Senators Set Sights On Overseas Tax Havens

"We cannot tolerate tax cheats offloading their unpaid taxes onto the backs of honest taxpayers," Levin said in a joint statement with co-sponsors Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). "Offshore tax havens have declared economic war on honest taxpayers by helping tax cheats hide income and assets that should be taxed in the same way as other Americans."

Yet they do nothing to stop illegal aliens from working tax free and the scum Americans who hire them off the books.

Tax equalization...there is a person in a cubicle somewhere who gets paid to sort it all out for the US employees worldwide at great cost. When the London/NY based private equity group buys the division they fire the US guys so they can close the compliance and equalization office and hire the non-US management that has no overhead based on their national origin...

US Persons (that is, US citizens, holders of green cards, and others who must file and pay US taxes), have been taxed on their worldwide earnings for a long, long time. It is just false to claim that US Persons can legally get away without paying taxes by any "offshore" financial activity. US Persons are even required to annually report all "financial accounts" such as bank and brokerage accounts to the US Treasury. There is a $10,000 fine if this report is not filed.

Over the last several years the Treasury and IRS have not hesitated to make grossly exaggerated claims as to the size of the tax evasion. They did this a few years ago while filing "John Doe" summons for credit card charge information at Master Card, Visa and American Express as well as with Credomatic, a Florida-based processor of credit card applications.

There are many people who legally hold non-US bank accounts for legitimate purposes as well as hold assets in the form of foreign stocks and bonds. Most of these holdings are in countries that have tax information sharing treaties with the US.

Going after "offshore" accounts is just an easy target. It makes for great soundbites: lots of smoke but little fire.

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