(snip)"WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Internal Revenue Service is curtailing audits of many people who use offshore tax havens, even when agents see signs of tax evasion, because agents fear they cannot meet a three-year deadline for finishing an examination, Congressional investigators have found.
In a report to be released on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office found that I.R.S. agents are so hobbled by “dilatory tactics” by offshore taxpayers and other problems that it takes almost two and a half years to complete a typical audit.
Many I.R.S. agents told the G.A.O., the investigative arm of Congress, that the “safest way” was often to stop an audit prematurely and sometimes to refrain from starting one in the first place.
The I.R.S. reported that almost $300 billion in investment and business income was moved out of the United States in 2003. Analysts at the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that the annual outflow has shot to more than $400 billion since then.
Of that, only a small portion went to tax havens that impose few taxes of their own and provide little information to authorities in the United States. Most went to countries with tax treaties and agreements to exchange financial data with the United States. The report did not provide a breakdown of how much money went to specific countries.
Even so, the G.A.O. found that the average audit of people with money offshore turned up twice as much in unpaid taxes — about $5,800 — than audits of money kept inside the United States.
The average assessment of unpaid taxes tripled to $17,500 for the limited number of audits that were allowed to run longer than three years, and it shot up to nearly $100,000 for the small number allowed to run four or five years.
The new report was requested by the Senate Finance Committee, where Democrats and Republicans alike are looking for more ways to crack down on people who move their profits overseas.
The I.R.S. has estimated that the government loses about $300 billion a year from companies and people who underreport incomes. While much of that so-called tax gap stems from people inside the country, often self-employed people or family-owned businesses, Democratic lawmakers contend that the government could be losing tens of billions of dollars a year from offshore tax evasion.
“Trillions of dollars flow out of the United States every year in both legitimate and illegitimate transactions,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
“We’ve got to go after the offshore activity that abuses our tax system and thereby cheats the honest folks who pay their fair share.”
Tax analysts say it is almost impossible to know how much the government is losing from international tax evasion.
The I.R.S.’s estimates of money moved offshore are based on transfers that are reported by financial institutions like banks and investment firms that handle such transactions.
But those estimates leave out at least two potentially big pots of taxable income: transfers of money that are not reported to the government and overseas profits made by Americans on money that is already outside the country."(snip)



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