Tough Calls for US Tax Dodgers & Counsel; Secret Bank Accounts Exposed
An international crackdown on holders of once-secret offshore bank accounts is putting some wealthy clients of U.S. lawyers on the hot seat as they try to figure out what to do about possible criminal prosecution concerning unpaid income tax on assets concealed overseas.
Do they confess and plead for mercy? Quietly file amended tax returns, along with hefty checks, and hope prosecutors are too overworked to pursue them? Or say and do nothing and hope for the best? All are viable options, and which is the best choice is a judgment call, reports the Wall Street Journal.
“People are having trouble sleeping at night,” tax attorney Charles Rettig of Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez in Beverly Hills, Calif., who advises such clients, tells the newspaper. “They don’t want to go to prison.”
One required course of action is clear, however, according to Rettig, as an ongoing probe by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service of some 100 American taxpayers with once-secret bank accounts in Liechtenstein continues. If you have such an account, he says, “lawyer up immediately.”
Liechtenstein is, however, as an article today in the German magazine Der Spiegel notes, far from the only country in which banks may be forced to reveal information about the holders of once-secret accounts to U.S. authorities.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Spy Saga Sparked Liechtenstein Tax Probe”
ABAJournal.com: “Revised Reporting Law Could Mean Big Penalties for U.S. Clients of UBS”
Money-RX Blog: “UBS Tax Evasion Probe Nets American Clients”
