Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s agreement with the USA to hand over the names of 4,450 US clients accused of tax fraud, with accounts in Swiss bank UBS, is in danger of unravelling. A Swiss court has ruled that simply not filing an American W-9 form does not constitute “tax fraud and the like”. The Federal Administrative Tribunal, one of the country’s high courts, has asked the Federal Tax Administration to review 25 similar cases, in a decision made public 22 January. An infraction or crime as defined in the annex to the August 2009 agreement cannot take precedence over the 1996 tax treaty, the court has found.
The decision cannot be appealed and may affect up to 4,200 of the clients who are on the list to be handed over to the IRS, the US tax authority.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has finished reviewing the first 500 files of UBS clients suspected of tax fraud by the IRS, the US tax authority. The FTA announced 25 November that it has not communicated names to the IRS and will not, as stipulated in the Swiss-US agreement, until clients have exhausted the appeals process.
