IRS Issues 2010 Foreign Trust Statistics As Reported on Forms 3520 & 3520-A.

The 2010 foreign trust statistics reported on Forms 3520 and 3520-A show an increasing interest in foreign investment by U.S. taxpayers and the impact of changes made in 1996 to information reporting requirements.

The number of Form 3520 returns reporting foreign trust transactions and certain foreign gifts rose by 104.1 percent, from 7,956 in 2006 to 16,242 in 2010

The number of Form 3520-A foreign “grantor” trust returns rose 84.6 percent, from 3,819 to 7,051.

U.S. “persons” transferred nearly $1.5 billion in assets to foreign trusts in 2010.

In addition, some 7,051 foreign grantor trusts reported total assets of $35.3 billion, distributions of $4.0 billion, and net income of $1.1 billion during this same period.

Finally, in transactions generally separate from foreign trust activity, U.S. persons received gifts or bequests of $7.3 billion from nonresident aliens, foreign estates, foreign corporations, and foreign partnerships during 2010.

Need Advice on Reporting, Planning or Funding a Foreign Trusts

or Receiving Gifts or Inheritance From a Foreign Trust or Estate?

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Source:

IRS 2010 Foreign Trust Statistics

Singapore Banks ... No Longer a Safe Haven For Tax Cheats!

Banks in Singapore are urgently scrutinizing their account holders as an imminent deadline on stricter tax evasion measures forces them to decide whether to send some of their wealthiest clients packing.

The Southeast Asian city-state has grown into the world's fourth- biggest offshore financial center but, with U.S. and European regulators on the hunt for tax cheats, the government is clamping
down to forestall the kind of onslaught from foreign authorities that
is now hitting Switzerland's banks.

Before July 1, all financial institutions in Singapore must identify accounts they strongly suspect hold proceeds of fraudulent or wilful tax evasion and, where necessary, close them. After that, handling the proceeds of tax crimes will be a criminal offence under changes to the city-state's anti-money laundering law.

 

The tighter rules are intended to fall in line with new global standards announced last year that treat tax crimes as a money-laundering offence. 

Bankers may now feel compelled to give up some of the lucrative accounts that have fuelled a boom in Singapore's assets under management to more than $1 trillion, with 50 percent growth in the five years to 2011, according to the latest government data.

While banks do not have to check that their clients are fully compliant with all their tax obligations, they must check if there are reasons to suspect the accounts contain the proceeds of serious tax offences such as fraudulent or wilful tax evasion.

New foreign clients may find that banks become far more picky and inquisitive as the change in mindset takes hold.

Did You Move Your USB Account to Singapore?

 

Do Have Un-Reported Income From a Singapore Bank?

Secret Foreign Investments Keeping You Awake at Night?

Want to get right with the IRS?
 

Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A.

for a FREE Tax Consultation Contact US at

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or Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888 882-9243).  

 

Source:

Reuters

Whistleblower Exposes Massive Offshore Corruption!

The enormous value of whistleblowers has once again been demonstrated with the release this of an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into off-shore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories hiding trillions of dollars in income and assets.

Deutsche Bank was one of the banks the ICIJ report said has provided customers with "secrecy-cloaked companies" in offshore hideways.

An anonymous whistleblower sent to the ICIJ 2.5 million electronic files containing what the organization calls “the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization.”

The whistleblower who has now exposed a high-stakes, secretive world that fosters and hides large-scale fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, corruption and other wrongdoing.

The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways.
 

They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.

 

Offshore patrons identified in the documents include:

• Individuals and companies linked to Russia’s Magnitsky Affair, a tax fraud scandal that has strained U.S.-Russia relations and led to a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans. 

• A Venezuelan deal maker accused of using offshore entities to bankroll a U.S.-based Ponzi scheme and funneling millions of dollars in bribes to a Venezuelan government official.
 
• A corporate mogul who won billions of dollars in contracts amid Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s massive construction boom even as he served as a director of secrecy-shrouded offshore companies owned by the president’s daughters.
 
• Indonesian billionaires with ties to the late dictator Suharto, who enriched a circle of elites during his decades in power.
 
• A Former U.S. Citizen Denise Rich , who had $144 million in April 2006 in a trust in the Cook Islands, a chain of coral atolls and volcanic outcroppings nearly 7,000 miles from her home at the time in Manhattan. The trust’s holdings included a yacht called the Lady Joy, where Rich often entertained celebrities and raised money for charity. Rich gave up her U.S. citizenship in 2011 and now maintains citizenship in Austria.

The documents also provide possible new clues to crimes and money trails that have gone cold.

The investigation looked into what it called “a well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives” that has “helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.”

The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike.

The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories.

