GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – American Citizens Abroad are hosting a fourth Town Hall meeting in Geneva Wednesday evening 16 November to talk about US tax obligations. Among the odd questions likely to come up is this one: does the US Justice Department really expect people to inform the Justice Dept. that they are appealing a Swiss federal government decision, if their bank accounts are slated to be turned over to the IRS by Credit Suisse at the behest of the Swiss government?

Swiss law allows the account owners to appeal before any data is turned over, so their privacy is respected until the day the Swiss court rules that the client’s case meets the criteria for “administrative assistance” under the terms of the the bilateral double taxation treaty.

In other words, the day the Swiss tax office says they do indeed appear to be committing fraud or tax evasion involving a substantial amount of money.

Nasdaq, which published a Dow-Jones article Sunday 13 November about Credit Suisse turning names over, ends with this startling sentence: “Taxpayers who challenge the release of the information are supposed to report their challenge to the US Justice Department.”

It takes a bureaucratic mind to come up with that one.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – We have reported regularly on the US government’s efforts to bring its far-flung citizens back into the American tax fold, and I’m about to write something on American Citizens Abroad’s efforts to get Congress to repeal Fatca (if you don’t yet know what that is, you’re not alone, which means you’re part of the problem).

But an article that appeared in Tom Dispatch, which is always excellent reading, stopped me in my tracks. There are the very public wars, and the quiet ones: this is part of one of the quiet ones, and I leave you to determine who is fighting whom here.

The story of Ann Jones, Fulbright Scholar in Norway, not being able to get her rent money out of her US bank account, will raise the anxiety level and hackles of many Americans. Years ago I was an illegal alien in France, at a time when Paris was filled with Americans, almost all of them living there illegally because France didn’t give many visas to Americans. Banking was a nightmare, for me and almost everyone I knew. In a particularly Gallic twist on logic, I was allowed by the French to pay taxes and social security there, to the tune of nearly 40% of my income. My US bank was Citibank, so I felt a strange comradery with Ann Jones when I read her saga, even though my problem at the time was not the US Justice Department but the French government.

I left France, despite having a good job, because I wanted to live in peace, with peace of mind, in a country where I could do my banking and pay my taxes and sleep at night, a country where the machinations of government were more open: Switzerland.

What really bothers me in the Ann Jones story is reading about the questionnaires. These are oddly and uncomfortably close to the questionnaires Americans appear to be receiving once they have turned themselves into the IRS for non-filing (IRS voluntary disclosure), without knowing in advance they will receive these unless they have a pricey US accountant handling their paper – and that the filing apparently doesn’t count unless they fill out the questionnaires. I’m still looking for more information on that – accurate rather than the rumours floated by a New York Times/Reuters reporter (more on that later today). I’ll report on that when I know more.

For now, I guess this is the little rider, in the IRS FAQ, that implies late filers will have to answer more questions after they have filed: “Cooperate in the voluntary disclosure process, including providing information on offshore financial accounts, institutions and facilitators, and signing agreements to extend the period of time for assessing tax and penalties…”

Meanwhile, the Ann Jones story makes sobering reading, nothing to do with taxes, much to do with the fear of God being put into Americans who live overseas.

A bonus is that I discovered she’s written a book that sounds promising, War is not over when it’s over (women and the unseen consequences of conflict).

The IRS in the US is doing its best to make it clear to Americans that not filing taxes leads to trouble, with a host of cases coming to light this week, just in time for the April 15 tax filing deadline. The latest batch of seven was published today by the US Justice Department: here are the details, bedtime reading if you’re not up late doing your taxes.

The Independent has run a lengthy interview with Roger Federer. It makes for cheering reading after an evening spent in growing irritation at the amount of mis-reporting and confused writing on the Internet  about the just-published crtieria for determining which UBS bank accounts will be handed by Switzerland to the US tax authority, the IRS. Roger, I  hope you get a bit more sleep, but babies do eventually learn to sleep, one of life’s great pleasures!

I don’t object to the IRS or any other government going after frauds and schemers who are hiding millions from the taxman, but I do feel uncomfortable when the taxman begins to talk as if God is on his side and we’re probably all tax sinners. The IRS’s stridently righteous tones in recent months sounds far too like the talk of the McCarthy era in the 1950s, which threw a net so wide to catch Communists that it caught anyone wearing pink. So I appreciate the Time magazine article entitled “Foreign tax cheats find the US a safe haven”, published in October. It puts a little balance back into the holier than thou accusations coming out of the IRS office.

