Switzerland has agreed to comply with U.S. disclosure rules on offshore accounts controlled by Americans set for 2014, Swiss president Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said on Tuesday.
“We have initiated the agreement,” Widmer-Schlumpf said in parliament in response to questions from lawmakers, without providing further details.
The agreement, which will come up for final government approval in January, would reconcile Swiss secrecy rules with U.S. disclosure demands under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) enacted in 2010.
The act requires foreign financial institutions to tell the U.S. Internal Revenue Service about Americans’ offshore accounts worth more than $50,000.
In September, Britain became the first country to finalize a tax information-sharing pact with the United States under FATCA.
That agreement spares UK banks, funds and other financial companies from reporting client information directly to the United States.
Widmer-Schlumpf denied a link between initial agreement on FATCA and separate, ongoing discussions aimed at ending U.S. probes into 11 banks suspected of helping clients dodge U.S. taxes with offshore bank accounts.
(Reuters)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
4 Responses
All the money from Swiss is being moved out, millions of dollars are making their way across the ocean to countried that can be trusted
Swiss are the losers from this whole prosess
Invest in Chinese banks I’m sure they won’t disclose. Halivoy oif mir gezucked that should be my worry were the heck do I put all this money!
Come to lichtienstien still tax free and off the radar!
Any country that wants to engage in economic dealing with the USA will have to cooperate with the IRS. If you need a hidden account, probably the only way to do so is to hold cash or specie. Or you can give it all to tsadakah, live off the money and learn Torah – and if you suddenly find yourself having to flee with nothing but the clothes on your back, your reputation will have preceeded you and you’ll be much better treated than the miser who stashed his money in a secret bank account which was then confiscated. The tax authorities can neither tax nor confiscate a good name or zechuyos.