Beanie Baby founder's tax evasion: Swiss bank account flood gates open for IRS?

Beanie Baby founder's tax evasion: Swiss bank account flood gates open for IRS?

Beanie Baby founder's tax evasion: Swiss bank account flood gates open for IRS?, Beanie Baby founder, Ty Warner, is ready to dish out $53.5 million to Uncle Sam as a penalty for tax evasion. Warner, who is the founder of the once very collectable Beanie Baby miniature stuffed animals, is one of the folks who opened a Swiss bank account and is accused of hiding money from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, according to Fox News 8 Cleveland on Sept. 18. He is expected to plead guilty to the charges of tax evasion.

Perhaps the bigger story here is that Warner is one of the people whose name was handed over by Swiss banking giant UBS as a result of a 2009 deferred prosecution agreement between Uncle Sam and UBS. This resulted in a $780 million fine for UBS and they agreed to hand over the names of certain American customers to the IRS. How many more of these stories will surface as a result of this U.S. agreement with the Swiss bank? It looks like the flood gates are about to open.

The Swiss bank account has been part of the financial fabric for some of the very wealthy in America. It is basically designed to make them wealthier because putting money in one of these secret accounts often means they don’t pay taxes on this hidden money.

Those days appear to be over, as the Swiss government has issued new guidelines for its banks, which will make it easier for the U.S. government to find its citizens hiding money in Swiss banks. This happened in July so it is more than likely that these new guidelines will result in a flood of folks contacting the IRS with new disclosures.

As a result of the UBS affair, as well as the new banking guidelines aimed at making it easier for the U.S. to find American’s bank accounts in Switzerland, the relationship between the U.S. and Switzerland is strained. Switzerland’s bank secrecy laws have been a draw for many around the world.