Americans must already sign papers they are tax-compliant
Soon to be a bank, and not interested in dirty money
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The new head of the financial arm of SwissFinance, Hansruedi Koeng, told Le Temps newspaper (registration required) in an article published 17 April that the bank will start requiring all non-Swiss account holders to sign a paper stating that the funds in their accounts have been declared to their own fiscal authorities. The new rule goes into effect in June and applies to old and new clients.
Koeng confirmed that PostFinance has been doing this with Americans since 2010. The group refuses US citizens’ requests for investments in stocks and bonds as well; both measures are designed to reduce the risk of problems with US authorities. Koeng told Le Temps that PostFinance does not go so far as to ask for a copy of tax forms.
Foreign nationals’ requests to invest in stocks and bonds will depend on “their own countries’ rules”, he says, without getting into details of different reporting requirements.
The interview was one of three accorded to Swiss media by PostFinance at the end of the first 100 days in office for Koeng.
PostFinance is a postal gyro system owned by Swiss Post. It is legally obliged to offer a bank account to all Swiss citizens, for example for pensions that are not covered by banks and insurance companies. This obligation does not extend to foreigners resident in Switzerland. Koeng’s remarks are one of the few official declarations by a Swiss financial body that it is turning down American clients, who are increasingly finding it difficult to bank in Switzerland, says American Citizens Abroad. A recent Town Hall meeting, where US citizens were asked for a show of hands showed more than half of those present had recently been turned down for bank activities or refused accounts, including some who have lived in Switzerland for a number of years.
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks briefly put PostFinance into world headlines in 2010 when he tried to open an account there. The temporary account was closed because he could not show proof of residence in Switzerland (story, GenevaLunch). The PostFinance site was then shut down briefly by WikiLeaks’ Operation Payback.
PostFinance will be given a banking license and fall under Swiss financial surveillance by Finma in the middle of 2013, within the framework of a partial privatization of the postal system. But for the time being, within the programme outlined to 2016, PostFinance will not be allowed to extend credit, for example, moving into the mortgage business.
When asked what he thinks of attacks on bank secrecy, the soon-to-be-bank director replied that “It’s easy to understand that foreign governments, faced with the sovereign debt crisis, are absolutely determined to recover unpaid tax monies. I don’t intend to get involved in the political debate, but it’s clear that banking secrecy linked to tax evasion is going to disappear. This is a completely outmoded business model.”
Britain, France, Germany, Italy Spain: US citizens’ bank data in exchange for US reporting some of their citizens’ bank accounts
Overseas Americans already caught in crosshairs
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A proposed deal that is being hailed by the six countries involved as a step forward in their fight against international tax evasion ironically borrows from a Swiss solution proposed as part of new double taxation treaties. In both cases data on foreign citizens is not turned over directly to the other government by financial institutions. Instead, the banks would hand data on foreign clients to their own governments, which would pass it on.
The US and EU-5 proposal comes as Swiss and US negotiators grapple with differing interpretations of a pending a new tax treaty. Strict Swiss data protection laws have been a sticking point. The Swiss have insisted they will not accept “fishing expeditions” but will accept bulk requests where tax fraud or evasion is shown to be likely.
Switzerland proposed for its recently negotiated double taxation treaties with Germany and the UK that Swiss banks collect withholding taxes that the Swiss government will then pay to these countries. Their citizens can elect to declare the assets and get the withholding tax back or cede it to their governments if they do not want to declare their accounts.
The news of the six nation proposal came at the same time 8 February as the publication of 355 pages of regulations for Fatca, new US legislation designed to fight tax evasion.
EC applauds government to government approach
Europolitics reports that the European Commission was happy with the news.
“The European Commission issued a statement applauding these arrangements: ‘Thanks to this intergovernmental approach – the only one conceivable for now because it is rapid – to the exchange of tax information, the extra administrative costs, compliance costs and legal impediments (related to data protection) that financial institutions in the EU would have experienced will be considerably reduced’. The financial sector itself has estimated at US$100 million the extra costs for a multinational European bank as a result of implementation of the new legislation.
“For the Commission, which opened the debate on FATCA with Washington in April 2011, any EU member state should now be able to adopt this government-to-government approach to information exchange by concluding ‘coordinated bilateral agreements’ with the United States. Washington is considering developing other partnerships with third countries.”
Automatic data handover part of the likely new deal, but reciprocal
The new agreement between the US and Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain would see financial data for all Americans automatically handed by these countries to the IRS, the US tax arm.
