U.S. international tax enforcement

Tax evasion is indeed a serious crime, one that warrants both civil and criminal sanctions, but you have to wonder whether it is serious enough to warrant either the current enforcement priority or the approach to enforcement (at least in the offshore space).
 For the offshore initiatives, neither Congress nor the IRS are really focussed on tax evasion, money laundering or any other underlying "mala in se." Rather, they are focussing on the "malum prohibitum" and a weak one at that - the mere failure to report. The draconian penalties that come with failure to file the FBAR (or one of the many other required forms such as 3520) are no longer being used as an additional stick to punish someone who has committed tax evasion but rather as a serious crime in and of itself, one that warrants a harsher (at least in civil practise) penalty than the underlying offense of tax evasion/fraud. One has to wonder where this type of enforcement practice fits in a "civilised society".

1. Joint Committee on Taxation, Explanation of Proposed Protocol to the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, (JCX-9-14), February 21, 2014, which may be downloaded here .

2. Collection Aspects of International Cases ‏: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B719qAMBEjGQaGJ0cFhBb2ViWUU/edit?pli=1

3. There is a multilateral treaty, called the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, sponsored by the OECD to which the U.S. is a party.
http://www.oecd.org/tax/exchange-of-tax-information/conventiononmutualadministrativeassistanceintaxmatters.htm


Presently, the United States is a party to more than 60 income tax conventions, more than 20 tax information exchange agreements (“TIEAs”), and more than 50 Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (“MLATs”). In this network of agreements, exchange of information is not the sole type of assistance that has been agreed upon, but it is the principal form of assistance that the United States has been willing to provide. In its treaties with France, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the United States has specifically agreed to provide mutual assistance in collection, and does so under its Mutual Assistance Collection Program.