Tax evasion from wealthy individuals using a variety of offshore schemes, including hiding assets in foreign bank accounts, robs U.S. taxpayers of tens of billions of dollars per year — and the costs for developing countries are even worse. A growing global norm in favor of transparency can ensure that all are held equally accountable for paying the taxes they owe.
Following today’s announcement by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) of the release of their “Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information: Common Reporting Standard,” the FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition released the following statement from its Director, Nicole Tichon:
Despite the damage that shadow banking and financial secrecy has caused to global markets and local budgets today’s release by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) of their 2013 Financial Secrecy Index ranking the world’s nations by their financial concealment shows a global financial network still remains hidden in the shadows. The FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition sees many opportunities for the U.S. to not only take action on this issue, but also in the process bring in new revenue to alleviate some of the constraints imposed under sequestration.
To the Editor:
Regarding “Florida bankers object to disclosing identities of foreign depositors,” OrlandoSentinel.com, April 18: The Florida Bankers Association, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and U.S. Rep. Bill Posey are off base in their reactions to the new Treasury Department rule requiring banks to report information to the Internal Revenue Service on deposit accounts held by foreigners. They already are required to do this for accounts held by U.S. citizens, U.S. residents and Canadians.