In return, the US would hand over data, too, but, in addition, the other countries’ financial institutions would benefit from being included in a group registration with the IRS. The result: complying with Fatca would be far less expensive.
The US argues the new arrangement would lower the cost of implementing Fatca—and that it will at the same time bring the other governments information about bank accounts held in the US by some of their own citizens, those with offshore accounts.
Significantly, too, “the Fatca partner [country] would not be required to terminate the account of a recalcitrant account holder”, an American who did not report account information to the IRS, according to the US Treasury.
The reporting requirements and burdens would not be the same: the US is asking for all US accounts to be reported because it is the only country besides Eritrea to tax its citizens on the basis of citizenship rather than residence. The five European countries would be given data only on their citizens who have US accounts but who are resident in the home country.
Ed. note: Eritrea was condemned in 2009 and again in December 2011 by United Nations Security Council resolution 2023, for destabilizing the Horn of Africa region. Eritrea is sanctioned in part for its diaspora tax, used for military purposes. The US voted in favour of the sanctions. The only other country, according to Wikipedia, that has a citizenship-based tax system as opposed to residence system, was the Philippines, but it changed to a residence system in 1995.
Fatca: data privacy concerns circumvented by reporting to banks’ own governments
Fatca, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, is a US law that went into effect in March 2010 but which is only gradually being implemented. It requires foreign financial institutions (FFI’s) to report to the US government US accounts, according to the US Treasury Department’s press release on the six-nation proposed agreement Wednesday 8 February.
Fatca’s implementation has been rescheduled several times and it has been the subject of much heated debate in the financial industry. The US Treasury Department in its press release concedes that Fatca “has raised a number of issues, including that FFIs established in these countries may not be able to comply with the reporting, withholding and account closure requirements because of legal restrictions.”
Data protection laws have been part of this debate in the UK, for example.
Questions have also been raised about the legitimacy of the American government writing laws that apply to non-US businesses, the FFIs, outside the US.
Fatca and Americans living outside the US: not tax evaders
US expatriates have voiced a number of concerns about Fatca, starting with its failure to distinguish between Americans in the US with offshore accounts and Americans who are resident, particularly long-term, overseas.
American Citizens Abroad (ACA), a Geneva-based international non-profit organization, in 2011 and after public debate in town hall meetings, called for the outright repeal of Fatca, saying it “destroys lives and the US economy”.
Growing number of Americans in Switzerland refused regular bank accounts
A Town Hall meeting of Americans in Geneva Wednesday 8 February called for a show of hands of those who have been turned down for a bank account in the past year: an estimated 50 percent said yes, and afterwards some people admitted privately they haven’t told their banks they are American for fear their accounts will be closed.
The US is currently investigating 11 Swiss banks for aiding wealthy Americans based in the US to evade taxes. More importantly, for Americans who live in Switzerland, Swiss banks, like those elsewhere, are preparing for Fatca, and US clients may be viewed as a liability.
ACA has been gathering growing evidence that US residents abroad, even if they file taxes, are being refused bank accounts and that financial institutions are beginning to divest themselves of US securities.
The New York Times in an article published 9 February says “Fatca has also been criticized by American expatriates because it imposes new reporting requirements. Some have said it makes Americans less attractive as clients for financial institutions, raising the cost of doing business overseas. Those criticisms were not addressed in the proposed rules.”
Tax evasion effort tacked onto jobs bill
Fatca was passed by the US Congress to little fanfare in 2010, tacked onto a much larger jobs bill called the Hire Act. President Barack Obama when he signed it, made reference to four of the five parts of the Hire Act, never mentioning the foreign tax compliance section. The IRS web page devoted to Hire initially failed to mention Fatca as well (Hire Act (pdf).
The US Treasury Department press release yesterday mentions that the five Fatca partners of the US would look at “certain accounts” as part of the agreement.
The law itself is more precise, stating that FFIs will be obliged “in the case of any United States account maintained by such institution, to report on an annual basis” several pieces of information:
“(A) The name, address, and TIN of each account holder
which is a specified United States person and, in the case of any account holder which is a United States owned foreign entity, the name, address, and TIN of each substantial United States owner of such entity.
(B) The account number.
(C) The account balance or value (determined at such time and in such manner as the Secretary may provide).
(D) Except to the extent provided by the Secretary, the gross receipts and gross withdrawals or payments from the account (determined for such period and in such manner as the Secretary may provide).”
