A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explores the tax proposals included in the federal budget outline that President Obama submitted to Congress on February 1. Like the budget he submitted last year, it is a vast improvement over the policies of the Bush years and continues to outline a progressive reform agenda.

But, also similar to last year, the President’s budget could be greatly improved with more aggressive policies to raise revenue. Over the coming decade, the President proposes to cut taxes by $3.5 trillion. We include in this figure the cost of extending most of the Bush tax cuts and relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) as well as additional tax cuts that President Obama proposes.

His budget would offset a portion of this cost with provisions that would raise $760 billion over a decade by limiting the benefits of itemized deductions for the wealthy, reforming the U.S. international tax system and enacting other reforms and loophole-closing measures.

The report concludes that the federal government should collect at least as much revenue as the President proposes in order to avoid larger budget deficits. There are two bare minimum requirements for Congress to achieve this. First, Congress must not extend any more of the Bush tax cuts than President Obama proposes to extend. Second, Congress must raise at least as much revenue as President Obama has proposed ($760 billion over ten years) through loophole-closers and new revenue measures.

Read the full report.

"From some on the right, I expect we'll hear a different argument -– that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away.  The problem is that's what we did for eight years."  (Applause.)  "That's what helped us into this crisis.  It's what helped lead to these deficits.  We can't do it again."

President Obama spoke these words in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, after pledging to enact an agenda that will create jobs and tackle our long-term budget deficit. He did a good job of explaining that the budget deficits that exist today are the result of deficit-financed tax cuts, two deficit-financed wars, and a major recession all occurring before he entered the White House.

But one has to wonder if President Obama is gently bearing left at a time when any sensible directions would call for a sharp left turn.

The Bush Tax Cuts

He remains committed to extending the Bush income tax cuts for the 98 percent of taxpayers who have adjusted gross income (AGI) below $250,000 (or below $200,000 for an unmarried taxpayer). The budget document released by the administration last year showed, in a convoluted way, that this would cost $1.88 trillion between now and 2019. His proposal to partially extend the Bush cut in the estate tax (making permanent the estate tax rules in effect in 2009) would cost another $576 billion over the same period, for a total of about $2.45 trillion.

The estimated costs of these proposals may be different in the budget to be released next week (since all the projections change at least somewhat in response to developments in the economy). But make no mistake, the cost of extending most of the Bush tax cuts far exceeds the savings the President hopes to achieve with his proposed spending freeze (which will actually cut spending if one accounts for inflation and other factors).

Cutting Non-Security Discretionary Programs

The administration is reported to believe $250 billion can be saved from the spending freeze, which would last three years but would not apply to national security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. The first problem is that these exempt categories of spending, along with interest payments on the national debt that cannot be avoided, make up 70 percent of the federal budget. Americans love to complain about wasteful government spending, but few realize that, once you eliminate those categories of spending that are very popular with the public, there's not a whole lot left to cut. The non-security discretionary spending that is left has come under increasing pressure in recent years since it's the only part of the budget lawmakers feel comfortable attacking.

The second problem is that cutting back spending when the economy may still be weak could prolong our downturn. Progressive observers have warned that the Roosevelt administration's decision to stop stimulating the economy and focus on deficit-reduction plunged the country back into a deeper depression in 1937.

For their part, administration officials have explained that they are not proposing an across-the-board freeze. Rather, they will identify particular types of spending that represent wasteful giveaways to special interests rather than public services that people depend upon.

Even if that's true (and the jury is still out on that), it's still peculiar that taxes aren't getting more attention. This is the third problem with the President's approach. The need for higher taxes is like an 800 pound elephant in the room that everyone is trying to ignore, even if they vaguely acknowledge that Bush's tax cuts got us into this mess. Does a family with an income of $190,000 really need every cent of their Bush tax cuts? Do families with $7 million in assets really need to be fully exempt from the estate tax? The President's tax proposals would have us believe so.

Steps in the Right Direction

The President certainly wants to move in the right direction, as was evident in various parts of his speech. He reiterated his proposal to charge a fee on risk-taking by the largest banks, which would raise $90 billion over a decade according to the administration. We've argued before that this is entirely reasonable. The institutions affected know they have an implicit guarantee from the government and are prone to put the entire economy at risk as a result. It makes sense to demand that they pay up in proportion to their risk-taking.

The President also reaffirmed his desire to do something about offshore profit-shifting by corporations. The proposals he made last year along these lines would raise $200 billion over a decade and would be extremely important, as we have explained in detail, in preventing U.S. corporations from shifting their profits to other countries.

