Concerned about being charged for offshore tax cheating, about 14,700 wealthy Americans chose to voluntarily plead guilty to the offense and take advantage of a government’s amnesty program. The amnesty program was offered by the Internal Revenue Service traded smaller penalties for self disclosing undeclared foreign holdings. The IRS program ended in October.

Reported assets were almost 15000 unreported bank accounts in 70 countries or more in Switzerland and the rest of Europe. U.S. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman confirmed that the agency recovered more participants than they had thought. A lawyer for some of the wealthier clients who took advantage of that proram in New York, Barbara Kaplan reported, “The IRS has never got anything like that in response to prior initiatives. It’s a little higher than I anticipated based on the pace of my own practice and the panic that was out there.”

The panic came as a result of a Swiss banking giant UBS Ag bank agreeing to reveal the names of 4, 450 accounts kept by Americans. They were made to take that unprecedented action due to a lawsuit filed by the United States against Switzerland. The assets in these accounts were reported to be more than 18 billion. The IRS was more than pleased with the monies that they recovered.

Americans admit offshore tax cheating