First, why might you have a foreign bank account?

There are many perfectly legitimate reasons. You might live abroad (six million Americans do), be a dual citizen, do business abroad, or get more interest from a foreign bank.

You may have an asset protection trust to shield assets from creditors and/or litigation or have a life insurance trust for estate planning purposes in an offshore location.

On the other side of the coin, there are the illicit reasons for offshore and foreign bank accounts, such as

hiding drug and terrorism money,

laundering money, and

tax evasion.

The illegal activities paint offshore and foreign bank accounts with an ugly brush.

Ratting Out Foreign Accounts

Because of the financial crises, UBS, the huge Swiss bank, ratted out over 4,500 U. S. citizens who were using Swiss banking secrecy to evade U.S. taxes.

Since those banking with UBS did not know if their accounts were ratted out or not, over 30,000 came forward with their confessions in two special ... Log in to view full article.