It’s About Time!

Never before has the distribution of wealth in the US been so skewed.  The top 10% own 71.1% of the wealth.  The bottom 40% own 0.2%.  Many of these greedy bastards were not content that the GOP Bushwhacked the tax code in their favor.  They wanted more!

Many Americans dread April 15, the deadline for filing their income tax returns. But some well-heeled people are trembling over another looming tax day: Oct. 15.

Thursday is the deadline for Americans to come clean about the money they have hidden offshore, in places like Swiss bank accounts. No one can say with certainty how much money is out there — the accounts are secret — but the hoard may be tens of billions of dollars.

Several thousand wealthy people have come forward, hoping to avoid large fines or possibly even prison. But many others are still weighing their options. The choice is stark: They can confess and pay the penalties, or gamble that they will not get caught. With the deadline only days away, tax lawyers say they are being inundated by anxious clients.

“We’re seeing a flood of people,” said Scott D. Michel, a tax lawyer in Washington. His firm, Caplin & Drysdale, has 350 clients who are preparing to report their offshore accounts to the Internal Revenue Service. The firm has 14 lawyers handling their cases, one of which involves a tax bill of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The deadline is part of a broad crackdown on Americans who use offshore accounts to evade federal taxes. As part of the effort, United States authorities have challenged the long tradition of banking secrecy in Switzerland, and, in particular at UBS, that nation’s largest bank.

The I.R.S. is offering tax dodgers some leniency. Penalties will be reduced for people who come forward by Oct. 15. They will be assessed fines equal to 5 to 20 percent of their tax bills, rather than the usual 50 percent. They also will pay that penalty once, based on the highest balance in their offshore accounts over the last six years, rather than for each of those six years…

Inserted from <NY Times>

Repuglican plutocons (the branch of the GOP that focus on No Millionaire Left Behind) are screaming bloody murder.  Socialism!!  Imagine making the rich obey the law!  Frankly, I think that they are getting off far too easily.  Nevertheless, enforcing the tax code against them is long overdue.  Rolling back the Bush/GOP tax cuts for the rich is long overdue.  What do you think?