Nothing has changed with regards to protecting your money in legitimate offshore accounts for privacy. These guys CHEATED. These brokers cheated. They admitted to breaking the law. They were caught. 'Avoiding' taxes, which is what people will continue to do, is not a crime. Nothing has changed, you can't cheat. In this case, UBS was NOT protected under Swiss law. Below is a synopsis of Swiss law with regards to what has transpired here. BANKING IN SWITZERLAND Swiss bank secrecy does not protect private banking information; the protections afforded under Swiss law are similar to confidentiality protections between doctors and patients or lawyers and their clients. While secrecy is protected, in practice all bank accounts are linked to an identified individual, and a prosecutor or judge may issue a "lifting order" in order to grant law enforcement access to information relevant to a criminal investigation. International legal assistance is only granted with respect to tax fraud.
Swiss authorities should have stuck to their guns and told UBS to tell the DOJ to fk off. So what they lose the US securities license, the bank is already insolvent and is a de facto branch of the government
Sarkozy is forcing Andorra to undergo the same procedure http://www.lavanguardia.es/internac...antes-de-la-cumbre-del-g-20-ocde-princip.html
Tax evasion might be a crime but tax management is everyone's duty. If one is able to save taxes by investing with a competing government, why not? Governments are in business just as any other business and should compete for customers. I am not sure how it is today, but overseas investors to the US don't have (or didn't have to) pay certain taxes (e.g. dividend taxes) if they were not US residents or US citizens. This was so that the US could compete with other government which let you do this as well. However, just as in any other business, competing on price alone is basically the lowest denominator and not good for the company/government. So you can offer better quality products or scare the customer into believing that the other product is unsafe. Guess what the US government is trying to do? Guess what Switzerland's business model was?
Further, a lot of times the government gives tax breaks to encourage certain behavior, such as making your house more energy efficient. The feds want people to take advantage of these benefits.