避税天堂瑞士遭围剿，海外逃税者何去何从

    日内瓦罗纳大街上私人银行林立，高档手表店和古驰（Gucci）、爱马仕（Hermes）专卖店散布其间。但这几天，在瑞士生活和工作的美国人走在这里时心情并不怎么愉悦。

    上周五，瑞士和美国达成了一项里程碑式的协议，旨在杜绝借助瑞士银行保密账户逃税的行为。受此影响，许多外派到瑞士的美国人称他们背上了逃税的恶名，很不公平。

    对于确实通过瑞士银行避税的人来说，情况可能更糟。按照这项协议，银行方面必须披露客户信息，同时并缴纳总额达到甚至超过10亿美元（61.7亿元人民币）的罚款。就避税者而言，相关银行把他们交给美国国税局或者司法部下属税务机构的可能性比以往任何时候都高，如果出现这种情况，他们将面临高额罚款和罚金，甚至遭到起诉。

    前联邦检察官杰弗里•尼曼曾追查过瑞士银行业从业人员，现在他则是这些避税者的代理律师。尼曼指出：“主动坦白的银行将被迫向美国司法部提交一项方案，而这项方案可能让无数处于保密状态的银行账户曝光。”对美国国税局来说，发现避税者“就会变得如同探囊取物。”

    这项协议在瑞士引起了轩然大波。这是一个复杂而且极为独立的国家，在这里诞生的银行保密法律可以追溯到中世纪，苏黎世还新建了一个公共车震场所。在美国加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳执业的税务律师菲利普•霍金目前受雇于那些在瑞士的美国人，他说这项协议是美国的“21世纪炮舰外交”。上周末出版的瑞士报纸则将该协议称为“一次有组织的投降”，而且“既不情愿、也不体面”。

    尚未坦白交代的避税者日子更加难过。虽然上述协议不包括目前正在接受犯罪调查的14家瑞士银行或以瑞士模式经营的银行，但它给这些银行带来了更大的司法压力，其中包括瑞信银行（Credit Suisse）、宝盛银行（Julius Baer）和百达银行（Pictet）。同时，该协议还向其余300多家瑞士银行发出了最后通牒，要求后者和美国客户以及那些帮助他们的律师和顾问划清界限，提供这些人的银行账户信息并缴纳巨额罚款，否则就可能遭到起诉。此举击中了这些银行的要害。

    最重要的一点可能是这项协议把这300多家银行划分成了三组——交出美国客户就能免遭起诉的，没有什么需要披露的以及遵守《海外账户税收遵从法》（Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act）的。这是一项新的反避税法律，非常繁琐。

    除了这14家受到大陪审团调查的银行外，美国客户对自己的银行属于哪一类一无所知。税务律师指出，对其中那些可能蒙受巨大损失的人来说，他们会在三种办法之间进行权衡，第一种方法是继续冒险隐匿财产，第二是向美国国税局坦白，第三是通过调整退税金额进行“私下披露”（quiet disclosure），但这种方法难度更大。

    白领犯罪辩护律师罗伯特•卡茨博格指出：“在人们看来，自己要缴纳的欠税、罚款和罚金不是太少就是太多”。卡茨博格的一些客户也把资产放在了瑞士的银行中。

    毕马威和瑞士圣加伦大学（University of St. Gallen）最近开展的一项研究显示，外国人存放在瑞士的资产估计为2.2万亿美元（13.574万亿元人民币），超过世界上其他任何一个避税天堂。但三年内，那些著名的瑞士私人银行可能会消失四分之一（圣加伦大学所在的小山城也是瑞士最古老银行Wegelin & Co.的总部所在地，拿破仑曾是这家银行的客户。去年，该行由于为避税的美国客户提供服务而遭到起诉，现已不复存在）。

    Americans living and working in Switzerland aren't feeling much joy these days on strolls along the Rue du Rhone in Geneva, where luxury watch shops and Gucci and Hermes boutiques nestle amid a clutch of private banks.

    Thanks to a landmark settlement last Friday between Switzerland and the U.S. designed to shut down tax evasion through secret accounts at Swiss banks, scores of expats say they've been unfairly branded as unsavory tax dodgers.

    The picture for actual tax evaders through Swiss banks is even uglier. Under the terms of the deal, in which banks are required to disclose client data and pay fines totaling as much as $1 billion or more, such persons stand a greater chance than ever of being outed by their banks to the Internal Revenue Service and tax division of the Justice Department, where they face onerous fines and penalties, and, possibly, prosecution.

    "Banks that come forward will be forced to provide a blueprint to the Justice Department, which will lead to the divulgence of countless undisclosed bank accounts," said Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor who once hunted Swiss bankers and now represents their tax-evading clients. For the IRS, finding tax evaders "will now be like shooting fish in a barrel."

    The settlement is unsettling to Switzerland, a complex, fiercely independent country that is home both to bank secrecy laws dating to the Middle Ages and a new drive-in sex facility in Zurich. Philip Hodgen, an American tax lawyer in Pasadena, Calif., with expatriate clients, called the settlement "21st century gunboat diplomacy" on the part of the U.S., and over the weekend Swiss newspapers called the deal "an organized surrender" akin to "swallowing toads."

    American clients who have not yet fessed up are feeling even more pain. While the settlement does not cover 14 Swiss and Swiss-style banks currently under criminal investigation by American authorities, it cranks up legal pressure on those banks, which include Credit Suisse AG (CS), Julius Baer, and Pictet. And it strikes at the heart of the rest of the Swiss banking industry, more than 300 banks, by offering them an ultimatum: Rat out American clients and the lawyers and advisers who help them, fork over their bank data and pay hefty fines, or risk prosecution.

    Perhaps most importantly, the settlement divides those hundreds of banks into three groups -- those that can avoid prosecution by outing clients; those that have nothing to disclose; and those that are complying with a separate, new and onerous anti-tax evasion law known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca.

    Apart from the 14 banks under grand jury probes, American bank clients appear to have no idea which category their banks falls into. For taxpayers with a lot to lose, that makes the calculus of deciding whether to risk continuing to hide assets; to come forward to the IRS; or to make a "quiet disclosure" by sneaking in an amended tax return even more difficult, tax lawyers said.

    "People think they either have too little or too much to pay" in back taxes, fines, and penalties, said Robert Katzberg, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer with clients of Swiss banks.

    With an estimated $2.2 trillion in offshore assets, more than any other global haven, the Alpine nation could find that a quarter of its storied private banks cease to exist within three years, according to a recent study by KPMG and the University of St. Gallen (located in the small mountain town where Wegelin, the country's oldest bank, was indicted last year for serving tax-dodging Americans. The bank, which once counted Napoleon as a client, no longer exists.)