Sometimes this shifting means companies actually move jobs and operations offshore, but other times it involves accounting gimmicks and transactions that exist only on paper. Either way, Americans lose tax revenue for no good reason other than that Congress is afraid to take on the lobbying power of multinational corporations.

America has a budget problem that is long-term in nature. The money we spend this year or next year to stimulate the economy has little impact on the long-term deficit. Reforming our tax system permanently, however, is an important part of the long-term solution.

On December 9, the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R. 4213, which would extend a series of tax cuts (mostly breaks for business) but would offset the costs by closing the infamous "carried interest" loophole for buyout fund managers and by cracking down on offshore tax cheats.

The bill would also require the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to issue reports evaluating these tax cuts before the end of next year, when Congress is likely to act on them again. Congress would receive these reports at the same time it is trying to decide which of the Bush tax cuts should be extended, what to do with the President's tax reform proposals, and how to balance the federal budget. In this context, it is hoped that the reports will prod some lawmakers to take a more critical look at corporate tax breaks before extending them again.

CTJ joined the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME and eight national non-profits in signing a letter in support of H.R. 4213 for these reasons.

The provisions extending the tax cuts (often called the "tax extenders") are enacted by Congress every year or so. CTJ and other analysts have often criticized the tax extenders as corporate pork routed through the tax code.

But H.R. 4213 is a major step in the right direction for the reasons spelled out in the letter to Congress. (See our previous article on H.R. 4213 for the points made in the letter.)

Prospects in the Senate are unclear. One problem is the full agenda the Senate has with health care reform.

Another problem is that the chairman of the Senate tax-writing committee, Max Baucus (D-MT) believes that the carried interest issue is “best dealt with in the context of an overall tax reform,” according to a spokesman. This is, frankly, an all-purpose excuse for legislators who want to avoid closing even the most unfair and outrageous loopholes. They know full well that comprehensive tax reform might not happen for decades. (The last one was in 1986, after all).

The carried interest loophole allows managers of private equity funds (a euphemistic term for buyout funds) to pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. It involves using the tax subsidy (the special top rate of 15% for capital gains) that was intended for people who invest their own money. Whether or not the capital gains tax subsidy is justified is another matter. (We believe it's not.) But private equity fund managers are not investing their own money anyway. They're being paid to manage other people's money, but by calling their compensation "carried interest" they're able to pay income taxes at the low, capital gains rate.

The notion that Congress can tackle tax schemes this blatantly unfair only in the context of comprehensive tax reform (which apparently only comes once every 25 years, if even that often) is ridiculous. Advocates of tax fairness need to call upon the Senate to approve H.R. 4213 as it was written and approved by the House of Representatives. 

Citizens for Tax Justice and several other national organizations have come together to support passage of (H.R. 4213), which fairly and responsibly offsets the cost of the "tax extenders." The House of Representatives plans to vote on this bill as early as December 9.

Read the letter in support of H.R. 4213.

To be sure, many of these organizations question the efficacy and fairness of some of the "tax extenders," which are provisions that Congress enacts periodically to extend, for a year or so, various temporary tax breaks. But we nonetheless agree that the core revenue-raising provisions included in this legislation are important reforms to our tax system. We  support this bill for the following reasons:

H.R. 4213 would reverse Congress's tradition of increasing the budget deficit every year by extending "temporary" tax breaks without paying for them.

Unlike many previous "tax extenders" bills, this legislation includes revenue-raising provisions that would offset the costs of extending these tax breaks. Enacting corporate tax breaks (which make up the bulk of the "tax extenders") without paying for them contributes to our federal budget deficits and our national debt, which is borne by all Americans. The revenue-raising provisions in this bill prevent an increase in the deficit while also making the tax code fairer and more efficient.

H.R. 4213 would finally close the loophole for what private equity fund managers call "carried interest." (See CTJ's previous analyses of the carried interest loophole.)

A middle-income person typically pays income taxes as high as 25 percent plus payroll taxes. Private equity fund managers can receive millions of dollars (or even billions of dollars, during boom times) in compensation for their work, but by calling this income "carried interest," they pay only income taxes at a 15 percent rate.

The "carried interest" label essentially allows these fund managers to pretend that this income is a return on capital investments (and thus eligible for the exception in the income tax that subjects capital gains to an income tax rate of no more than 15 percent). This pretense clearly contradicts the will of Congress in creating the subsidy for capital gains, which was meant to reward those who invested their own money, not those who are simply being paid to manage other people's money.

