IRS Taps Audit Firms to Probe Foreign Bank Role in Tax Cases
July 3 (Bloomberg) — The Internal Revenue Service summoned six of the biggest accounting firms to help detect foreign banks whose U.S. customers may be evading taxes through secret accounts, expanding an investigation that yielded a guilty plea by a former banker for UBS AG.
The IRS scheduled a July 8 conference call with the auditors to discuss how they can aid the agency in uncovering foreign banks that break their promise to report U.S. customers’ identities and earnings in their accounts.
The e-mail was sent to accounting firms Ernst & Young LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, KPMG LLP, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Grant Thornton LLP and BDO Seidman LLP, the executive said.
In the UBS case, IRS agent Daniel Reeves said in court papers that the bank divided U.S. customers into two categories: those who were willing to submit proper IRS paperwork and those who chose to remain “undeclared.”
UBS spokeswoman Rohini Pragasam said July 1 that the bank “takes this matter very seriously and is working diligently with both Swiss and U.S. government authorities.”
The IRS summons would direct UBS to produce records identifying U.S. taxpayers who had accounts with the bank in Switzerland between 2002 and 2007 and who kept their accounts hidden from the IRS.
Click here for complete article
Comments
-
Subscribe via RSS
-
BlogRoll
