It has taken a long time to find a pony in the pile of manure in Washington. Deficits as far as the eye can see. Unemployment higher than it’s been in nearly a quarter of a century. A war that the troops are fighting while a President can’t find a politically positive way to respond to a request for more troops. A union leader visits the White House 22 times since January. A union affiliated with ACORN. A stimulus spending spree that is mostly pork and isn’t working. More and more bad news every day. I have looked long and hard and finally I have to award a kudo to Washington.
They have gone after UBS, the Swiss bank that has enabled tax cheats the avenue they need to stiff the US government. They have collected a $780 million fine from UBS as a settlement for criminal charges that UBS sent bankers into the US to help US citizens to avoid taxes. The bank turned over the names of 250 US citizens who have solid indications of tax evasion. They have until August to give up another 4,450 tax cheats. The first 500 of those are due by the end of the month.
It is expected that the IRS might collect billions from these tax avoiders. Already 14,700 have come forward for a tax leniency plan that would allow them to avoid criminal charges if they pay the taxes and penalties.
This is a big net and long overdue. The Obama administration gets full credit for making this happen.
One can only wonder how many people on the Obama team are sweating bullets over this. Tim Geithner for example, confessed tax avoider. Was old Tim salting some of that Goldman money away in UBS?
If this list is made public it should make interesting reading.
No wonder UBS is having business problems. If they can’t engage in illegal activities and just have to compete as a bank, life must be hard.
