Last week it was revealed that the justice department began a special probe into UBS to investigate tax fraud through offshore accounts. There could be potentially 52,000 wealthy American clients that have committed tax fraud by having offshore accounts to evade taxes.
These are the wealthy multimillionaires that already had their tax load substantially lowered by the Bush tax cuts and they still feel the need to evade taxes through offshore accounts. Can you really be that greedy? So now these same people who have defrauded the U.S. government out of millions potentially billions are filing a lawsuit in swiss courts against UBS because they will be giving their names to the Justice department for investigation.
UBS was sued on Tuesday in a Swiss federal court by wealthy American clients seeking to prevent the disclosure of their identities as part of a tax-evasion investigation by the United States Justice Department.
The lawsuit accuses UBS and Switzerland’s financial regulator, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or Finma, of violating Swiss bank secrecy laws and of conducting what Swiss law considers illegal activities with foreign authorities. It also named Peter Kurer, the chairman of UBS, and Eugen Haltiner, the chairman of Finma, as defendants.
This is absolutely disgusting. These people who are already super wealthy try and avoid paying their fair share of taxes to keep more money and then they have the gaul to sue to keep their privacy when they are the ones committing a crime.
Some experts say the settlement, a new step in the growing global fight against tax evasion, opens cracks in the country's tough bank secrecy laws and could potentially undermine $7-trillion global offshore banking industry.
Swiss newspapers said the U.S. authorities had cracked Swiss bank secrecy, accusing the government of "capitulating."
Something needs to be done to close these tax loopholes that let the wealthiest Americans pay no taxes at all while a the hardworking middle class have taxes deducted automatically from their checks. I hope this is a small step to getting the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes and not cheat the system.