IRS Tax: Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Prolongs the Deadline for Disclosing Hidden Offshore Accounts

Earlier this year, the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) announced a voluntary disclosure practice for taxpayers which have unreported income using a hidden offshore account and offshore merchant account.

According to practice, the IRS aimed to bring those taxpayers who had offshore accounts forward, and the deadline which was first announced was September 23rd, 2009. This deadline is now extended by IRS until October 15. The main reason for extending the deadline is the very high number of requests from tax attorneys throughout the Unites States, telling that they are receiving an immense amount of applications on voluntary disclosure of the offshore accounts. Internal Revenue Service told that there will be no other extensions in the deadline for voluntary disclosure of those hidden offshore accounts (Foreign Bank Account Report - FBAR).

The aim of the IRS here is to abide those taxpayers who are using offshore accounts by United States tax laws. Other than this, the most important thing here is that the IRS will have the opportunity to understand how the process of avoiding tax by using secret offshore accounts works. As more U.S. taxpayers making those voluntary disclosures, the more the IRS will discover how this system works. This is something priceless.

Making a voluntary disclosure will eliminate the risk of criminal pursuance for those taxpayers. Not participating in this voluntary disclosure will probably result in IRS finding those taxpayers and expose heavy tax penalties.

For those who has paid all their taxes except those hidden offshore accounts, the IRS doesn't recommend using the voluntary disclosure process for FBARs. Those taxpayers should be filing the delinquent Foreign Bank Account Reports to Department of Treasury in Detroit, and they should also send copies to Philadelphia Offshore Identification Unit describing the reason of this late filing of tax. IRS says that they will not enforce a tax penalty for this.

Read more about IRS Tax.