H.R. 4213 also includes a proposal introduced by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel to prevent wealthy Americans from cheating on their U.S. taxes by hiding their income in offshore tax havens. (See CTJ's analysis of tax haven legislation.)

While this proposal is not as strong as we would prefer, it would be an important step forward to ensure that all Americans pay their fair share in taxes. Middle-income Americans typically have few opportunities to hide their income from the IRS. But wealthy Americans have access to lawyers and accountants who help them hide their income in offshore tax havens. Tax havens are countries that have a very low income tax (or no income tax) and laws that prevent their banks from cooperating with IRS enforcement efforts.

While the vast majority of taxpayers at all income levels do the right thing and pay their fair share, a minority of wealthy Americans are engaging in these activities that are both illegal and unfair. The Baucus-Rangel proposal would create strong incentives for foreign banks to provide information that would help the IRS identify tax cheats without creating any significant burden on the banks or their honest customers.

H.R. 4213 requires that the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) conduct studies evaluating the "tax extenders" before the end of next year, when Congress is likely to act on them again. (See CTJ's report calling on Congress and the administration to conduct regular reviews of tax expenditures.)

Providing a special corporate tax break through the tax code has the exact same effect as providing a subsidy through direct spending. Unfortunately, lawmakers have made almost no attempt to evaluate or even think critically about the effectiveness of corporate tax breaks before extending them each year. This contrasts significantly with lawmakers' attitudes towards the discretionary spending that they grapple with annually.

JCT's reports of the effectiveness of tax breaks will at least provide Congress with a basis to judge whether or not these tax provisions are worth their costs. This is a common sense reform that is long overdue.

On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations considered proposed tax treaties with France, New Zealand, and Malta. CTJ director Robert McIntyre and Wayne State University law professor Michael McIntyre submitted written testimony to the Committee arguing that the treaties are based on standards that are widely recognized as obsolete and ineffective in catching offshore tax cheating. They point out that it makes no sense for the U.S. to wrap up major litigation over Switzerland's UBS and then enter into treaties with other countries that would not help us find the sort of cheating that took place in the UBS case.

Read the testimony.

Last year, Senator Carl Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reviewed various studies on the fiscal impact of offshore tax evasion and concluded that the resulting loss of revenue annually is in the neighborhood of $100 billion. (Yes, that's $100 billion with a "b" -- every year.)

Senator Levin then introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act in the Senate, and Rep. Lloyd Doggett introduced the House version. This legislation makes several changes that would make it easier for the IRS to identify and prosecute Americans who illegally stash their income in countries commonly called tax havens, which essentially have no income taxes (or extremely low income taxes) and laws that prevent banks from revealing anything about their clients to the U.S. tax enforcement authorities. It also includes some steps that would prevent corporations from engaging in the most egregious offshore tax avoidance schemes using some of these same tax havens for their low or non-existent income taxes.

Many of us were disappointed when the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) made it's official estimate that the bill would raise less than $30 billion over an entire decade (since the ten-year cost of offshore tax evasion to law-abiding America is probably over a trillion dollars.)

But the low revenue "score" is not surprising. JCT has historically erred on the side of making very low revenue estimates for measures that enhance tax enforcement, since it's hard to predict how effective new enforcement measures will be. And for that matter, it's hard to know exactly how many people are engaging in offshore tax evasion and how much they're cheating. It could cost us less than $100 billion, it could cost more, but we don't know for sure. That's the nature of tax evasion -- the money is hidden from the government, so no one knows for sure how big the problem is.

But even the little bit of revenue that the Levin-Doggett bill would officially raise over a decade seems to be too much for some members of both parties in Congress. Yesterday, the chairmen of the two tax-writing committees, Rep. Charles Rangel and Senator Max Baucus, introduced their own bill to crack down on tax havens (officially called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), which will only raise $8.5 billion over ten years according to JCT.

The Baucus-Rangel bill does include important measures to require more reporting of foreign bank accounts and foreign assets and closing loopholes, and most of these provisions are in the Levin-Doggett bill. But Baucus and Rangel unfortunately left out some key provisions that are in the Levin-Doggett bill, which accounts for a large part of the difference in the revenue "scores" for the two bills.

Presumptions Against Americans Who Use Tax Havens

For example, the Levin-Doggett bill includes a list of countries that meet its definition of an "offshore secrecy jurisdiction," which is generally what we would call a tax haven. The Treasury would be authorized to remove countries from or add countries to the list as circumstances change. In tax evasion cases concerning accounts or assets in one of the listed countries, the IRS would be allowed three presumptions. (This means there would be three things that the IRS would not have to prove in court when prosecuting these cases, so the burden of proof would shift to the defendant.)

