John R. Bullis: Treasury working to reduce tax evasion

The Treasury Department recently told of the efforts to curtail tax evasion.

Some proposed regulations would use the recent release of the “Panama Papers” to audit the high-profile individuals and overseas tax havens largely used to hide cash and avoid taxes.

There is a network of tax treaties and agreements to exchange tax information with most other countries.

It seems about 112 jurisdictions are treated as having those agreements with the U.S. Nearly 200,000 financial institutions have registered with IRS. However, it is somehow allowing U.S. financial institutions to not be currently registered with IRS under the same law as foreign financial institutions.

The Treasury wants to enhance transparency and reduce opportunities for tax evasion. They want more information on when an account is opened and when a company is formed or ownership of a company is transferred. There is a need for rules that “ ... must require that all companies know and disclose adequate and accurate beneficial ownership information at the time of creation, regularly update this information upon any change and face penalties for failure to comply.”

In particular, the proposed regulations would require foreign owned Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) to disclose their real owners and get a tax identification number.

The goal is to discover those who have income that is not reported and upon which taxes have not been paid.

I understand the Panamanian law firm that was most involved in the “Panama Papers” had about 11,500,000 documents that the U.S. Treasury now can read and analyze.

IRS has a lot to do with Obamacare and the regular tax system. There are tax cases in the various courts all the time.

Now maybe they can go after some of the folks that have not paid taxes on all of their income. Anything they can collect will help reduce our country’s deficit.

Did you hear? “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed,” by Abraham Lincoln.

John Bullis is a certified public accountant, personal financial specialist and certified senior adviser who has served Carson City for 45 years. He is founder emeritus of Bullis and Company CPAs.