A New Jersey tax law firm can provide representation to U.S. affiliated taxpayers who have offshore accounts held at foreign financial institutions or managed by foreign financial entities.  If you have an offshore account and you are not fully in compliance with all U.S. tax rules, including those requiring you to report your account and pay taxes on gains, there is a significant likelihood you will come under investigation if you are not being investigated already. 

Many offshore investors have failed to comply with requirements  that they alert the U.S. government to their offshore funds, including requirements to file an annual Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts. The U.S. government has been aggressively cracking down on these investors in recent years, including entering into deals with foreign banks whereby those foreign financial institutions turn over information on accountholders in exchange for avoiding prosecution for facilitating tax evasion.

Many foreign financial institutions have made the decision to cooperate with the government of the United States in the government's tax-evasion investigations. Foreign banks have participated in a Swiss Bank Program, which allows them to come forward to disclose the ways in which they facilitated tax evasion. When these banks pay a fine and offer the U.S. government information on accountholders, the banks can avoid criminal prosecution. Financial institutions have also entered into similar deals with the U.S. outside of this formal amnesty program, protecting themselves from harsh penalties by turning over the information the IRS and Department of Justice need to investigate individual taxpayers.

When 11.5 million files leaked from a prominent Panama-based law firm, the leaked files revealed the secret ownership of confidential offshore accounts by a number of wealthy individuals. While having offshore accounts is not, by itself, unlawful, many of the holders of these offshore accounts were not in compliance with tax laws.  Failing to report offshore accounts and not paying taxes on investment income held in offshore accounts can have serious consequences.

The use of offshore bank accounts has long been a common tactic by investors who want to keep some of their wealth private and who may not want the IRS to know about every asset they own.  In recent years, however, countries nationwide have been cracking down on the practice of offshore banking as a method of tax evasion or tax avoidance. This has made it difficult or impossible to keep offshore accounts private and to ensure the accounts do not come to the attention of taxing authorities.