The first presumption would be that a U.S. taxpayer who “formed, transferred assets to, was a beneficiary of, or received money or property” from an offshore entity is in control of that entity. For example, this rule would prevent U.S. taxpayers from claiming that the trustee (usually a foreign person or entity) of their offshore trust is not permitted by the trust document to send money back to the U.S. to pay creditors (including the IRS).

The second presumption is that funds or other property received from offshore are taxable income, and funds or other property transferred offshore have not yet been taxed. The taxpayer will have to prove that the funds aren’t taxable income, or else pay the tax. The third presumption is that a financial account in a foreign country controlled by a U.S. taxpayer has a large enough balance ($10,000) that it must be reported to the IRS.

Special Enforcement Measures

Another set of provisions that are in the Levin-Doggett bill but not in the Baucus-Rangel bill would add to existing Treasury authority to impose special requirements on U.S. financial institutions. Under the Patriot Act, Treasury can impose a range of requirements on U.S. financial institutions dealing with certain entities -- from requiring greater information reporting to prohibiting opening accounts. The Patriot Act’s provisions are aimed at combating money laundering. The Levin-Doggett bill would extend that authority to allow Treasury to use those tools against foreign jurisdictions or financial institutions that are “impeding U.S. tax enforcement.” It would also add an additional tool to the Treasury’s arsenal: it would allow Treasury to prohibit U.S. financial institutions from accepting credit card transactions involving a designated foreign jurisdiction or financial institution.

Treatment of Foreign Corporations Managed and Controlled in the U.S. as U.S. Corporations

Yet another provision that is in the Levin-Doggett bill but not the Baucus-Rangel bill would treat foreign corporations as U.S. domestic corporations for tax purposes if 1) the corporation is publicly traded or has aggregate gross assets of $50 million or more, AND 2) its management and control occurs primarily in the U.S.

This provision of the bill deals with a certain type of tax avoidance rather than tax evasion, meaning a practice that may be technically legal even though it's an abuse of the tax system. The provision is particularly aimed at hedge funds and investment management businesses that are structured as foreign entities, although their key decision-makers live and work in the U.S. As Sen. Levin put it in his statement, “It is unacceptable that such companies utilize U.S. offices, personnel, laws, and markets to make their money, but then stiff Uncle Sam and offload their tax burden onto competitors who play by the rules.”

Less Robust Crackdown on Tax Havens Means Less Revenue

These provisions, which are some of the most important in the Levin-Doggett bill but which are not in the Baucus-Rangel bill, would raise $9 billion over ten years according to JCT. There may be many things that make Congressional leaders uncomfortable with these provisions, but surely one major factor is that it would require them to take on financial institutions that have subsidiaries in tax havens.

Economic Substance

There are other provisions included in the Levin-Doggett bill, but not the Baucus-Rangel bill, such as a provision codifying the “economic substance doctrine” in the Internal Revenue Code. The doctrine has been developed over the years by courts to disallow losses or deductions that have no economic substance apart from their tax benefits. Unfortunately, different courts have developed different interpretations of the rule and courts do not apply the doctrine uniformly. The bill would put the economic substance doctrine into the tax law, thereby disallowing losses, deductions, or credits arising from “tax avoidance transactions,” for example, where the present value of the tax savings far exceeds the present value of the pre-tax profits.

This particular provision was probably left out of Baucus and Rangel's bill simply because they want to use this as a revenue-raiser for other purposes, since it has already been attached to several bills.

The Path Ahead

The introduction of Baucus and Rangel's bill, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, is certainly a positive development because it means Congress might finally be ready to do something about those who cheat on their taxes at the expense of the rest of us. But Congress tends to take on a controversial issue only once every decade (or longer) so if the legislation that is finally enacted is too weak to make a difference, we're stuck with it for a while. That's why the Baucus-Rangel bill will need to be amended in committee or on the floor of the House and Senate to incorporate some of the best elements of the Levin-Doggett bill.

Senator Levin to Offer Tax Haven Legislation to Help Pay for Health Care Reform

This week, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan indicated that he will offer a measure to crack down on offshore tax evasion as a revenue-raiser to help pay for health care reform.

