"Obama also planned to ask Congress to crack down on tax havens and implement a major shift in the way courts view guilt." http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gpKlcN2oB5og6-h34ilV1flq338wD97VBRQ00
Of course tax evasion is illegal. Just ask ol' Tim Geithner and his good buddy Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel really knows how to get his housing expenses down.
Norm Coleman agrees with Obama: " A report by a Senate subcommittee says overseas tax shelters cost the United States about $100 billion a year. The Senate Subcommittee on Investigations had a hearing Thursday on illegal tax shelters at foreign banks. One bank the subcommittee took aim at was the LGT Group, a private bank owned by the royal family of Liechtenstein. " "" "We got to close this down," said Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, the subcommittee's ranking minority member. "As I say, you [can] drive a Mack truck through the holes in this system, and there's a lot of money ⦠that's just â you know, not going down the drain, it's staying in people's pockets." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92663986 Seneca
I'd guess 90% of the Americans who're actually evading taxes through off-shore accounts are either drug dealers, gamblers or Americans with legit foreign income streams. With Bush era cap gains rates it's not as if normal, "wealthy" Americans find 15% such an onerous threshold to pay on stock gains that they'd risk seizure. The efforts by the U.S. to enforce compliance are not something new....