Free Republic

ZURICH (Reuters) - The era of mystery-cloaked numbered Swiss bank accounts has officially come to a close as Switzerland, the world’s biggest center for managing offshore wealth, began automatically sharing client data with tax authorities in dozens of other countries. The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) said on Friday it had for the first time exchanged financial account data at the end of September under global standards that aim to crack down on tax cheats. Bank secrecy still exists in some areas — Swiss authorities cannot automatically see what citizens have in their domestic bank accounts, for example — but gone...

ZURICH, June 16 (Reuters) - A Swiss-U.S. tax deal crucial to the future of UBS (UBSN.VX) (UBS.N) hung in the balance as the lower house of parliament voted again on Wednesday for a referendum, delaying a final decision until Thursday. A special panel will be formed to iron out differences between the houses early on Thursday before they take final votes later in the day. Both houses have to reach agreement or leave the deal in tatters. Parliament's main body finally backed the tax treaty on Tuesday but demands for a referendum on the issue sent it back to the...

Delaware beats Switzerland as most secretive financial center By: Reuters | 31 Oct 2009 | 07:59 PM ET Text Size By Kim Dixon WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Move over Switzerland. The tiny state of Delaware beats the Alpine country in a contest for the most secretive financial jurisdiction, a tax justice rights group said on Saturday. The United States, led by the eastern seaboard state, took in $2.6 trillion in deposits from non-resident corporations and individuals in 2007, according to a survey of financial jurisdictions analyzed by the Tax Justice Network. The survey of laws, practices and size of inflows in...

<p>Germany's finance minister, Peer Steinbrueck, has been described by an MP in Switzerland as behaving like a 'jackbooted Nazi' for challenging banking secrecy in the country.</p> <p>Mr Steinbrueck, whose government has campaigned against tax havens and has called for Switzerland to relax its code of banking secrecy, said that he had received hate mail after he was compared on Wednesday by Thomas Mueller to a "generation of Germans ... who went through the streets wearing leather coats, boots and arm-bands".</p>

In 1934, the Swiss Federal Parliament explicitly introduced the notion of bank secrecy for the first time in a section of the law and created criminal sanctions. Why was this law created? The first and most common explanation is the one taken up by the Swiss Bankers Association, which considers the event to be a political act by the Federal Parliament to demonstrate its independence and its neutrality in the face of the threatening power of Nazi Germany. In the wake of the 1931 financial crisis, the Weimar Republic introduced strict foreign exchange controls. Many cases of economic espionage led...

EU majority backs clampdown on tax havens By Tony Barber in Brussels and Haig Simonian in Zurich Published: March 5 2008 02:00 | Last updated: March 5 2008 02:00 Germany's call for a clampdown on European tax havens won support yesterday from a majority of the European Union's 27 member states, determined to tighten rules on bank secrecy, which they see as encouraging tax evasion. At an EU finance ministers' meeting in Brussels, only Austria and Luxembourg, which obtained special arrangements when an EU savings tax directive came into effect in 2005, appeared reluctant to back tougher rules. Tax havens...