Senate Budget Chair Urges Crackdown on Offshore Tax Evasion

The IRS and the Treasury Department should do more to enforce the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as a means of combating offshore tax evasion, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee said Wednesday.

FATCA requires reporting and disclosure of US taxpayers’ foreign-held assets, but a lack of enforcement has allowed super-rich individuals and multinational companies to keep their assets and profits in foreign tax havens and avoid huge sums in US taxes, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said at a Budget Committee hearing.

“Treasury should use its rulemaking authority to close loopholes and improve consistency and fairness,” Whitehouse ...