It defines a US account: “In general.—The term ‘United States account’ means any financial account which is held by one or more
specified United States persons or United States owned foreign entities.” The exception is an individual whose aggregate accounts at one financial institution, including for example retirement accounts, are under CHF50,000 in a given year.
US pressure on Swiss for bank names accompanies Fatca, FBar pressure on overseas Americans
Paradeplatz in Zurich: Credit Suisse
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Two Swiss-German newspapers spilled the news Sunday 4 September that the US is pressuring Switzerland with a short deadline and legal threats over bank data related to Americans suspected of hiding taxable assets in Switzerland. SonntagsZeitung and NZZ write that the US is demanding that Swiss bank Credit Suisse and several other banks hand over the names of a significant number of bank clients by Tuesday 6 September.
The newspapers are basing their information on details that are reportedly part of a three-page letter written by US Deputy Attorney General James Cox to Swiss diplomat Michael Ambuhl, threatening legal action if US demands are not met to furnish the names of US clients who handed the banks $50,000 or more between 2002 and 2010.
The story is being widely covered by media outside Switzerland as part of a Swiss banks and “tax cheats” saga, an over-simplification of a situation that has many threads, only one of which is how wealthy Americans or green card holders hide their money abroad.
FATCA, FBar the new overseas American tax lingo
American Citizens Abroad is calling for US Fatca legislation to be repealed
The news comes as US citizens abroad grapple with the implications of two extended deadlines: a very short deadline extension to 9 September announced at the end of August by the IRS, the tax arm of the US government, to come forward if they have not filed FBar forms in the past, and the recent one-year extension to 2014 of implementation of the new Fatca (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) legislation.
Under Fatca, foreign banks will have to announce, to the US, assets of American citizens who are clients, whether they are based in the US and using offshore services or resident abroad and using the bank to handle daily banking needs, including regular payments such as rent or mortgages, salaries and pension funds or trusts that are their main source of income.
American Citizens Abroad, a non-profit group based in Geneva that works closely with both Republican and Democrat groups for American citizens living outside the US, says that Fatca is “using a bulldozer to go after an ant hill” and that the price to the US will ultimately be too high. The group wrote, in a 31 August letter to US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and top US tax officials demanding that Fatca be repealed, that
“Fatca will provoke a serious backlash from foreign governments who find it unacceptable, and rightly so, that the United States unilaterally extend US law worldwide.
This is financial imperialism. At a time when the United States needs the cooperation of the rest of the world to help resolve its major domestic debt problems and to reinvigorate its economy, it is counter-productive and dangerous to provoke foreign governments and force their financial institutions to become the policemen of the IRS, by requiring that they spend billions of dollars in compliance for the sole benefit of the IRS, and to force them to break their own domestic laws to do so.”
Spotlight on Credit Suisse, but it’s not the only targeted Swiss bank
BERN, SWITZERLAND – A Swiss spokesman for the new State Secretariat for International Financial Matters (SIF), Mario Tuor, has confirmed that Switzerland and the US have been holding “informal talks” to explore solutions to the problem of undeclared assets held by Americans in Swiss bank accounts, but he told Reuters Friday 10 June that many of the details appearing in the media jump the gun and can’t be confirmed.
The rumours have been flying for the past two days, with Reuters, Bloomberg and the New York Times vying for scoops and exclusive information and ultimately giving credence to the stories. The newspaper quotes three unnamed sources; US government officials leaked the information to the newspaper that the two countries were expected to come to an agreement in July: “As part of the agreement under discussion, known as a global resolution, US government agencies would invite the banks to pay a fine, exit their undeclared offshore banking businesses for Americans, and turn over client names to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Justice Department.” In exchange, says the paper, In exchange, “the agencies would drop an ongoing investigation into the banks.”
US officials have often in the past used the New York Times to leak information and their position, in advance, on Swiss-US tax and financial discussions.
Tuor told Reuters that “the two sides had exchanged ideas but that he could not confirm the July date, whether the two sides were eyeing a multi-bank solution, or any other details mentioned” in an article published Thursday by Reuters. “‘There were several sets of talks, one of which was on the sidelines of the IMF’s spring meeting and was about the Fatca, though ideas were also exchanged about finding a solution for the past,’” Tuor told the news agency.
Fatca is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act adopted by the US at the end of 2010, which goes into effect in 2013, and which will require non-US banks to provide the US with considerable data on the accounts of Americans and foreigners with US assets. The goal is to catch people who are illegally avoiding pay US tax.