The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act

The measure Senator Levin plans to offer is one he introduced earlier this year, along with four co-sponsors, as a stand-alone bill called the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act (S.506). It would enact important new rules to deter offshore transactions designed to evade U.S. income tax.  Rep. Doggett introduced the same measure in the House the next day, with 59 co-sponsors (H.R. 1265). A description of the bill’s provisions is available here.

When the bill was originally introduced, Sen. Levin said “our bill provides powerful tools to end offshore tax haven and tax shelter abuses [which] contribute nearly $100 billion to the…annual tax gap.” Sen. Levin said, “With the financial crisis facing our country today and the long list of expenses we’re incurring to try to end that crisis, it is past time for taxes owing to the people’s Treasury to be collected.  And it is long past time for Congress to stop tax cheats from shifting their taxes onto the shoulders of honest Americans.

Paying for Health Care Reform with the Tax Haven Bill

A preliminary projection by the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the legislation would raise $29.8 billion in revenue over ten years. The ultimate amount of revenue may be many times that. Because these assets and income are not reported to the IRS, the true magnitude of the revenue loss is a mystery.

Attaching the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act would be a progressive way to help pay for health care reform because it is generally wealthy Americans that are able to take advantage of tax havens. (See CTJ's additional suggestions for progressive ways to pay for health care reform.)

The Tax Haven Problem

It is estimated that the international tax gap — the amount of taxes American companies and wealthy Americans evade through offshore tax activities — is as much as $100 billion per year.

U.S. citizens and residents are taxed on all their income, whether it is earned here or abroad. If a foreign government also taxes the income, that tax may be credited against their U.S. tax.

Wealthy taxpayers are able to avoid paying U.S. taxes that they legally owe by moving assets and income offshore to what are known as “tax havens.”  Tax havens are offshore jurisdictions that have low or non-existent income taxes as well as bank secrecy laws that they use to justify being uncooperative with investigations by tax authorities from other countries. Evading U.S. income tax by using tax havens is illegal and U.S. citizens that do it are subject to civil and criminal penalties, including possible prison terms.

The U.S. government’s investigation of banking giant United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) revealed that as many as 52,000 accounts there are owned by Americans. That’s just one bank in one of the dozens of offshore financial centers. Several UBS account owners have already pled guilty to tax evasion.

The latest plea came Tuesday when a Seattle area man, a former sales manager for Boeing, appeared before the court in connection with his plea agreement. Roberto Cittadini faces possible criminal penalties of three years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. He has already agreed to a civil penalty for failure to file a Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR) of up to one-half of the maximum balance of his offshore accounts which at one time contained as much as $1.9 million dollars. The great irony of this particular case is that since Boeing is a multi-billion dollar contractor for the U.S. government, part of Cittadini’s salary was paid by the U.S. government. He moved that money outside of the country to invest it and avoid paying U.S. income tax on the investment earnings.

As we have reported in recent weeks, the IRS is taking much-needed action to crack down on Americans who hide their income in offshore tax havens to illegally evade their U.S. taxes. One of the biggest developments is a settlement with the Swiss bank UBS, under which it will hand over to the U.S. information about 4,450 of its American clients who may be evading U.S. taxes.

But the IRS is giving these possible tax evaders plenty of opportunities to avoid punishment. The IRS implemented the six-month IRS Offshore Income Reporting Initiative, which is a voluntary disclosure program for foreign financial accounts that started on March 23, 2009 and was supposed to end on September 23.

This week, just two days before the voluntary disclosure program was scheduled to end, the Internal Revenue Service pushed back the deadline until October 15, 2009. The IRS said it had received numerous pleas from tax practitioners and attorneys around the country to extend the program so that they would be able to deal with the last-minute rush of taxpayers wanting to disclose.

Don't think these tax cheats suddenly got religion and want to become virtuous taxpayers. By using the streamlined procedures of the voluntary disclosure program, taxpayers are able to limit their penalties and avoid criminal prosecution. See the previous CTJ report with more details and the IRS guidance. The IRS stressed that no more extensions would be granted.

This week, governments around the world continued to turn up the heat on taxpayers who hide their income in offshore tax havens, as fallout from the settlement between the U.S. government and the Swiss mega-bank UBS continued.

Tax haven issues were prominent at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) meeting earlier this week in Mexico City. The OECD has a monitoring program tasked with addressing offshore tax abuses, and its president-elect suggested a "system of sanctions" may be implemented against countries not living up to certain accepted standards for the exchange of tax information to catch tax evaders.

