Taxes, Offshore Tax Haven | featured news

Swiss bank UBS AG "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes and must be forced to reveal the identities of 52,000 of those clients, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

They say the president's proposal would unfairly penalize U.S. companies that are trying to compete in global markets.

Officials say measures to shut down offshore tax havens would bring the government $210 billion over the next decade in otherwise lost tax revenue.

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee 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.

A Senate report estimated in 2008 that the United States loses up to $100 billion a year in tax revenue to offshore tax havens (PDF). In a report released Wednesday, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group offers a state-by-state breakdown of the cost to taxpayers of tax revenue lost to "shell companies and sham headquarters" in places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.