This from The Guardian:
The world’s most secretive tax havens are to be prised open after Barack Obama’s new administration endorsed far-reaching legislation to crack down on them.
The decision to force “secrecy jurisdictions” to reveal the identities of the super-rich and major corporations who use them came from the US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, at a congressional hearing and will be seen as a blow to places such as Jersey, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland.
“We fully support the legislation … on offshore tax centres, and we look forward to working with you as part of the broader effort to address international tax evasion and close the tax gap,” Geithner told the House ways and means committee late on Tuesday.
Key measures in the new legislation, now likely to be in force within 12 months, include revealing the beneficiaries of secretive trusts and identifying “offshore secrecy jurisdictions” that “unreasonably restrict US tax authorities from obtaining needed information” as well as severely increasing penalties against tax evaders and closing numerous loopholes.