A side effect of the US adopting Fatca, however, has been a growing reluctance on the part of banks in Switzerland in particular, but also banks elsewhere, to keep US citizens or foreign residents in the US as clients. Some accounts have been closed, creating a string of financial management problems for people who are not hiding from the IRS.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The US Department of Justice appears to be stepping up efforts to track cases of tax fraud tied to Switzerland, with two new cases: the arrest in New York of a Credit Suisse banker last week and “information” charges filed in Ohio against a US man who heads a Geneva-based hedge fund company.
Banker Christos Bagios was arrested when he arrived in New York for the start of a two-week trip there, Zurich newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported Sunday, for investigations related to tax fraud. He has been the head of the Relationship Management West Coast Group of Credit Suisse Private Advisors, a wealth management subsidiary of the Swiss bank, but his name no longer appears on the bank’s management team web page.
The Greek citizen joined the bank two years ago, after working for nearly 10 years as a director at Bank UBS in Zurich.
The Department of Justice has not filed charges and it is not yet clear if the investigation is linked to his work at his new company or at UBS, although the NY Times suggests, without backing the statement, that the “highly unusual move signals that the Justice Department is intensifying its scrutiny of Credit Suisse over its sale of offshore private banking services that may have allowed wealthy American clients to evade taxes”.
Both banks have declined to comment to media.
The DOJ lists Bagios as “in transit” and US media report that he is being moved from New York to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where several tax fraud cases have been heard, including the IRS case against UBS, which was dropped in 2010.
DOJ “information” charges head of Geneva hedge fund company
Geneva rally4sanity, at the Bastions park (photo: Maya Samara)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The crowd was far smaller than those in the United States, but some of Geneva’s American citizens showed up at the Bastions park Saturday 30 October as part of the US Rally to Restore Sanity. The Geneva event was organized by the group Vote from Abroad, which is making a push to get overseas Americans registered to vote.
The Rally to Restore Sanity was about, hmm, umm, well, people who are fed up, or, in their own words, from the US: “If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence. . . we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.”
Participant Maya Samara told GenevaLunch that the group included “two Uncle Sams, a few groups of students who were happy to swing by on their way to pre-Halloween festivities, and others who came out before heading out to a movie. Several women in their 60s were relieved to see the the gathering form when people started to appear a few minutes before 6pm—flash mob style—as up until that moment, they wondered if they were in the right place.”
The rally attracted people from ages 18 to 80, she notes.
Geneva rally4sanity, at the Bastions park, under the watchful eye of Geneva's famed Reformers, on the wall (photo, Maya Samara)
“By 6:20pm we dispersed, having made some new friends, taken a bunch of photos to post up on the iPhone app for the Rally4Sanity and entertained a few Japanese tourists!”
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - American voters abroad, including those in Switzerland, are being encouraged to register again to vote, by the Overseas Vote Foundation.
The group notes that: “New regulations for overseas voting are in effect for 2010.
To be sure you get your ballot, we strongly encourage overseas voters to refile the official registration/ballot request form every election year, starting this year. It is always best to file this form as early as possible! Likewise, if you registered this year for your State Primary Election, you should still request a ballot for the General Election.”
The foundation’s voter help desk answers a multitude of questions and the site now has a database of state-specific information.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Taxpayers who met with tax and estate planning experts in Geneva Tuesday 4 May complained that the jargon which surrounds US taxes for those who lived abroad is a barrier to filing. Here is a list, by no means extensive, of some of the terms that came up at the meeting. The meeting was organized by US Citizens Abroad.
See GenevaLunch article 6 May: “US taxpayers abroad struggle to make sense of tax laws, lingo.”
Egttra = Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, major piece of US tax legislation
Editor’s note: the meeting in Geneva invoked the Chatham House Rule to encourage open discussion, so no names or identities of participants and presenters can be revealed
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Confusion replaced 2009′s anger and a black mood when a group of mainly Americans gathered in Geneva for the second time in nine months to learn more about their obligations to Uncle Sam’s tax arm, the IRS. US citizens, green card holders and others who potentially owe the American government tax money, or even just forms, met at Webster University Tuesday 4 May to hear from a group of experts what their obligations might be.
The result was an evening that focused primarily on how to invest your money if you live outside the US, in order to avoid problems with the Justice Department or the IRS. An earlier meeting at Webster in September 2009, organized by American Citizens Abroad with support from Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad, was held just days before a US amnesty deadline for people to declare foreign assets held abroad. That meeting drew twice as many people and a younger crowd.
