IRS Offers Carrot For Offshore Account Holders

by Leroy Baker, Tax-News.com, New York

01 April 2009

As the United States government readies a new assault on offshore financial centres and their users, the US Internal Revenue Service is promising to be more lenient with holders of offshore banks accounts who decide to make a voluntary disclosure to the tax man before the IRS comes looking.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman has announced that a partial amnesty program being launched by the agency will see account holders avoid heavy penalties and possible criminal prosecution. "This is a chance for people to come clean on their own," he told reporters on March 26.

Currently, if IRS investigators discover during the course of an audit that a taxpayer has not declared money held in offshore accounts or income accruing from offshore assets, they can impose penalties of up to 50% of the balance of an undeclared account for each year that it remained undisclosed. In addition, interest will be owing on any unpaid tax.

Under the new scheme, the IRS will impose a penalty of 20% on the highest single account balance held over the past six years, and will agree not to initiate criminal proceedings against taxpayers if they volunteer information on their offshore accounts and earnings before they are audited.

The program will run for the next six months, and will also help the IRS to develop useful 'intelligence' not only on taxpayers with offshore accounts and other assets, but also on the banks and institutions that help manage their offshore financial affairs.

The IRS undertook a similar initiative in 2003 when it collected USD170m in unpaid tax and penalties as a result of its Offshore Voluntary Compliance Initiative (OVCI). Under the three month OVCI, more than 1,300 taxpayers came forward, amended their returns, paid taxes, interest and penalties and furnished the IRS with information regarding the person who promoted the offshore arrangements to them. According to the IRS, some 479 promoters of tax schemes were identified during the course of the partial amnesty, half of whom were previously unknown to the tax agency.

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