WASHINGTON -- A new Internal Revenue Service enforcement unit targeting the very wealthy will help the tax agency decode partnerships, offshore trusts and other complex techniques used to hide income, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said Monday. Dubbed the Global High Wealth Industry group, the unit will launch "a small number" of audits of individuals with assets or income in the tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Shulman told an accountants' trade group. An IRS official said the group would begin work on these initial audits in the next month. The high-wealth group, housed in the IRS's large- and medium-sized business division, marks a sharpening of the IRS approach to auditing the very wealthy. Its creation is a response to the complex web of entities and transactions many high-net-worth individuals use to manage their financial affairs. "You cannot assess compliance among the nation's wealthiest individuals by looking only at their 1040s [tax returns]," Mr. Shulman said. "Our goal is to better understand the entire economic picture of the enterprise controlled by the wealthy individual and to assess the tax compliance of that overall enterprise." Wealth advisers questioned how much the new IRS approach adds, since in some cases, even under the old structure, an audit of a high-net-worth person may have looked across multiple income sources and asset classes. However, "audits can sometimes be quite insular and silo-like," said Ronald Aucutt, a partner at the law firm of McGuire Woods. In particular, gift-tax audits and income-tax audits are usually not coordinated, he said. The reorganization is part of a multifront IRS effort to crack down on tax evasion by wealthy Americans. The agency is now sifting through the results of a partial amnesty program that netted 7,500 disclosures by Americans who held offshore accounts. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125659261162008901.html Wealthy ? EUR /USD 1,4816, USD/JPY 91,35, USD /CHF 1,0208. Poor Americans.
Outright fraud is more common in less wealthy people. Problem with super wealthy is the vague, complicated and ever changing rules of the IRS code. IRS will rule one way on a tax structure then a few years later will change their interpretation.
The solution is so very simple..... Implement a 10/5 Ctax only....no other taxes....no taxes allowed on any class of securities..... Revenues will rise dramatically over the next 10 years and beyond....and there will be labor shortages in the US.... And no need for money to leave the US....Money will automatically return to the US.... US Govt. = STUPIDITY in its purest form....
G7 tax payers AND tax dodgers are going to bleed like crazy. I can't wait until top marginal tax rates are pushed to 60, 70, 75%. Anybody with an income or assets in US, UK, Frannce, Germany and the rest of the Euro zone is going to get milked. The bloodshed is likely going to last an entire generation.