IRS Urges Americans: Come Clean Now, Before We Read Panama Papers

[Algernon Moncrieff]

NBC

U.S. officials revealed to NBC News that they have taken part in two global meetings about the Panama Papers to plan how to use the huge trove of leaked documents to catch criminals — and urged Americans to come clean now before illegal activity is discovered.

Last week's discussions in Paris and Washington between IRS and Treasury officials and their counterparts from around the world are the first evidence of U.S. involvement in the growing international coalition eager to analyze and use the data about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

In a statement to NBC News, the IRS acknowledged participating in a "special project meeting" of JITSIC, the Joint International Tax Shelter Information and Collaboration network, about the papers in Paris last week.

The IRS also encouraged any U.S. citizens and companies that may have money in offshore accounts to contact the agency now before any possible illegal activity on their part is identified. According to media reports, the documents contain information on potentially thousands of U.S. citizens and firms that have at least an indirect connection to offshore accounts affiliated with Mossack Fonseca. Many other firms provide similar services, and the Treasury Department estimated last year that more than $300 billion dollars of illicit proceeds are generated in the United States annually, with criminals using such companies here and abroad to launder funds.

[annabanana]

1. That should get the attention of a few people.

IRS don't play

[2naSalit]

6. What I thin they should do is

find every "business" that cannot be traced to a human and disavow them as businesses in the US and go from there.

[LiberalFighter]

2. I confess

[sulphurdunn]

13. Me too. My billions are stashed in the Caymans

[Rex]

3. Better do it! Nobody expects the

Confess! Confess I say!

[Jopin Klobe]

14. Yes ... and, unfortunately, ...

... there's probably a comfy chair involved in this mess also ...

... meetings? ... they're having international meetings before anyone down here on the ground finds out who??? ...

[Liberal Veteran]

4. I confess. I bought a Panama Jack t-shirt one time. -nt

[2naSalit]

5. I confess

When I was in my 20s I smoked some Panama Red!

[SwankyXomb]

7. I confess

I sang Van Halen's "Panama" at karaoke in 2007.

[MattSh]

8. You'd have to be crazy to think...

that they'll go after anyone of any importance.

If you're not in the top 5%, they'll go after you. If you are in the top 5%, you have nothing to worry about. These tax shelters were made for you.

[Orrex]

9. A man, a plan, a canal. Panama.

I confess.

[NightWatcher]

10. That's the oldest trick in the book. Don't confess to anything ever. Deny deny deny.

When you come forward to admit anything, you are saving them the trouble of building a case. If they had a case, you'd already know it by now.

How do they make a case off of leaked documents? Are they admissible?

[Hiraeth]

11. I confess. I rolled some :Panama: :red: with some strawberry :Papers:

[DisgustipatedinCA]

12. There's a McClatchy piece out about Clinton associates featured in the Panama Papers

(edit: I said "cronies" at first, thinking this was what McClatchy's headline said. But I was reading a repackaged version of the article on another site, so I don't know that McClatchy actually used that word. I changed it to associates)

[silvershadow]

15. I can think of some folks that potentially should be alarmed. And that's just the

tax angle of this unfolding story. I can't imagine this is going on without some other illegalities, such as shell accounts used to launder money. Sure seems to have Global implications.

[fasttense]

16. Because the IRS had NO Idea people were doing this before now?

Oh come on, why should now be any different? The IRS is more than willing to chase down the middle class and poor but the extra special uber rich - not so much.

They chased down and audited my grandfather who never made more than $10,000 a year. For 3 years straight they harassed him with audit after audit (making his bleeding ulcer worse and worse) until my mother hired him a lawyer. Then suddenly they stopped.

They could have been hunting down uber rich tax cheats for some real money instead of harassing my grandfather for pennies. But no, the policy is get the poor and middle class; leave the rich uber class alone. Wasn't that President Clinton's plan in the 1998 Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act.

"According to a recent report in the New York Times, since the passage of the law the IRS has sharply reduced audits of wealthy individuals and large corporations. Instead the agency has shifted its focus to investigating low-income families applying for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and cracking down on those, mostly the working poor and unemployed, who fail to file tax returns."

So, the IRS is merely doing what RepbliCONS and new way Dems want - ignore tax cheats among the uber class and make the middle class and poor pay through the nose.

And now suddenly they discovered real tax cheating among the extra protected uber rich. That is a surprise?

[Equinox Moon]

17. Wonder if they will tell us how much they collect from these tactics?

Headline:

Two Trillion in Back Taxes Collected From Offshore Accounts

[ananda]

18. Hmm.. I wonder how soon Congress will pass a law..

.. making it illegal for the IRS to pursue tax-evasion criminals
based on the Panama papers.

[Katashi_itto]

19. Drip...drip...clintons

[IronLionZion]

20. Romney? Trump?

I hope they get exposed. Stashing money overseas doesn't create many jobs.