Our office is advising dozens of clients (including many HSBC customers) regarding offshore accounts, all of whom may be subject to large unfair penalties.\u00a0 Finally it appears that someone in government is realizing the unfairness of the offshore penalties.<\/p>\n
In her June 30, 2011 Report to Congress<\/a>, U.S. Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson criticizes the IRS over its Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program. According to its mission statement<\/a>, the Taxpayer Advocate Service\u2013an independent organization within the IRS\u2013helps taxpayers resolve problems and recommends changes to prevent them.\u00a0 However, the Taxpayer Advocate cannot and does not create or pass new laws (hence do not expect any significant government action).<\/p>\n Olson points out in its first offshore amnesty program that ended October 15, 2009, the IRS said if you came forward, \u201cunder no circumstances\u201d would you pay larger penalties than if you didn\u2019t step forward. Yet on March 1, 2011, more than a year after that first voluntary disclosure program expired, the IRS \u201cclarified\u201d that it would no longer consider whether taxpayers in the 2009 amnesty program would pay less than under existing statutes on based on having reasonable cause or being non-willful.<\/p>\n Taxpayers either had to agree to pay more than they believed they owed or withdraw from the program and face potentially massive civil, and perhaps even criminal, penalties.\u00a0 The Taxpayer Advocate Olson said this violates\u00a0 longstanding IRS policy.\u00a0 It\u2019s not clear how this all applies to the current OVDI program, since opting out still seems somewhat risky.<\/p>\n In spite of the Taxpayer Advocate’s announcement, taxpayers (including many of our clients) with foreign accounts must still participate in the OVDI program and will be subject to large unfair penalties.<\/p>\n Patel Law Offices is a law firm dedicated to helping clients resolve complicated tax, criminal tax, and international tax problems. Our firm assists (and defends) clients and their advisors to legally disclose (and legitimize) foreign accounts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our office is advising dozens of clients (including many HSBC customers) regarding offshore accounts, all of whom may be subject to large unfair penalties.\u00a0 Finally it appears that someone in government is realizing the unfairness of the offshore penalties. In her June 30, 2011 Report to Congress, U.S. Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson criticizes the IRS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,20,23,24,52,54,25,27],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-planning-for-tax-minimization","tag-amnesty","tag-asset-protection","tag-fbar","tag-foreign-account","tag-offshore","tag-offshore-accounts","tag-penalties-and-interest","tag-voluntary-disclosure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}