Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes text missing in the original.)
... persons moving assets from their countries into OECD financial centers, including the United States, to take advantage of de jure or de facto bank secrecy in those centers and avoid foreign taxes?
Senate Report Overview
The Permanent Subcommittee's report, "Tax Haven Abuses: The Enablers, The Tools and Secrecy" on August 1, 2006 ("Senate Report"), was released in conjunction with a hearing by the Permanent Subcommittee ("August 1, 2006, Hearing").1 The Senate Report and the August 1,2006, Hearing were a followup to a hearing that the Permanent Subcommittee held on July 18, 2001 ,"What is the U.S. Position on Offshore Tax Havens?" ("July 18, 2001, Hearing").2 The Senate Report includes recommendations that raise several questions.
The Senate Report asserts that financial professionals, applying tax haven secrecy laws and practices that limit corporate, bank, and financial disclosures, often use offshore tax haven jurisdictions as a "black box" for U.S. persons to hide assets and transactions from the IRS, other U.S. regulators, and law enforcement. The Report "is an attempt to open that black box and expose how offshore and U.S. financial professionals are helping U.S. citizens conceal and secretly utilize offshore assets, while undermining, circumventing, or violating U.S. tax, securities, and anti-money laundering laws."
Offshore tax haven and secrecy jurisdictions today hold trillions of dollars in assets. While these jurisdictions claim to offer clients financial privacy, limited regulation, and low or no taxes, too often these jurisdictions have instead become havens for tax evasion, financial fraud and money laundering. A sophisticated offshore industry, composed of a cadre of international professionals including tax attorneys, accountants, bankers, brokers, corporate service providers, and trust administrators, aggressively promotes offshore jurisdictions to U.S. citizens as a means to avoid taxes and creditors in their home jurisdictions. These professionals, many of whom are located or do business in the United States, advise and assist U.S. citizens on opening offshore accounts, establishing sham trusts and shell corporations, hiding assets offshore, and making secret use of their offshore assets here at home. Experts estimate that [individual] Americans now have more than $1 trillion in assets offshore and illegally evade between $40 and $70 billion in U.S. taxes each year through the use of offshore...