Political Quotes

“last evening the Senate adopted a proposal I introduced in September of last year to curb the use of foreign trusts to avoid U.S. tax responsibilities. The Treasury Department first called attention to this problem early in 1995. Thereafter, I worked with Representative Gibbons to develop legislation to prevent taxpayers from evading taxes by transferring assets offshore. Legislation very similar to the bill that I introduced (S. 1261) was included in the Senate-passed health insurance reform bill late yesterday. There is disturbing evidence of the extent of tax avoidance through the use of foreign trusts. Although taxpayers are required to report the value of their assets held in foreign trusts, only $1.5 billion were reported in 1993, according to the IRS. Yet it is estimated that total U.S. source funds held abroad in tax haven jurisdictions are in the hundreds of billions. In 1989, the New York Times reported that financial institutions in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and the Bahamas had $240, $200, and $180 billion, respectively, on deposit from the U.S. More recently, Barron's estimated that a total of $440 billion was on deposit in the Cayman Islands in 1993, with 60 percent of that amount--$264 billion--coming from the U.S.”