At the meeting, the Mexican finance minister urged the 70 delegations at the OECD meeting to look at other methods of tax evasion besides bank secrecy. For example, he noted that corporate dividends often escape taxation. He urged the representatives to include money laundering and other opaque financial practices in their investigations, especially in developing countries.

Countries that want to at least put some effort into preventing offshore tax evasion continue to sign tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) with each other. Several new agreements were signed on the first day of the conference. Also that day, Austria, a long-time defender of bank secrecy, passed legislation allowing it to implement the new global tax standards after the European Investment Bank threatened to withdraw loans to Austria if it did not reform its bank secrecy laws.

In Switzerland last week, the government formally approved six of the 13 TIEAs that have been drafted with other countries. The agreement initialed with the U.S. in June was not approved, possibly because of the ongoing U.S. investigation of Swiss banking giant UBS.

UBS, the Swiss government, and the U.S. government reached agreements in the UBS case last month which anticipate that UBS will turn over approximately 4,450 names of account holders to the U.S. government. The U.S. government made its first formal request under the agreements and the first 500 names are to be provided within 90 days. The Connecticut attorney general has written Treasury and the IRS requesting that the names be provided to the state when they are received from the Swiss government so that his office can investigate whether state income taxes have also been evaded.

Noting the US/UBS agreement, last week a European Commission official stated that European Union members would expect the same cooperation from the Swiss. This week, the French minister of budget announced that the French government had compiled a list of 3,000 French-held Swiss bank accounts from audits and information provided by French banks on money transfers to tax havens. "Some are certainly tax evaders," he said.

The details of last week's settlement of the U.S. government's case against Swiss mega-bank UBS, which is accused of helping wealthy Americans hide their incomes from the IRS, were released on Wednesday. Under the agreement, UBS will disclose information regarding approximately 4,450 American taxpayers with current or former accounts at UBS. In exchange, the U.S. government will withdraw its legal action to compel UBS to disclose all of its 52,000 American customers. A related agreement with the Swiss government will provide a new treaty process to facilitate the release of the information.

This is both good news and bad news for law-abiding Americans who pay their taxes and who are tired of subsidizing those who don't. The good news is that the 4,450 Americans' accounts at one point in time totaled $18 billion in assets, approximately 90% of the estimated $20 billion in American-owned accounts at UBS. So, the IRS is perhaps going to be able to catch most of the tax-cheating, at least in dollar terms.

The IRS will use this information to investigate the offshore accounts of those 4,450 taxpayers, with hopes of collecting back taxes, interest, civil and possibly criminal penalties if those accounts have not been previously reported to the IRS.

Of course the bad news is that the 4,450 names expected to be released to the IRS make up less than 10% of the estimated 52,000 American-owned accounts. Without 100% disclosure, American taxpayers may in the future be tempted to play the "audit lottery," assuming they have only a 10% chance of getting caught.

Another piece of bad news is that the criteria used to select the UBS account holders to be disclosed to the IRS will not be released. But there is a strong indication that the size of the account has some importance. Taxpayers might avoid this danger in the future by spreading their offshore funds among several accounts and numerous banks so that they can "fly under the radar."

What also seems like bad news is that under the settlement, UBS will pay no civil penalties. It has already paid $780 million in criminal penalties for the actions of certain bank employees facilitating illegal tax evasion.

What's even more alarming is that the IRS will withdraw its "Notice of Default" that was issued to UBS for violating the agreement it entered into with the U.S. government. This agreement, which made UBS a "Qualified Intermediary" or "QI," is one that foreign banks enter into with the U.S. in order to get favorable treatment in return for complying with certain reporting standards. Given that UBS bankers came into the U.S. to solicit illegal business from Americans with the express purpose of helping them evade taxes, it's hard to believe UBS is not in default of such an agreement. If this egregious behavior can't get a bank kicked out of the QI program, what in the world can?

So the settlement certainly does not mean that the offshore tax evasion problem is resolved. If anything, it shows how badly we need legislation to deal with the problem, since there are apparently limits to how far the U.S. government will go, using existing laws, to crack down.

Fortunately, members of Congress seem to understand this. Senator Carl Levin, sponsor of the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, said in a statement that, "The UBS settlement is at most a modest advance in the effort to end bank secrecy abuses, tax haven bank misconduct, and the tax haven drain on the U.S. treasury. It will take a long time before we know whether this settlement will produce meaningful gains due to treaty procedures which are complex, depend upon the Swiss government to carry out, and open the door to potentially lengthy appeals."

