IRS Cracking Down on Oversease Hidden Assets

In these unprecedented times, it’s pretty clear that the government is looking for each and every penny they can scrape out of people for Federal taxes, especially the wealthy, who actually pay the majority of the taxes here in the US because of the disproportionate percentage of their income they pay in taxes when compared to the average earner.

The problem is that a lot of wealthy people, for ions, have been stashing their money, and a lot of it, in Swiss and other overseas bank accounts. I think the Cayman Islands used to be one of the desirable places to have money too, but that I believe has fallen out of favor.

They stash this money in these overseas accounts because they are doing something pretty simple and clear cut, they are evading taxes by not declaring this income. I always wonder though, how do they think they won’t get caught. I mean, how do they get the money out – don’t they have to have it wired to a US account, and wouldn’t that then tip off the Feds that there was something fishy? I thought that banks were required to report suspicious activity like that, not only for tax evasion purposes to nail tax evaders, but also not because of how terrorism is funded.

Finally, an settlement has been made between the IRS and a large Swiss bank to declare the names of more than 50,000 Americans who are putting their money in the bank, presumably to evade taxes, although all may not be guilty of that, but why else would one have a Swiss bank account, I’m really not sure. This has a lot of the most wealthy, richest people in a frenzy seeking tax and legal advise on what they should do to avoid getting prosecuted for tax evasion.

Apparently there is a stipulation that if you have earned money legally and avoided taxes, you can get away without jail time as long as you come forward voluntarily and declare the money, pay any applicable back taxes, and also pay the incredibly hefty penalties and fines that are involved with not paying your taxes when you should.

The Obama administration has really made it an incentive to make back some money that they feel is missing and contributing to the deficit (uh, how about wasteful government spending, nah that can’t be it!), and they have proposed and had approved a suggestion to hire 800 new IRS agents to go after people who have evaded their taxes via overseas accounts. Times are a changing, and some may think it’s not for the better.

I’m not really sure how this benefits people, but I’ll take their word for it that somehow down the line this helps average American citizens. I do think that everyone should pay their taxes though, and I’m not really sure why the richest of the rich try so hard to avoid paying their share when they usually have so much to begin with. Heck, who am I kidding, no one likes to pay taxes. It’s just a fact of life!