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The Panama Papers: A Small Part of a Larger Challenge?

BY Stanley Foodman
June 01, 2016

The Panama Papers has become a new buzz phrase. Information contained in the Panama Papers ' the unprecedented leak of 11.5 million internal documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca ' illustrates the dangers of noncompliance for U.S. taxpayers and for citizens of other countries with whom the U.S. has exchange of information agreements.

So why should all of this journalistic reporting carry the name of a country that has worked very hard to promote its transparency when it is well known that you don't have to go to Panama to create a shell company? It can be done right here at home in the United States.

In many jurisdictions, including the U.S., it is legal to create and be a beneficial owner of the assets of an offshore entity or offshore trust. In the U.S., using structures to evade taxes and hide reportable assets and income is illegal. The Internal Revenue Service pointed to offshore tax avoidance once again in 2016 in its dirty dozen tax scams. (See, “IRS Wraps Up the 'Dirty Dozen' List of Tax Scams for 2016.”)

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