Monday, April 30, 2012

Rand Paul Seeks to Block Tax Treaty Change on Swiss Accounts

Senator Rand Paul is blocking an amendment to a U.S.-Swiss tax treaty, slowing Switzerland’s handover of data on thousands of Americans with bank accounts hidden from the  Internal Revenue Service, reports Bloomberg.

The protocol, negotiated in September 2009, would amend a 1996 treaty and make it more difficult for Switzerland to refuse requests from the IRS for tax information about U.S. customers of Swiss banks.

Senator Paul said the protocol is too “sweeping” and would threaten protections under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure. Paul said he is exercising his privilege to delay a Senate vote.

“We’re concerned about the due process of whether or not people have any kind of process before their records are looked at, the privacy of your banking records,” Paul said in an interview with Bloomberg. “There needs to be some constitutional protections to your banking records.”

The taxsters are flipping out.


Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said failure to ratify the protocol hurts the U.S. overseas.

“The consequences are that we are lose credibility globally, in terms of our accountability,” said Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.


Tax attorney William Sharp, who represents clients with foreign accounts, said Paul’s objections to the protocol will hurt the U.S. enforcement of tax law, according to Bloomberg.

“We’re losing global credibility by mandating treaty concessions, obtaining those concessions, and then not approving them for almost three years,” said Sharp of Sharp Kemm P.A. of Tampa, Florida. “What Senator Paul and others don’t recognize is that the use of bank secrecy puts the IRS at a special disadvantage. When you go offshore, you’re off the radar.”

7 comments:

  1. The US has global credibility?

    Or were those treaty concessions agreed to when the Clinton State Department threatened to block the 2009 bailout of UBS if they didn't turn over the Swiss bank account information to the IRS?

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/09/us-banks-ubs-idUSTRE6380UA20100409

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  3. “What Senator Paul and others don’t recognize is that the use of bank secrecy puts the IRS at a special disadvantage.

    I'm pretty sure Senator Paul does realize it put's the IRS at a disadvantage.

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  4. The comments from the tax whores made me laugh. They bring back memories for me of when I worked for a large prestigious tax consulting firm that helped wealthy taxpayers lessen their tax bills substantially. The irony was that our firm supported almost any tax measure that increased tax rates, compliance or complexity. All, meant more revenue for the firm of course.

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    1. Of course they'd support it. Government stealing creates all sorts of industries that would be much smaller otherwise, or would not exist at all. Bastiat's what is seen and unseen.

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  5. "“What Senator Paul and others don’t recognize is that the use of bank secrecy puts the IRS at a special disadvantage. When you go offshore, you’re off the radar.”"

    No, he's completely aware of this; it's precisely the idea.

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  6. "What Senator Paul and others don’t recognize is that the use of bank secrecy puts the IRS at a special disadvantage."

    I guess the advantage they had to aggressively use violence against others wasn't enough =/

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