"IRS Launches Crackdown on Offshore Tax Evasion" (3-26-09 AP via CNBC)

[bobthedrummer]

"The IRS is ratcheting up the pressure on Americans who kept secret Swiss bank accounts, giving them six months to come clean and cough up any evidence against their advisers or bankers."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29897220

What do you think about this, DU?

A lot of my thoughts are founded in the work of Lucy Komisar, check out her website, The Komisar Scoop-linked below. We are talking about black-budget networks, indeed we are.

http://thekomisarscoop.com/

[sui generis]

1. I think the IRS should ratchet up pressure against everyone

witchhunts are for puritans.

Seriously, before I would give an answer I could believe, I'd want to know this:

1. How much potential tax revenue from underreported foreign account money is being lost?
2. How much potential tax revenue from underreported domestic account money is being lost?

While we should focus on clearly criminal behavior, we should also focus IRS limited resources on where it stands to recover the most money. Overseas accounts are sexy and provocative and tempting for a cathartic burn-the-evil-rich fuckover, but there are many more middle class tax evaders who don't have the money to fight the IRS forever right here in the U.S., and likely most of them are republicans.

Let's sweep the turds off our own doorstep first.

[bobthedrummer]

2. What do you understand about black-budget operations, sui generis?

The Komisar Scoop
http://thekomisarscoop.com/

[sui generis]

4. is that a facetious question?

Worked for the top PE firm in the world for a number of years . . . at the very top and nearly 2 decades of experience in both government and international banking, again in the exec and C-Level. I can discuss many, many forms of international revenue management, all legal, auditable, and transparent to the IRS.

What do YOU know?

I'm not saying to protect anyone - just saying be expedient. If recovering revenue is the goal, then a witchhunt so we can get our jollies burning those evil foreign account holders is a waste of time and money when the bulk of underreported revenue is actually happening right here in the U.S., by Joe the Plumber, in $20 dollar increments.

If I'm not clear about this: going on a witchhunt through every deposit and withdrawal transaction in a foreign account held by or asssociated to an American citizen just because the "evidence" is merely that they have an account is tantamount to going house to house in an upscale neighborhood looking for drug paraphernalia just because some drug dealers live in nice houses.

You won't change my mind.

[bobthedrummer]

6. No. Myself, my wife and our adult children, our extended families have been harmed by Nixon era ops

that just kept on a rolling through the decades-that's my credibility on the subject.

[sui generis]

8. in that case

let me state that I hate government "black box" anything.

With the questionable exception of budgeted military readiness, "black" budgets have no place in the administration of government, at all, and absolutely NOT at all when aimed at U.S. citizens.

The money is not accountable, the people using it aren't accountable, and any fuckups are usually so buried under red tape and evasion and diversion or just plain re-writing the rules and other "gotchas" that it's easier to give up than push on and spend more money to continue in legal process.

No - I think it's un American in the extreme. We should not make Americans into targets just because we can't find targets abroad. Shades of McCarthy era HUAC again after 9/11 - god forbid you send money to any organization in the middle east but an AIPAC pro-israeli one or you will be stopped at the airport and harassed FOREVER.

Even the no-fly lists that have no accountability for how a name gets added, nor how to remove a name proven false - perfect example.

[SlipperySlope]

3. I have mixed feelings...

I have no problems with someone wanting to keep their wealth secret from the government. If you want to put $10,000 in a mason jar and bury it in your back yard and tell nobody, or if you want to put $10,000 in a Swiss bank account and tell nobody, either way I think you are fine.

I do have problems if they are using that secrecy to avoid taxes.

So I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't know how to preserve #1 and avoid #2.

[JJ]

5. the only reason they want to keep it secret is to avoid taxes

and it surely isn't 10 grand, most certainly millions, and hidden offshore to avoid income taxes.

[SlipperySlope]

7. If I had money in a Swiss bank account, it wouldn't be to avoid taxes.

It would be for protection from non-tax related issues.

Examples:

1: Protection from a "bank holiday" (a la United States 1933)
2: Protection from seizure (a la Argentina 2008)

[whosinpower]

9. then it would not need to be secret-nt