The September evening was notable for the shock it gave many who attended, about “non-compliance” issues and the obligation to file an Fbar (foreign assets) form.
This week’s meeting brought together four specialists in tax consulting, estate planning and legal issues. The longer-term focus meant there was less of a sense of panic in the crowd. Speakers offered several surprises about the increasingly complex tax payment system, and 10 of 13 people randomly questioned individually by GenevaLunch in the 24 hours after the meeting characterized it as “depressing”, if helpful.
Taxpayers face confusing changes in rules, application of them
The speakers outlined several problems:
- there are a number of recent and upcoming changes to taxation regulations, most of which appear to be poorly understood by US citizens living overseas
- changes have been implemented in an irregular pattern over time, creating uncertainty for taxpayers
- US citizens abroad are caught in the gap between US banks that don’t want them and Swiss banks that refuse them, adding to mortage, pension plan and others investment dilemmas.
Among the changes
2008: the Heart Act, amended expatriation procedures and includes succession tax – “much discussed but seldom implemented” says one Geneva meeting expert
2009: voluntary disclosure programme, under which 14,500 people took advantage of the amnesty
2010: the Hire Act – gifts, annuities, insurance pulled in for Fbar reporting of foreign assets, but no guidelines have been issued yet about how this will be implemented
Fbar: The Treasury has now gone back to its 2000 definition of who is a US Person for filing purposes, after “going overboard on that” one speaker says, and it exempts some people for some assets in earlier years (IRS notes on the change)
Grats, which cover the transfer of assets of family owned business is being reviewed
The exclusion for gifts to “alien spouses” is $134,000 in 2010 but is dropping to $60,000
Estate tax credit and exemption levels: 2009 applicable estate tax credit was $1.46 million, no estate tax in 2010 and credit in 2011 will be down to $345,8000. Available exemption in 2009 was $3.5 million and in 2011 it drops to $1 million.
“Land of the free – I used to really believe that”
Those attending who said the meeting had depressed them gave several reasons: the difficulty of understanding what one person called the “foreign language of tax jargon” (see “US tax mini jargon buster”), a sense of abandonment by a US government indifferent to the reality of the lives of its citizens abroad, frustration that too many Americans who live in the US wrongly see those abroad as a spoiled group of tax dodgers, and ultimately, a costly and unjust inability to plan.
“The right to plan – isn’t that what someone said the last time?” asked one woman. She was recalling a speaker who argued that under a fair system all taxpayers should have the right to plan for the future, but that current US tax rules make this impossible for many people abroad.
She and others chafed that even tax and estate planning experts fail to understand the needs of US citizens married to people from other countries, who often want little to do with the complex US tax structure.
The US Saturday warned its staff to send families out of Juarez, Mexico, where it has a consulate, shortly before three of its staff were killed in drive-by shootings in the border city, famous for its violence. The US is now sending eight FBI investigators to join Mexican agents looking into the shootings, and US citizens are being warned to avoid the area. Gunfights have broken out in other border areas, miles away, as drug wars appear to be stepping up.
Mixed signals from banks, for US citizens in Switzerland
Updated 01:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss banks have become more cautious in their relations with US citizens in the wake of problems the country’s largest bank, UBS, ran into in 2008 with the IRS over unreported income on the part of some of its clients. GenevaLunch, in a survey of several Lake Geneva area banks, found that without exception the banks say they do not discriminate against US citizens, and they continue to welcome new accounts. Stories nevertheless abound in Switzerland of US citizens who received letters in early 2009 from their banks saying their accounts were being closed – but few of of these people will speak openly about such letters, in part because the IRS tax authority encourages citizens to report on others who are not “compliant” in filing taxes as well as listing all worldwide assets.
US Ambassador Beyer suggests UBS could turn over fewer names
A GenevaLunch reporting team this week spoke with several people to determine the extent to which the personal banking problem is real or a recent urban myth. The team talked to seven of the eight banks which returned its calls and to a number of US citizens resident in Switzerland, as well as with members of American Citizens Abroad (ACA). Some of those interviewed participated in an informal meeting in Geneva 12 November with the new US ambassador to Switzerland, Donald Beyer, where the banking problem was raised.
