I loved this in Bloomberg this morning:
Switzerland's government will unveil a new “clean money” strategy at the end of this month, SonntagsZeitung reported, citing unidentified people.
Proposed regulations, to be put forward by Finance Minster Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, will require banks to demand a declaration from non-Swiss clients that all their assets are properly taxed, the Swiss newspaper reported.
Let's be clear about what this means.
The Swiss know they are harbouring tax evaded funds, or they would not be doing this.
And those who are tax evading will already have signed false statements to their tax authorities as part of that process of tax evasion. The Swiss will know that.
But now, to let themselves off the hook of having to investigate tax evasion they are saying they will take at face value a statement that people are not tax evading without any supporting evidence to validate the claim.
That's absurd!
Get people to show Swiss banks their tax returns to support the claim or this is nonsense, I say. Without that then any banker has to have suspicion that their client is tax evading if they ask for information not to be disclosed to their domestic tax authority (as will be the case in Switzerland) - and have a duty to report them under money laundering rules as a result. But of course, that's precisely what the Swiss do not want to do.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Kinda like a social service centre asking a drug addict to swear on his grandmother’s grave that he won’t take drugs in order to qualify for further social benefits.
I agree this is a joke, but we can’t really expect the Swiss to do anything different, otherwise they would be destroying their banking sector. It would be like asking the UK not to export arms!
Do you always support crime?
Richard