Monthly Archives: July 2013

The figure was revealed on Wednesday July 10, 2013, in a French parliamentary report. The report also described a variety of legal, technical, diplomatic and procedural issues that began almost as soon as the French tax authorities received five DVDs of data.

The report, explaining why it had taken so long to act on the data, said that there were internal obstacles over the different remits of the tax authorities and the prosecutor's office, which in 2010 transferred responsibility for the case from the Mediterranean city of Nice to Paris.

The Swiss authorities have demanded the computer specialist’s extradition from France so he can be judged for violating Switzerland’s banking secrecy legislation.

Falciani was questioned by French lawmakers on July 2 to help tighten proposed rules against tax evasion. A Franco-Italian, he had just returned to France after taking refuge in Spain from the Swiss authorities.

The sheer size of the client list, which ran to 65 gigabytes over several formats, meant it took a year to extract the names behind each client account, according to the report, in a project dubbed "Operation Chocolate".

From an original list of nearly 9,000 names, there are now 2,319 cases still open. The list was however not purged of “embarrassing” names, notably those of politicians, according to lawmaker Christian Eckert, one of the report’s authors for the National Assembly's finance committee.

The list shrunk largely because duplicate names were removed, while more than 500 cases could not be pursued because of insufficient data or because there was no indication of ill-intent.

After the client names were extracted it was found that there were $5 billion in undeclared assets, 70 per cent of which belonged to physical persons.

France, like countries across the world, is cracking down on tax after the financial crisis, which has put government budgets under strain and increased the need to maximise tax receipts.

So far, €186.4 million (CHF232 million) in taxes and penalties have been recovered, while €950 million in assets have been regularised.

Source:

Swissinfo

Swissinfo (2)

The Internal Revenue Service still has not finalized sign-up instructions for the new online portal, due to open by July 15 in one of the last steps toward implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) of 2010.

Hundreds of thousands of:

• Banks
• Insurance Companies and
• Investment Funds with US Customers

are required to register with the IRS by October 25 to avoid FATCA penalties starting on January 1, 2014.

In an effort to address some foreign concerns, the United States has signed FATCA deals with nine other governments so far that allow firms to report U.S. client information via their local tax authorities rather than directly to the IRS.

About 80 countries are in negotiations with U.S. Treasury officials about such pacts, known as intergovernmental agreements (IGAs), analysts said.

Germany on Friday passed legislation to implement its IGA with the United States. The United States aims to get as many countries as it can behind the legislation.

Chinese government officials have so far been publicly dismissive of FATCA, throwing into question whether financial firms in Hong Kong will be able to comply with the FATCA law. Hong Kong is said to be "initialing some preliminary discussion" with U.S. officials.

Source:

Reuters

The Internal Revenue Service is considering canceling employee bonuses and using the money to avoid two unpaid furlough days, the agency’s interim leader told staff members in a memo today.