UBS Client Rubinstein Pleads Guilty Over Tax Return (Update2) - Bloomberg.com.
A Florida millionaire pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return that failed to disclose secret accounts he held at UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank by assets.
Steven Michael Rubinstein, 55, of Boca Raton, was the first U.S. taxpayer charged after UBS gave more than 250 customer names to the Internal Revenue Service .
UBS handed over account data on Rubinstein, a chartered accountant who has worked since 1994 at an international yacht company. He is cooperating with a U.S. probe of scores of U.S. taxpayers. He pleaded guilty to filing a false return in 2004 and admitted failing to disclose UBS accounts from 2001 to 2007.
I added the emphasis without surprise that it is a member of my profession who has been found guilty of this.
Now, will he expelled from his professionla institute pronto? Don't count on it.
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Richard,
Your article’s title shows you err on facts and perspective.
In the case of UBS vs. USA, we are talking of 52’000 accounts, not 52’000 customers.
If you consider there are at least 20’000 American people in Switzerland, you would expect that a sizable number of them would use UBS banking services in Switzerland (a universal bank which offers far more services than a savings & loans’ one), for their current (salary) accounts, savings account, currencies account (one per currency), spouses (if joint signature) accounts, kids accounts, etc.
1 customer can therefore equal many accounts.
Those Americans are expats, students, retired persons, married to non-US spouses, many are also dual-citizens (whose tax obligations to their second or third country, the IRS has absolutely no interest in).
The bank clients are responsible for meeting their tax obligations, not the bank which provides them with financial services, not the real estate agent who sells them property, not the car dealer who sells them a new car, not the jewellery shop who sells them an expensive watch, not the travel agent who organizes for them a nice trip, etc.
Nothing allows you to assume that those thousands of Americans, with a foreign Swiss bank relationship, are automatically tax dodgers who do not report their US or non-US income to the IRS (the US is one of the few countries in the world who taxes its citizens on their worldwide income, creating conflicting tax obligations for overseas Americans), and should therefore be pilloried.
To imply like you do, that 52’000 Americans are all Rubinsteins just demonstrates your lack of understanding or objectivity.
Bernard
Bernard
How do you know?
You can’t
And that is exactly the point
I accept 52,000 is an estimate
But it’s as likely to be understated as overstated and unless there is automatic information exchange we will not know the truth
Which is why your argument is a lot less tenable than mine. I offer a solution, you offer excuses.
Richard
So many problem cases do you think there are, Bernard? Presumably Mr Rubinstein is not the only only one. Or perhaps, we should assume that Mr rubinstein is the only one until more names start dropping out? How many thousands would it take to constitute a problem?