Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR)
www.irs.gov
How does that severely conservative saying go?
If you haven't done anything wrong -- then you don't have anything to worry about {as we rifle through all your papers, virtual or otherwise.} Step back please.
Funny how Romney always looks SOOO worried, eh?
Let's see, American Investors with foreign Bank Accounts, were required to file FBAR reports with the IRS each year -- Any guesses on how many of them do? Kind of defeats the offshore-purpose, doesn't it?
Mitt Romney Taxes For 2010 Not Fully Disclosed
by Zach Cater and Ryan Grim, huffingtonpost.com -- July 19, 2012
[...]
Romney released his 2010 tax return in January of this year, a document that first informed voters about the existence of his Swiss bank account and financial activities in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But people who own foreign bank accounts are required to file a separate document with the IRS that provides additional details on such overseas bank holdings, and Romney has not released that form to the public.
[...]
Tax experts say it is almost certain that Romney did file the form, known as a Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or “FBAR” in accountant slang. The penalty for not filing an FBAR can be severe, and the IRS would have expected to receive the form since Romney listed the Swiss bank account on his tax return. Listing the account on his tax return and then failing to file the subsequent FBAR would have been asking for a hefty fine, and would probably have heightened IRS scrutiny of prior tax filings.
[...]
Well back in the last decade, the U.S. 'Capital Gains Drain' got so bad that, the IRS offered those Tax Evaders
a retroactive offer to file all those missing FBAR reports --
a one-time chance to get right-by-them.
In short: Tax Evasion IRS Amnesty would be granted -- no fewer questions asked. Step right up, Tax Dodgers.
Deadline looms for Americans to disclose accounts in foreign tax havens
by Stuart Pfeifer, LATimes.com -- October 13, 2009
Wealthy U.S. taxpayers, concerned about an Internal Revenue Service crackdown on the use of secret overseas bank accounts as tax havens, are rushing to meet a Thursday deadline to disclose those accounts or face possible criminal prosecution.
The concern was triggered this summer when Switzerland's largest bank [UBS], caught up in an international tax evasion dispute, said it would disclose the names of more than 4,000 of its U.S. account holders.
The decision shattered a long-held belief that Swiss banks would guard the identities of its American customers as carefully as they did their money, and it raised concern that other international tax havens might be next.
Under an amnesty program, the IRS is allowing taxpayers to avoid prosecution for having failed to report their overseas accounts. As a result, tax attorneys across the nation have been besieged by wealthy clients who are lining up to apply even though they will still face big financial penalties.
[...]
Makes you wonder if Mitt jumped on the offer for Amnesty -- or risked facing the wrath of the IRS super-sleuths?
If Mitt was one of the USB 4000 to be named later -- he most certainly did.
Afterall he's perpetually running for president for Pete's sake!
Since Mitt still won't "put up or shut up" about his "financial expertize" during those "lost years"
-- Mitt simply leaves the door open for others, well-versed in such matters, to do the speculating for him:
Choose Your Own Romney Tax Return Adventure
by Elspeth Reeve, theatlanticwire.com Jul 18, 2012
[...]
Yglesias speculates:
"Romney might well have thought in 2007 and 2008 that there was nothing to fear about a non-disclosed offshore account he'd set up years earlier precisely because it wasn't disclosed. But then came the settlement and the rush of non-disclosers to apply for the amnesty. Failing to apply for the amnesty and then getting charged by the IRS would have been both financially and politically disastrous. So amnesty it was."
Why else would Romney want a Swiss bank account, Shaviro told the Huffington Post. "It's unclear why he would have valued the Swiss bank account secrecy, and it wouldn't have enabled him legally to avoid U.S. tax... This is why there's speculation that he was into the amnesty program."
Counter-evidence: Bloomberg's Barro explains that Romney listed a "UBS Money Market Account" in a Federal Election Commission disclosure form in 2007. It wasn't "clearly flagged as Swiss, but it's there," Barro says. (Romney failed to report earned interest income on the $3 million account in a 2011 disclosure form, and had to amend it.) "It's possible that Romney told the FEC about the account while hiding it from the IRS, but that doesn't seem very smart."
[...]
Good questions. Since Mitt's finances are such a {cough} "open book" -- and since Mitt certainly has
"no wrong-doing to worry about" -- {cough, cough}
-- I'm sure all those nagging questions will be put to rest, post haste.
Or not. Because aren't we all simply supposed to Leave poor Willard alone?
Just 'trust him' for Pete's sake -- he's fixing to be President ... W-style.
Yes we will, just like the IRS does -- just 'trust him' ... and the rest of those U.S. Tax Haven "refugees" ... Trust them about as far as we can throw track them (virtually or otherwise):
Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR)
www.irs.gov