The end of the most alluring aspect of the ultra-confidential swiss banking system appears to be near its end thanks to the U.S. Justice Department to require the Swiss government to disclose tens of thousands of U.S. taxpayer's tax records.

The following AICPA article provides the details of the recent developments in the Swiss government and UBS bank battle to retain account confidentiality:

http://www.cpa2biz.com/Content/media/newsletters/Corporate_Tax_Insider/corptaxinsider090730.jsp

Interestingly, the U.K. is taking similar action in Liechtenstein with respect to U.K. taxpayers.

These actions are a combination of post-9/11 enhanced government probing of banking activities as well as government efforts to close the "tax gap" (also see July 14th post) associated with offshore accounts and other international activities.

Tags: Swiss Bank Accounts, Swiss Tax Treaty, Tax Havens, U.S. - Swiss Tax Treaty, UBS Disclosure

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Tax - General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.