Beyer later in the day told WRS public radio in Geneva that some 9,000 Americans took advantage of an IRS amnesty for citizens overseas that ended 15 October. He suggested in the radio interview that the number of names UBS will turn over to the IRS is likely to be lower than the numbers – up to 50,000 – tossed about earlier in 2009 by international media.
US citizens in Geneva, Switzerland with Ambassador Donald Beyer, centre back, 12 November 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A small group of Americans met informally with their new ambassador, Donald Beyer, Thursday 12 November, the first such meeting in Geneva in some 20 years, according to the members of American Citizens Abroad (an international organization based in Geneva) who participated. The discussions were wide-ranging and included:
Zurch, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Bank Julius Baer joins the growing ranks of Swiss banks moving out of the US client managed wealth business. The bank announced that it has begun a gradual shift away from American customers, but the move is not hurting the bank’s overall wealth under management: the bank reports that in the first 10 months of 2009 total client assets increased to CHF234 billion and assets under management rose to some CHF 150 billion, up 17%, compared to a year earlier.
Spokesperson Martin Somogyi told GenevaLunch that details about the US client business are not available now, although the bank may provide them when it releases 2009 full year results in February 2010. He clarified that US citizens resident in Switzerland “who are tax compliant” are not part of this group and will remain bank clients.
Update 2 15:45 The IRS will extend the 23 September deadline,”a one-time extension of the deadline for special voluntary disclosures by taxpayers with unreported income from hidden offshore accounts. These taxpayers now have until Oct. 15, 2009″, the US tax agency announced 21 September.
The IRS announced Monday 21 September that it is pushing back its amnesty deadline for overseas US citizens and greencard holders to file some forms late. The complete announcement:
The Internal Revenue Service today announced a one-time extension of the deadline for special voluntary disclosures by taxpayers with unreported income from hidden offshore accounts. These taxpayers now have until Oct. 15, 2009.
Under special provisions issued in March, taxpayers with these hidden accounts originally had until Sept. 23, 2009 to come forward. Those taxpayers who do not voluntarily disclose their hidden accounts by the new deadline face much harsher civil penalties, where applicable, and possible criminal prosecution.
IRS officials decided to extend this deadline after receiving repeated requests from tax practitioners and attorneys around the country following an influx of taxpayer requests. By extending the deadline for a short period of time, the IRS is providing relief for those taxpayers who had intended to come forward prior to the deadline, but faced logistical and administrative challenges in meeting it. The extension will allow tax preparers and attorneys the necessary time to interview and advise their backlog of taxpayers with these hidden accounts, and prepare the necessary paperwork to qualify for the special penalty provisions.
The IRS also announced that there will be no further extensions.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss bank UBS will close or transfer Wednesday 1 July, a month early, all US resident bank accounts that are not declared to US tax authorities, an unnamed official of the bank has told Swiss financial news agency AWP (20 Minutes and romandie.ch). The information could not be confirmed Tuesday evening, 30 June.
The report refers to account-holders who were earlier informed by the bank that it would close their accounts if they did not wish to transfer the money to a dollar-based account in the United States.
US President Barack Obama, while maintaining the trade embargo with Cuba, has eased some restrictions that particularly affect Cuban-American families: cell phone companies and television broadcasts to the island will be allowed and US citizens will be allowed to make unlimited family visits to the island and provide unlimited financial aid to their families. NPR
Three members of Congress, US Democrats, met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro after meeting with his brother Raul, who now heads the country. The Americans were part of a larger team of seven who visited the island, sparking reports that the two countries are prepared to start easing relations. Congress will consider a bill to allow US citizens to travel to Cuba, but the trade embargo, in place since 1960, is unlikely to fall soon, says a BBC reporter. But the Miami Herald, with a large Cuban expat population among its readers, was upbeat about the possibilities opened by the visit and Castro’s comments afterwards on a Cuban government web site.
A US circuit court of appeals panel in Manhattan has ruled that “reasonableness,” but not a warrant is needed to wiretap and search US citizens abroad, in what could be a critical, precedent-setting case. The decision follows the conviction of men accused of involvement in two bombings, one in Kenya and the other in Tanzania, in 1998. Their lawyers say they will appeal, that this is an issue for the Supreme Court to decide. New York Times
Title: Declaring Swiss bank accounts – a US perspective
Location: Geneva, Ramada Park Hotel
Link out: Click here
Description: Guest Expert: Scott D Michel, member, Caplin & Drysdale; H David Rosenbloom member, Caplin & Drysdale
Start Time: 11:45
Date: 25 Nov 2008
End Time: 14:00
