Search results for OVDP

Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) Update

Manasa Nadig - OVPD

It has been exactly a year to the day Part I of this post went up. The Internal Revenue Service decided to put an end to the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) on September 28th, 2018. That was just a precursor of the tumultuous changes to come at the Internal Revenue Service.

In November of 2018, the IRS released a Memorandum with updated procedures regarding voluntary disclosure both domestic and foreign submitted to them after September 28th, 2019. Notwithstanding the closure date, the IRS has the discretion to apply the new procedures to domestic voluntary disclosures received on or before September 28th, 2018.

Procedures Under The New OVDP

1.   All taxpayers, whether offshore or domestic need to submit a preclearance request on Form 14457 for screening to Criminal Investigation {CI} to determine eligibility. This can be requested via Fax or Mail to the IRS Criminal Investigation unit in Philadelphia.

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Written by | Posted in Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program

Americans Abroad And IRS ‘Amnesty’ Offers In OVDP

In an earlier post, I explained why the Canada Revenue Agency assisted the IRS in collecting a penalty on a Canadian resident. The bottom line was that he was presumably NOT a Canadian citizen and therefore did NOT have the benefits of the tax treaty. This post is to explain where the penalty came from in the first place.

It has been widely reported that a U.S. citizen residing in Toronto, Canada since 1971, paid a $133,000 U.S. dollar penalty for failing to file IRS forms disclosing that he was running a business through a Canadian corporation. How did this fly get caught in the spider’s web? Read More

Written by | Posted in IRS

Court Blocks Attempt To Transfer From OVDP To Streamlined

Ephraim Moss

In a very recent decision (Maze v. IRS), the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision blocking several taxpayers’ efforts to leave the OVDP tax amnesty program and enter the friendlier IRS Streamlined program without utilizing the required transition rules.

The Maze case demonstrates the importance of choosing the IRS tax amnesty program that is right for you from the outset. Read More

Written by | Posted in International

No Refunds For OVDP Participants Without Filed Return

Ephraim Moss

In a recently published Chief Counsel Advice, the IRS chief counsel’s office offered advice to taxpayers participating in its amnesty programs regarding the issue of whether refunds for past overpayments of tax can be used to offset additional taxes or penalties triggered under the program.

Before we get to the advice, let’s first review the amnesty programs that could potentially be affected by the conclusions made in the published advice.

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Written by | Posted in IRS

OVDP & Double Counting: Traps For The Unwary

Accounting for “double counting” is not child’s play. Your tax attorney will need the following information in order to complete his or her review of your double counting issue. These steps must be repeated for every year in which you believe that there is a double counting issue.

For each transfer, you should provide the following:

(a) The highest balance of the account from which the transfer(s) was made for the tax year in question;

(b) The highest balance of the account into which the transfer(s) was made for the tax year in question; Read More

Written by | Posted in FBAR • OVDP

OVDP And Double Counting: Oh The Agony! – Part II

This is a continuation of Part I. This hypothetical pertains to a taxpayer who has applied to OVDP and who has transferred assets from one foreign account, which was recently closed, to another during the disclosure period.

This is a simple example, yet it illustrates some of the common mistakes that are associated with double counting.

Joe has applied to the OVDP. He had two foreign accounts in 2010: one at Bank A and another at Bank B.

The opening balances in each account were as follows: Read More

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OVDP And Double Counting: Oh The Agony!

What is this phenomenon known as double counting? Why is it important? If you are shepherding clients through the OVDP program, or you are going through the program yourself, it is critical that you understand what it means and the governing principles behind it. Otherwise, you could be paying an offshore penalty that is exponentially higher than what it ought to be.

This article will explain the principles behind double counting and what type of supporting evidence the taxpayer must produce in order to prove double counting to the satisfaction of the IRS. As is my ordinary practice, I will make use of a hypothetical.

As a refresher, the offshore penalty is determined by isolating the highest aggregate Read More

Written by | Posted in OVDP

What Do You Do Next After You’ve Been Pre-accepted Into OVDP?