What’s that phrase, about the pot calling the kettle black?

The next two weeks will be tense ones for the Swiss government and UBS, with difficult negotiations underway with the US Justice Department over the Swiss bank providing information to IRS tax officials on 52,000 bank clients. The problem dates back to July 2008, and in the early months there appeared to be little US media understanding of, or support for, the Swiss position, but the tide may be turning. The New York Times ran a more balanced editorial last week on the issue after several earlier articles that seemed to show UBS and Switzerland in general as evil-doers. This week the Wall Street Journal and today Time magazine carry articles on the standoff, and show a better understanding of the Swiss argument that the US is playing bully, expecting to ride roughshod over an existing tax treaty.

Nevertheless, the clichés don’t die hard and as is too often the case Time starts out by mentioning chocolate, watches and neutrality, for American readers who would otherwise possibly mix us up with Sweden, that other cold Sw- country. The clock might be ticking for the negotiators but at least Time left out the enduring (Austrian) cuckoo clock myth.

The answer is yes, just as the US tax authority, the IRS, is after every other bank that might have taken money from American tax evaders, and the list is undoubtedly very long. Le Temps today carries a story suggesting that the IRS is about to pounce on Credit Suisse and HSBC, among others, but if you read closely, the main source is the not very reliable New York Times. I say not reliable because although the Grande Dame of US journalism is one of the best newspapers around, its reporting on UBS and Swiss banks in general has tended to be lopsided to the point where I remain suspicious about its editorial motives.

The New York Times in this case carried the same story several US publications ran at the end of April following a 27 April presentation in Miami Beach, Florida by Daniel Reeves at the Financial Due Diligence Conference organized by “Offshore Alert,” a financial newsletter.

Reeves has gained celebrity status as the IRS agent whose lengthy document, presented to a US Senate committee, led to the US Treasury Department demanding names of clients of Swiss bank UBS. Reeves in his presentation did not provide the names of any banks the IRS will be going after, but he was reported by Reuters 28 April to have said that the IRS is organizing more John Doe summonses – what some, including the Swiss government, refer to as “fishing expeditions” because the IRS is looking for lawbreakers whose names it does not have.

One of the reporters presumably at the conference is a freelance self-described investigative journalist, Lucy Komisar, who wrote of Reeve’s speech that “He declined to name the new targets, but one might imagine that UBS’s giant Swiss competitor, Credit Suisse, is among them. Swiss banks will provide information about drug traffickers and other criminals, but not tax evaders, because the Swiss don’t consider tax evasion a crime.”

The Miami Herald was also at the conference and it quotes Reeves the same way, calling his comment an “extraordinary disclosure” but also noting that he declined to name any banks. No countries appear to have been mentioned by Reeves, either.

The New York Times story is not their own, but the Reuters story, picked up from the wire service. Yahoo picked up a longer version of the Reuters story, where there is no mention of Credit Suisse or any other banks by name.

Komisar’s story is carried by IPS, Inter Press Service, a news agency. Komisar writes from the US, so might be forgiven for not realizing that tax evasion is indeeed a crime in Switzerland, but punishable by a fine, rather than the prison term that goes with tax fraud. The difference is somewhat like that between a venial or a mortal sin in the Catholic church, and a misdemeanor or a felony in the US, although the crime of tax evasion in Switzerland probably sits somewhere between the latter two.

Meanwhile, her story, spinning out across the Internet, is being picked up by a small number of other publications.

And in translation, from English to French in Switzerland, Credit Suisse has become a clear suspect, although there does not appear to be any foundation for this. In the nature of journalism, foreign journalists could well translate it back into English as an article run in the generally reliable newspaper Le Temps. Let’s see if that happens next.

Kids call this game Telephone or Post Office.

For those of us who are not economists (and I’m married to one), the global economic crisis leaves us with one stupid question: so where did all the money go? The easy answer, it seems, comes from China: Xinhua reports that China’s foreign reserves have reached $1.95 trillion. If you think this means China has it all and the rest of the world has nothing, do turn to the nearest economist and ask for a little help.

And if you’re looking for other simplistic answers to the world’s economic woes, read the Fox News blog on the US taxpayer revolt today, IRS tax form filing day in the US. In fairness to Xinhua, its English is a lot easier to follow than Fox’s.