Do Offshore Tax Evaders Deserve Sympathy

“Offshore Tax Evaders”…

That’s how James Stewart chose to categorize those currently scrambling under the governments determination to attack offshore account holders’ privacy in his recent Wall Street Journal article.  While the spurious nature of such a straw man is evident, we’ll continue to look at what he writes before editorializing his work to death.

Do you know anyone with a Swiss bank account? I don’t, which is probably no surprise since the whole point is secrecy. But evidently there are plenty of Americans who do—at least 52,000 at UBS alone—whose identities the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice are trying to learn.

…. I’ve been wondering just why anyone needs or wants a Swiss bank account. For African dictators, international arms traffickers and terrorists, the answer is pretty obvious. And there are certainly citizens of countries whose own banking systems are so precarious, and the risks of persecution for any number of reasons so great, that a Swiss bank account may provide welcome security.

Here our friend has completely missed the boat.  Setting aside the fact that he paints the only people who might need offshore accounts are all sociopaths and criminals, he fails to observe the most obvious reason someone might want to hold assets offshore.  The absurd construction the US calls its civil court system.  Anyone with more than two nickels to rub together is rightfully worried that a plaintiff(s) and a lawyer without said nickels can get together and file any manner of frivilous litigation against them.

An award system that allows the lawyers to work on contingency is great for allowing the disadvantaged to be heard in court, but it is also open license for expensive fishing expeditions.  Those with assets to protect that find them in the line of fire of US courts often find it less time consuming and bothersome to merely pay off plaintiffs, right or wrong, to avoid the cost and hassle of outrageously expensive litigation costs.

But the U.S. is not one of those countries. Despite our recent banking woes, the U.S. has plenty of financial institutions with impeccable balance sheets. It has a legal system second to none that provides ample confidentiality and due-process protections. But it doesn’t offer ironclad secrecy in the face of a legitimate, court-sanctioned subpoena, which means it doesn’t lend itself to tax evasion.

 I don’t even know where to begin with this one, other than to say, “we’ll agree to disagree”.  The U.S. has plenty of financial instiutions with impeccable balance sheets??? Is he kidding here or what?  The only reason most of the major financial institutions that accept retail deposits haven’t been declared insolvent is pure lack of oversight, regulation, and out and out fraud.

UBS says it would violate Swiss financial privacy laws if it complied. In that case, UBS (and its government) should be faced with a simple choice: continue its policy of strict secrecy, in which case UBS should forfeit the right to do business in the U.S.; or compromise, aligning its banking laws with those in the rest of the civilized world.

Here I tend to agree.  If UBS and Switzerland by extension want bank secrecy within the confines of Swizterland they should be able to have it.  HOWEVER, in cases where US citizens have gone to Swizterland he argues that it should align its banking rules with those of the US if it wants to serve US citizens.  Here I violently disagree.  To do so not only tramples on Switzerland’s sovereignty, it seriously undermines the credibility of anyone who thinks or declares that Americans are “free”.  They most certainly are not.  

What’s completely “unsaid” in his strawman attack of those looking to shelter their assets is that ordinary American citizens were merely looking for the same kind of tax advantages and shelters from liability that corporations, those foreign and domestic enjoy every day in the good old USA.  Well, the argument stems that “corporations are different”.  I reject that flatly.  Nowhere in the constitution, that I’m aware of are corporations afforded protections or unalienable rights.  The reality is, however, the US has become a country by and for the corporation, with individuals the only ones left to be taxed into oblivion to pay for greedy corporate pigmen, bent on breaking already lenient rules on risk taking and taxation until the paid for government declares them “too big to fail” and reaches into the ordinary citizens’ pocket again to pay for their largess.

In a corrupt and obviously unfair environment such as this, is it any wonder that an ordinary citizen would doubt the future intentions of a system bent on taxing and redistirbuting its wealth to the richest of its corporate citizens while leaving everyone else the victim of misguided growth policies?