Money Off-Shore?

By Number Six

Wednesday, August 02, 2006 at 07:11 AM

Check out this from the news.........

What gets me is why am I not the least bit surprised???

So many superrich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that law enforcement cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a Senate report that provides the most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes.

Senator Carl Levin discussed tax abuses at a briefing Monday in Washington. Cheating accounts for as much as $70 billion a year.
Among the billionaires cited in the report are the owner of the New York Jets football team, Robert Wood Johnson IV; the producer of the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" children's show, Haim Saban; and two Texas businessmen, Charles and Sam Wyly, who the Center for Public Integrity found in 2000 were the ninth-largest contributors to President Bush.

And, more proof of Fascism 101 in progress, eh? And not just some tax cuts. This is plain-old breaking the law, 'cept, unless you pocket some dough in your reps pockets, of course.

Center for Public Integrity. An oxymoron, indeed!!!!

Cheating now equals about 7 cents out of each dollar paid by honest taxpayers, as much as $70 billion a year, the report estimated.

I need that 7 cents, please. I have bills to pay.

The report details how the Quellos Group, a tax shelter boutique based in Seattle, "concocted a tax shelter" using $9.6 billion "worth of fake securities transactions that were used to generate billions of dollars of fake capital losses."

Senator Levin said that when investigators asked for trading records they were first told the trades were private, over-the-counter transactions. He said investigators asked for trading tickets or other evidence of who owned the $9.6 billion worth of stock and were told the stocks were never owned by the parties involved.

"They just wrote down numbers on paper and claimed losses," he said. "It was just like fantasy baseball, except the taxes not paid were for real."

Who was it said "the poor pay taxes, the rich hire clever accountants"? Looks like they also retain lawyers who find these....ahem...clever methods to "hide" money from the IRS.

And all of this? Courtesy your America-hating Republicans, of course.