The IRS announced Wednesday that it reached a deal with the Swiss government, gaining access to as many as 5,000 of UBS AG (NYSE:UBS) accounts that Americans might have used to avoid paying taxes.
In an interview that aired earlier today on FOX Business Network, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman commented on the deal, saying how IRS just blew a big hole in bank secrecy, and how the agency is going after other institutions. According to Shulman, this is a fundamental issue of fairness.
“If a fireman or teacher pays all their taxes, wealthy individuals should not be able to go park assets overseas and avoid paying their taxes,” said Shulman.” So we’ve been driving a wedge and going at this from a number of angles. The settlement that we announced today is the largest one which is we found that UBS was facilitating tax evasion. We filed in court a summons to get that information. At the same time the justice department went after UBS criminally and settled with them..this is the culmination of our court proceeding to turn over information…The Swiss government’s position was that we couldn’t have access to any of these accounts and through us applying this pressure, Swiss came around, decided to negotiate with us and is starting to open up bank secrecy.”
When asked about IRS pursuing other institutions, Shulman said that “a big part of [the IRS'] voluntary disclosure program is that, you come in, need to tell us what financial institutions you’ve been working with, what law firms, what other advisors you have helped to facilitate your tax evasion. Through that process, we’re getting a lot of leads and so you should expect us in the future to be pursuing other financial institutions, other intermediaries as well as lots of other taxpayers.”
Shulman also said that the settlement reached with the Swiss government “sends a very strong message that if you hide your assets even out of this country the IRS is going to pursue you, find you.”