The hoard of documents represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization. The total size of the files, measured in gigabytes, is more than 160 times larger than the leak of U.S. State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010.

Offshore’s defenders counter that most offshore patrons are engaged in legitimate transactions. Offshore centers, they say, allow companies and individuals to diversify their investments, forge commercial alliances across national borders and do business in entrepreneur-friendly zones that eschew the heavy rules and red tape of the onshore world.

 

Secret Foreign Investments Keeping You Awake at Night?

Want to get right with the IRS?

Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A.

for a FREE Tax Consultation Contact US at

 www.TaxAid.us or www.TaxLaw.ms

or Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888 882-9243).

 Source:

 International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

GAO Reports a Big Increase in FBAR Reporting - Maybe It Is A Result of IRS Enforcement Efforts?

The number of American taxpayers reporting foreign accounts to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) doubled to 516,000 between 2007 and 2010, according to the US Congress' General Audit Office (GAO).

The GAO investigation also found that 6 per cent of US taxpayers who took up the IRS' 2009 offshore tax amnesty received penalties of USD1 million or more, and most of them had accounts at the Swiss bank UBS.

Have Un-Reported Income From A Foreign Bank?

 

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Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888 882-9243

 Sources:
GAO statement

GAO Report (PDF file)

Reuters

IRS Increases Estate Tax Audits

During 2012, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Audited Estate tax returns in greater volumes than any other category of individual tax returns.

• The 2012 Internal Revenue Service Data Book showed that 29.9% of the 12,582 estate tax returns that were filed in 2011 were audited by the IRS.  

• The figure was a major rise from the 2010 per cent audit rate of 18.2%.

• Estates with assets worth between USD5 million and USD10 million had a 58% audit rate.  

 Are You the Personal Representative of an Estate

Which Is Being Audited by the IRS?

 

Contact the Tax Lawyers at Marini & Associates, P.A.

 

 

for a FREE Tax Consultation at:
www.TaxAid.us or www.TaxLaw.ms or
Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888) 882-9243

Source:

IRS (via STEP)

Accounting Web (via STEP)

Billionaires Flee Havens as Trillions Pursued Offshore

Billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, Russia’s 14th-richest person, and his wife, Elena Rybolovleva, have been brawling for almost five years in at least seven countries over his $9.5 billion fortune.

More than 30 percent of the world’s 200 richest people, who have a $2.8 trillion collective net worth,Bloomberg Billionaires Index, control part of their personal fortune through an offshore holding company or other domestic entity where the assets are held indirectly. These structures often hide assets from tax authorities or provide legal protection from government seizure and lawsuits.

Rybolovlev, who lives in Monaco, made most of his fortune from the sale of two potash fertilizer companies for a combined $8 billion in 2010 and 2011. He held both companies -- OAO Uralkali and OAO Silvinit -- through Cyprus-based Madura Holding Ltd.

Singapore, the heart of Asia’s banking and offshore industry, will make laundering of profits from tax evasion a crime under a law taking effect on July 1. Luxembourg announced on April 10 that it would end its bank secrecy policy in 2015.

Cyprus was bailed out of its financial troubles in March by the European Union, which required the nation to impose a tax on bank deposits of more than 100,000 euros. That month, the country lost $2.4 billion in deposits, according to data from the European Central Bank.

The shift toward transparency has led many of the world’s wealthiest to reassess how and where they hold their assets, according to Goran Grosskopf, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based economist who has advised several billionaires, as well as the Russian government.

 

Need Experienced Tax Advise? 

 

Contact the Tax Lawyers at Marini & Associates, P.A.

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Source:

Bloomberg.com

Multinationals Be Prepared: Costly Tax Audits On The Rise!

              

The current trends in global taxation include a sweeping wave of compliance, regulatory requirements, the implementation of the OECD report on Base Erosion and Profits Sharing alongside a push for harmonisation. The development of FATCA legislation from the US, CFC reform and increases in information exchange agreements are also of major impact to multinationals and their tax departments.

The economic instability witnessed across the globe over the past few years has resulted in a number of shifts in global tax systems, largely driven by the need of governments to drive revenues.

According to TaxAnd.com Governments worldwide are facing severe financial challenges, and as a means of combating further dire financial straits, they are ramping up their auditing processes to recover unidentified revenue sources.

This need has resulted in heightened scrutiny of multinationals’ tax affairs and a more aggressive as well as more sophisticated approach to tax audits by authorities. The burden of compliance is only going to rise.

Need Help & Experienced Representation

for Your Company's Tax Audits?

Contact the Tax Lawyers at Marini & Associates, P.A.

for a FREE Tax Consultation at:

www.TaxAid.us or www.TaxLaw.ms or

Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888 882-9243).

 

 

 

 

TaxAnd.com