You’ve submitted your OVDP letter and attachments to the Voluntary Disclosure Coordinator and are reclining in your arm chair watching the “big game” while opening up the day’s mail. The upper left-hand corner of one of the envelopes in your pile is adorned with the IRS’s logo. You open it up. The letter is but a few paragraphs long and as you start glancing at it you breathe a sigh of relief. It says that your disclosure has been preliminarily accepted by CI as timely.

It provides instructions for the second phase: completing and submitting the full voluntary disclosure package to the Austin Campus within 90 days of the date of the timeliness determination (and cooperating with the examiner in resolving all civil liability). You’ve made it this far, but you are uncertain about what is meant by a “full voluntary disclosure Read More

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National Taxpayer Advocate Lambasts IRS’s OVDP Programs And FBAR Penalties

Here ye, here ye! National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson recently gave her annual report to Congress. And she didn’t mince words. She lambasted the IRS for relentlessly asserting onerous offshore penalties including its disproportionate treatment of non-willful taxpayers caught in the labyrinth of foreign asset reporting. Ms. Olson’s report asks the IRS to change its ways and to end the practice of branding every taxpayer who happens to have an offshore account with the letter “C” for “criminal.” Indeed, this is not the year 1652 and not every taxpayer who has an offshore account is the modern-day equivalent of Hester Prynne, the young woman found guilty of adultery in “The Scarlet Letter” and forced to wear a scarlet “A” (“A” was the symbol of adultery) on her dress to shame her. Read More

Written by | Posted in FBAR • IRS • OVDP

OVDP Hotline Nixes Practical Use of New Streamlined Program

The inflexibility of the IRS in the offshore area is starting to get some professionals down. I am one of them, but there are some others voicing similar frustration.

Taxpayers and professionals alike, were very pleased when the IRS announced the new Streamlined procedures in mid-June. You can learn more about the new Procedures here.

It seemed that sensibility and reason were beginning to prevail over at the IRS! Finally, “benign actor” (as opposed to “bad actor”) taxpayers with undisclosed offshore assets, could obtain relief and come into tax compliance without driving themselves into both fiscal and physical bankruptcy. Read More

Written by | Posted in OVDP • Tax Fraud/Evasion/Crimes

How Harry Potter Can Help You Navigate The Labyrinth of Overlapping Rules Within OVDP

Nary a day goes by that I don’t talk to a client who is confused about one or more aspects of the OVDP program. Most of the time, it’s not the client’s fault. Usually, the confusion lies in the fact that the rules themselves are like a tangled web or labyrinth on the scale of what Harry Potter had to endure in the triwizard competition. So grab your broom. It’s time to navigate the labyrinth of overlapping rules within OVDP. The only difference is that your tour guide on this journey is not a famous teenage wizard who wears glasses, is an ace Quidditch player, has an impenetrable patronus, and speaks Parseltongue. Instead, it’s a very ordinary tax attorney who can no more get a snake to listen to him than he can his dog, Fido.

For as tedious as the rules can be, surprisingly that is not the primary source of Read More

Written by | Posted in IRS • OVDP

Show Me The Money! Is The Source of OVDP Revenue Coming From Taxes Or Excessive Offshore Penalties?

On June 18, 2014, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen disclosed that the 2009, 2011, and ongoing 2012 offshore voluntary disclosure programs have resulted in more than 45,000 disclosures and the collection of about $6.5 billion in taxes, interest, and penalties. On its face, the OVDIs appear to be bringing into the government’s coiffures an average of approximately 9,000 taxpayers a year with approximately $1.3 billion in revenue.

However, the last six months paint a very different picture. That period is marked by anemic growth. Indeed, there were only 2,000 additional disclosures and $500 million in additional revenue. That may lead one to speculate that the OVDI, at least for high net Read More

Written by | Posted in FBAR • IRS • OVDP
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