Recognizing, as announced on June 3, that there is a large population of Americans residing abroad who have been afraid to become “compliant” and honor mandatory tax and financial asset reporting requirements imposed by the US Internal Revenue Service, the IRS announced on June 18 “major changes in its offshore voluntary compliance programs, providing new options to help (…) taxpayers...
In remarks before the U.S. Council for International Business-OECD International Tax Conference on June 3, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen recognized that the “voluntary disclosure” programs designed to punish tax fraud may have been “too focused on those willfully evading their tax obligations (and) not accommodating enough to others who don’t necessarily need protection from criminal prosecution because their compliance failures...