In case you are starting to feel sorry for all those wealthy taxpayers who might go to prison because the Swiss bank where they hid their money (UBS) is about to turn them over to the IRS, rest assured that they will avoid prison if they have any common sense whatsoever. That's because the IRS is temporarily allowing Americans who've hidden their income in offshore accounts to come clean now and face almost no chance of prosecution.

In his statement on the UBS settlement (see related story), IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman reminded taxpayers that the six-month IRS Offshore Income Reporting Initiative, which started on March 23, 2009, will end on September 23. That gives taxpayers only five more weeks to come clean with the government about their offshore accounts.

As a Forbes columnist put it so well: "What's a wealthy tax cheat to do?" According to Commissioner Shulman, they'd better come in to the IRS and disclose their accounts voluntarily before the IRS gets their names some other way.

If taxpayers take advantage of the voluntary disclosure program, they must:
- pay six years of back taxes and interest on any unreported income;
- pay a 20%-25% penalty on those taxes;
- and pay a penalty of 20% of the highest balance of their offshore accounts during the past six years.

By doing so, offshore account owners will avoid much harsher penalties. For example, taxpayers would avoid the penalty for not filing a Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR), which is 50% of the balance of the account every year, and the fraud penalty, which can be as much as 75% of the tax. In addition, voluntary disclosure will avoid criminal prosecution and possible prison terms.

Once a taxpayer's name is turned over by UBS, it is too late to take advantage of the voluntary disclosure program and "all bets are off." Also, the related agreement with the Swiss government would allow the IRS to get names of taxpayers using Swiss banks other than UBS when the pattern of facts and circumstances is similar to that of the UBS case.

Commissioner Shulman indicated that the IRS currently has no plans to extend the voluntary disclosure program beyond September 23. He urged anyone with undisclosed offshore accounts to contact their tax professional immediately. He noted that the agreement demonstrated that " the world of international taxes has dramatically changed, and people hiding assets and income offshore and from the IRS need to get right with the government now."

On August 12, the U.S. government and Swiss banking giant UBS announced that they had reached an agreement settling the dispute over whether the Internal Revenue Service can enforce a "John Doe summons" against the bank. The summons would have required UBS to turn over information on its 52,000 U.S. customers.

In a statement issued the same day, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said that the details of the agreement would not be available until after the Swiss government has signed the agreement, possibly as early as next week. But rumors have it that the IRS will get only a fraction of the information sought, perhaps on just 8,000 to 10,000 accounts.

Anything less than full disclosure of all U.S. customers is unacceptable. A federal court agreed with the IRS that there was a reasonable basis for concluding that the 52,000 includes people evading their U.S. taxes. The case against UBS exposed especially egregious behavior by the bank's employees. They came to the U.S. soliciting illegal business from U.S. citizens, and helped Americans hide their income and assets from the IRS by setting up accounts in the name of foreign shell companies. These private bankers committed crimes on U.S. soil, with the full knowledge and support of the bank's management. UBS should not be allowed to hide behind arguments about Swiss sovereignty or the country's bank secrecy rules.

If the agreement does not provide for full disclosure, it sets a terrible precedent for future investigations. Some Americans will continue to evade taxes by using offshore financial institutions and hope that, when the bank gets prosecuted, their names will be among the 80% that aren't turned over to the IRS.

Foreign governments and financial institutions should not be able to facilitate the evasion of U.S. taxes by its citizens.

On July 24, three organizations, Global Financial Integrity, the Tax Justice Network, and Citizens for Tax Justice, briefed Congressional Hill staff on proposals to crack down on offshore tax abuses. The speakers from the three organizations explained the types of offshore tax abuses that are costing Americans billions in tax revenue: tax evasion (which is illegal) by individuals and tax avoidance (which is not necessarily illegal) by corporations.

Speakers from Global Financial Integrity and the Tax Justice Network discussed developments related to offshore tax evasion and the ways in which some financial institutions facilitate it.

The strongest legislation proposed so far to crack down on offshore tax evasion is the tax haven bill introduced by Senator Carl Levin and Congressman Lloyd Doggett (S.506/H.R.1265). (See the letter that CTJ and several other organizations signed in support of this bill.) Congressman Doggett himself made a surprise appearance at the briefing and expressed his determination to keep pushing for action on the bill.

Speakers also explained that as the U.S. prods other governments to comply with our tax enforcement efforts, some respond that the U.S. itself is a tax haven for foreigners trying to escape paying taxes to their own governments. The problem is that certain U.S. states allow people to set up shell entities that can be used to hide income from whatever government they're supposed to be paying taxes to. The Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act, introduced by Senator Levin (S.569) would address this problem. (See a letter that Citizens for Tax Justice and other organizations signed in support of this legislation).

