesty program's Thursday deadline, the top U.S. tax collector said. 

Doug Shulman, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, said his agency would expand its crackdown on offshore tax evasion and will open new criminal investigation offices in Beijing, Panama and Sydney, Australia. The amnesty plan revealed accounts in 70 countries.

The pending 40 month prison sentence for one of the most important U.S. whistle-blowers ever has been roundly criticized as unfair. Critics say not only does Bradley Birkenfeld deserve reward for making the tax-evasion case against UBS, his former employer, but his harsh treatment is a bad example for those who want to expose fraud.

 

 

MIAMI, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The key informant in the U.S. tax evasion case against Swiss bank UBS AG faces prison next year, but his harsher-than-expected treatment by the U.S. Justice Department will undermine efforts to expose secretive offshore tax havens, lawyers and whistle-blower advocates say.

No one, including himself, would argue that Bradley Birkenfeld, 44, is a saint. The former UBS private-banking executive hasn't hidden the fact that he once bought diamonds with illicit money in Europe and then spirited them to California stuffed in a toothpaste tube, all part of an effort to conceal $200 million in assets on which his client - the Russia-born, California-based real estate mogul Igor Olenicoff - owed $7.2 million in U.S. taxes. But at the same time, almost no one in the U.S. government would deny that Birkenfeld was absolutely essential to its landmark tax-evasion case against Swiss banking giant UBS. The former UBS employee turned whistle-blower exposed the previously hidden world of offshore tax shelters, which cheats the Treasury out of about $100 billion a year. Thanks to his insider information, UBS was fined $780 million, and it promised to "exit entirely" from the U.S. tax-shelter business and to provide the names of thousands of American tax dodgers, from which hundreds of millions of dollars still might be collected. It also led to new tax treaties with the Swiss that should provide unprecedented tax information in civil cases and better access to such data in criminal cases. 

Associated Press October 1, 2009. Dangle some cash and a lot of people are happy to turn in their employers for cheating on their taxes.

Since Congress beefed up whistleblower rewards in late 2006, tips about suspected tax cheats owing at least $2 million have jumped more than tenfold, the Internal Revenue Service said in a report Thursday.

In 2008, the agency received tips on 1,246 suspected tax dodgers, each owing more than $2 million. That's up from 116 big-money tips in 2007.

By David S. Hilzenrath, Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, August 20, 2009

In March 2006, an American employee of UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, sent a confidential letter to a top executive.

"I wish to invoke my rights listed under the UBS Whistleblowing Protection for Employees" policy, he wrote.

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--A key government informant in the U.S. tax investigation of UBS AG's (UBS) cross-border banking business was sentenced Friday to 3 years and 4 months in prison for helping the Swiss bank's American clients cheat on their taxes.