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That could bring the British treasury around £5 billion ($7.8 billion). But Nicholas Shaxson, author of “Treasure Islands”, a book on offshore finance (and a former contributor to this paper), calls it a “Swiss tax swizz”: the country will in effect pay a fat fee to avoid revealing clients’ names. That undermines efforts at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Paris-based club of mostly rich countries, to set international standards on tax evasion.

Global Financial Integrity, a campaigning group, says poor countries “lose” more than $1 trillion a year to tax havens, around ten times the aid they receive. Two-thirds of this is tax evasion and avoidance, the group says, the rest transfers by criminals and the corrupt. Another outfit of fiscal inquisitors, the Tax Justice Network (TJN), cites research by the Bank for International Settlements, the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey to calculate that global offshore deposits amount to at least $9 trillion, some $2 trillion more than the total held at home by American banks. ActionAid, a charity, published research this week showing that the companies in the FTSE 100 index had 8,492 offshore subsidiaries.

Campaigners also want to see more countries agree to the automatic exchange of tax information on non-residents. Bilateral tax treaties normally require such exchanges only on request. This works if the government seeking information knows precisely what it is looking for and if the host government can obtain it. As this issue has moved up policymakers’ agendas, some havens have voluntarily become more co-operative. The Isle of Man, for instance, now automatically swaps information (though Jersey refuses to follow suit for fear of losing “competitive advantage”).

Overall, however, resistance to change remains strong, not least in big Western financial centre's such as Wall Street and in the City of London, which see the flexibility offered by tax havens as an essential part of their business model. Public discontent may be filling the campaigners’ sails, but political support for reforms is still patchy. France, which holds the presidency of the Group of 20 (a club of the world’s biggest economies) wants to discuss tax havens at next month’s meeting in Cannes. But other countries are less keen, and more urgent items crowd the agenda.

The bank has been asked by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to provide the requested information in line with an existing 1996 bilateral tax treaty between Switzerland and the United States, a Credit Suisse spokesman confirmed Nov. 8.

Credit Suisse mailed letters Nov. 2 to certain U.S. clients notifying them that the bank has been ordered to deliver information to the Swiss authorities, the spokesman said. The clients have also been told they must provide the Swiss authorities the name of a person authorized in Switzerland to receive legal documents and orders on their behalf.

The move by Credit Suisse to disclose American client names and account information is the latest twist in a showdown between Switzerland and the United States over the battered tradition of Swiss bank secrecy.

U.S. authorities, who suspect tens of thousands of wealthy Americans of evading billions of dollars in taxes through Swiss private banks in recent years, are conducting a widening criminal investigation into scores of Swiss banks, including Credit Suisse.

It is unclear how many American clients of Credit Suisse hold private banking accounts that have gone undeclared to U.S. tax authorities.

For more information go to Reuters.

1. Status is modified if the single owner of the entity is a bank. Treas. Regs. Section 301.7701-2(c)(2) (iii). 

2. Status is modified for certain tax liabilities. Treas. Regs. Section 301.7701-2(c)(2)(iii). These include: (1) federal tax liabilities of the entity with respect to any taxable period for which the entity was not disregarded; (2) federal tax liabilities of any other entity for which the entity is liable; and (3) refunds or credits of federal tax. 

3. Disregarded status ignored or modified for taxes imposed under Subtitle - Employment Taxes and Collection of Income Tax (Chapters 21, 22, 23, 23A 24, and 25 of the Code) and taxes imposed under Subtitle A including Chapter 2 - Tax on SelffEmployment Income. Treas. Regs. Section 301.7701-2(c) (2) (iv) (A). 

4. Status is modified for certain excise taxes, as described in Treas.Regs. Section 301.7701-2(c)(2J(v). Although liability for excise taxes isn't dependent on an entity's classification, an entity's classification is relevant for certain tax administration purposes, such as determining the proper location for filing a notice of federal tax lien and the place for hand-carrying a return under Code Section 6091

5. Conduit financing proposed regulations will treat a disregarded entity as separate from its single member. Code Section 7701 (I).

6. Special rules will apply in hybrid situations. Hybrid situations are circumstances where an entity is not disregarded in one jurisdiction but is disregarded in another.

Countries Identified as Havens.

In his final press conference in which he described summit outcomes, Sarkozy said that, in a report to the G-20, the Global Forum on Transparency and Information Exchange for Tax Purposes, fingered:

• Antigua
• Barbados
• Botswana
• Brunei
• Panama
• the Seychelles
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Uruguay and
• Vanuatu

He said the reports name two more, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, that he said have failed to adequately implement information exchange mechanisms that they have recently adopted.

“Countries that remain tax havens with banking secrecy will have to answer to the international committee,” Sarkozy warned.

OECD Comment.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which hosts the Global Forum, cautioned that the 11 countries Sarkozy named, which are all forum members, have committed to make changes to improve their information exchange.

Another BLACK LIST? 

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