US: tax evasion purge begins
The US Treasury isn't waiting for the inevitable Obama victory. And it's not waiting until the revenue dries up as unemployment figures rise and interest rates drive homeowners into penury and people think non or late payment of tax is a good way of improving their domestic cashflow. It's already starting to attack those is suspects of hiding wealth from its gaze.
Obama and Senator Carl Levin know that they are preaching to the converted when they ask the US elected representatives to help them catch tax evaders. And so they know that much of their Stop Tax Havens Abuse Bill will be passed without argument.
But in the dying days of the Bush presidency, the US Treasury is trumping that Bill by demanding that US operations of Swiss Bank UBS disclose details of customers' accounts.
That's not spectacular news: but the way they are going about it is.
The US Treasury is working with the US Department of Justice to seek so-called "John Doe" summonses against account holders at the bank.
For UBS the problem has arisen because a former UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, has told the IRS that the bank routinely helped wealthy Americans to conceal the true value of their wealth in the US and elswhere. Reports say that he has told the IRS that there is as much as USD20 milliard hidden in UBS accounts around the world.
The "John Doe" summonses would allow the IRS to demand information relating to accounts even when the identity of the account holder is not known.
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