The Internal Revenue Service must improve communication with financial institutions to detect and prevent criminals from using stolen social security and tax identification numbers to claim a tax refund, according to U.S. officials.
Despite an ongoing push for greater financial transparency, few EU nations have signaled a willingness to require corporations and trusts to identify their owners, a nongovernmental group said in a report.
The Internal Revenue Service will no longer move to quickly seize funds linked solely in suspicious activity reports to potential structuring of legally derived money, an agency leader said Sunday.
A U.S. plan for greater financial transparency is unlikely to bypass opposition from the head of a senate panel who is opposed to requiring companies to identify their real owners.
Faced with raised compliance expectations, many large financial institutions are expanding the types of corporate clients they ask to implement anti-money laundering controls to include import-export businesses, payroll companies and payday lending firms.
The authors of the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act are trying to charge FinCEN with duties the agency has shown no appetite for, according to guest writer Bruce Zagaris of Berliner Corcoran and Rowe, LLP.
The Wolfsberg Group and Clearing House Association called for banking cooperative Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommuncation to change the payment instructions it handles to "promote the effectiveness of global anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing programs."