A group of Swiss banks are planning to deliver information to US authorities investigating tax evasion by Americans, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Swiss Cabinet launched a program last week to let approximately a dozen Swiss banks, being probed by the Justice Department to deliver data on accounts held by American clients.
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Under this programme, banks will, reportedly, need to hand over ‘leaver lists’, or aggregate data on US client’s accounts that had been transferred to other institutions to identify tax evaders.
Leaver lists will contain generalised data on the number of undeclared American accounts maintained at a bank, and the amounts they held before being transferred out to other lenders.
Bank employees also might contest the handover of their personal data to US authorities in Swiss courts, but the names of individual clients holding the accounts would remain secret.
The WSJ reported that banks such as Credit Suisse and Julius Baer Group are eligible to apply or already have applied for Swiss government approval to participate in the programme.
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By GlobalDataThe US has used the information gained through its probes of Swiss banks to pursue a broader array of alleged tax evaders.
Swiss-US tax probe
On 04 July 2013, The Swiss government agreed to allow banks to hand over data to US authorities without facing criminal | sanctions | under Swiss law in a bid to avert US charges against its banks.
On 09 July 2013, PBI reported that Switzerland’s Supreme Court has ruled that the government can transfer the bank records of an American client of Credit Suisse to the US tax authorities.
Prior to that, on 29 May 2013, Julius Baer had been ordered by the Swiss government to hand over data on US clients that would be passed on to US tax authorities.
Slow steps forward
The Switzerland-US tax tussle has been going on for years, with several Swiss banks being targeted directly by US authorities for assisting Americans evade taxes, following a US$780 million settlement with UBS in 2009.
At the end of 2012, the number of Swiss banks under investigation by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) increased to 13, including Credit Suisse, Geneva private bank Pictet and Bank Frey.
Switzerland is known to be taking fast action to end the tax feud with the US.