CTJ director Bob McIntyre discussed offshore tax avoidance by corporations. (See a summary of his remarks.)

Read CTJ's summary of pending legislation to address offshore tax evasion.

Read the complete materials from the briefing: Tax Evasion and Incorporation Transparency.

Did tax avoidance schemes contribute to the tragic subway crash in the nation's capitol on June 22? For us to know for sure, the District's transit agency should make public the details of leasing agreements it entered into purely to facilitate tax avoidance.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA or "Metro") has, like many other transit agencies, engaged in so-called sale-in, lease-out (SILO) deals with financial institutions that don't actually have any real substance and do not change anyone's behavior -- except perhaps that Metro was obligated to keep train cars in service longer than was advisable.

Here's how SILOs work. When a company buys assets like equipment, it takes depreciation deductions over a period of years to reduce its taxable income. Cities and transit agencies are not subject to federal income tax, so they can't use the deductions. A SILO basically allows transit agencies to sell the benefits of those deductions, which they cannot use anyway, to a private investor. A city or transit agency sells assets such as train cars to a private investor (usually a bank). The sale gives the city immediate cash for other investments. The bank, which now "owns" the train cars and can take depreciation deductions, "leases" the train cars back to the city. So the investor gets depreciation deductions on the equipment and deductions for interest, if it borrowed money to make the purchase. The city gets the cash it was paid for the train cars, which exceeds the lease payments it must make.

But notice that the deal has no economic substance whatsoever. The train cars obviously never are possessed by the bank, which is in no way involved in operating mass transit systems. Both the transit agency and the bank are in the exact same position as they were before the deal, except they've made some money by manipulating the tax code in a way that Congress obviously never intended, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers. In 2004 alone, SILO deals were estimated to cost the Treasury $4.4 billion.

Metro has $889.1 million of these deals in place. In a statement that the agency has recently backed away from, Metro told federal inspectors in 2006 that it could not retire its 1000 Series Rohr railcars (which are suspected of being a significant contributor to the deaths and injuries) because "tax-advantaged leases" required that the cars be kept in service "at least until the end of 2014. The National Transportation Safety Board had previously recommended that the 1000 series cars be retired or retrofitted, after its investigation of a 2004 crash.

Federal transit officials encouraged these deals as a way to provide much-needed funds to transit agencies. But the Treasury Department fought them and, beginning in 2004, denied depreciation deductions for SILO deals.

Sarah Lawsky, a law professor at George Washington University, posted one of the many SILO agreements the Metro has entered. This agreement is available to the public because of a court settlement, but the other agreements are not. What details are in the other agreements is unclear, but Metro has said that the agreements did not bar it from replacing the cars and were not a factor.

But there's only one way we can know for sure. Metro should make the rest of the agreements public.

A column by Kevin Hassett on Bloomberg.com this week suggested that if President Obama's international tax policy proposals are enacted, Microsoft will move out of the country.

Actually, quite the opposite is true. The President's proposals would reduce the perverse incentives in our tax code that currently reward companies for moving plants, profits, and people offshore. If they are enacted, Microsoft would have less, not more, reason to leave. The President's proposals would limit multinational companies' ability to reduce their U.S. tax by using deductions and tax credits attributable to their foreign income before the foreign income is taxed. The proposals would require matching of the income and deductions. (See the CTJ report explaining the President's international tax proposals.)

Hassett's assertions were based on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's comments last week while in Washington, that "it makes U.S. jobs more expensive...we're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S." This strikes us as a lot of hot air designed to scare Americans and their lawmakers.

In support of his argument against changing the tax rules, Hassett also cites a study that shows for every 10 dollars U.S. companies invest offshore, their investment in the U.S. increases by about two dollars, and that foreign investment is therefore good for the U.S.

We might begin by pointing out that every ten dollars that U.S. companies invest in the U.S. result in at least, well, ten dollars of investment in the U.S. But this is largely beside the point. Many of the administration's proposals really address corporate tax avoidance practices that involve investments that only exist on paper anyway (think of Citigroup and its 90 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, which cannot possibly be conducting much real business). These are practices that serve only to reduce the U.S. taxes that corporations pay on the profits that are really generated in the U.S.

And as far as incentives to genuinely move real operations offshore, the current system of allowing tax deferral on foreign income encourages that. The President's proposals would begin to reduce that incentive (we wish they'd go farther).