The IRS Urges Taxpayers to Strongly Consider Offshore Compliance

Now that the United States and numerous foreign jurisdictions have begun the automatic third-party financial account reporting exchange, it is less likely that offshore financial accounts will go unnoticed by the IRS.  The IRS reminds taxpayers to take advantage of the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) or streamlined procedures to come into compliance regarding offshore accounts.  Since OVDP began in 2009, there have been more than 54,000 disclosures from which the IRS has collected over $8 billion.  In the past year, 20,000 taxpayers have participated in the streamlined proceedures designed for taxpayers whose non-compliance was not willful.  Thanks to information obtained from investigations and settlements with foreign financial institutions, the IRS has conducted thousands of offshore-related civil audits resulting in tens of milions of dollars.  The total assessed in criminal fines and restitutions is now in the billions.  To read the complete bulletin, see IR 2015-116.