Financial Transparency Coalition

Ten years ago today, the New York Times reported the words of U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill who, in testimony:

"dismissed as meaningless a document, based on government data, presented by the senator, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, indicating that fewer than 6,000 of more than 1.1 million offshore accounts and businesses were properly disclosed and therefore legal. Pressed by Senator Levin about whether the disparity between reported offshore accounts and their actual numbers was significant, Mr. O'Neill replied: ''I find it amusing.''

The scale of it was startling, even then:

"His testimony, to the...

"Real patriots pay their fair share of taxes. They don’t run out on the bill," write Scott Klinger and Holly Sklar. Some of our nation’s biggest corporations are planning a tax holiday and they want you to pick up the tab. Actually, you already pay for their routine tax avoidance through the use of tax havens in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and elsewhere. These accounting acrobatics cost the U.S. Treasury $100 billion a year. Now they want Congress to pass a special tax holiday for money they “repatriate” back to the United States. There’s nothing patriotic about this repatriation being pushed by...

WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service is giving more time to Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), Aegon NV (AGN) and other banks based outside of the U.S. to implement a controversial tax reporting rule.

WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and several other senators have introduced a bill to close offshore tax loopholes and strengthen offshore tax enforcement.