Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) “plans to introduce legislation to give U.S. tax collectors more tools to police offshore tax evasion, an aide to the senator said on Wednesday,” Reuters reports.
The draft bill, sponsored by Democratic Senator Max Baucus, seeks to deter offshore tax havens by increasing reporting requirements to the Internal Revenue Service for entities transferring funds offshore and puts more onus on tax preparers to route out wrongdoing.
Evasion of taxes using foreign accounts by individuals and corporations is said to cost the U.S. government $100 billion a year, according to a congressional report.
But the Baucus effort is seen by some as more lenient than an earlier proposal introduced by Democrat Senator Carl Levin, chairman of an investigative committee in the Senate that has studied and issued influential reports on the topic.
The bill mentioned in the above excerpt by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) “focuses more on penalties.”
For example, it seeks to amend current laws with a penalty of up to $1 million for any person who fails to disclose any offshore holding or transaction involving debt or equity.
The Baucus bill “aims to boost some penalties, but on a much smaller scale.”
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