The Internal Revenue Service plans to announce a new amnesty program to encourage those in the US with hidden offshore bank accounts to come forward and pay taxes owed, The New York Times reports.

The new program is taking aim at offshore accounts beyond Swiss banks, including Asia and the Middle East, using data mined from the original.

An IRS spokesman told The NYT that the program would be announced soon and would not offer terms as generous as the previous amnesty program.

The original program ran from March to October of 2009. Private banking giant UBS was at the center of the IRS’ crackdown on offshore accounts. UBS, along with several other Swiss banks, no longer provides offshore banking to US clients.

Approximately 15,000 US taxpayers disclosed billions in offshore bank accounts under the original amnesty program allowing most to avoid criminal prosecution as long as they paid what they owe. An additional 3,000 came forward after the program ended.

Talk of a second program arose during a speech given by IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman at a tax conference held in Washington, DC last month. At the time Shulman said the IRS was considering a new amnesty program.

“We have been scouring the vast quantity of data we received from the VDP applicants and from other sources. Although more data mining is still to be done, this information has already proved invaluable in supplementing and corroborating prior leads, as well as developing new leads, involving numerous banks, advisors and promoters from around the world, including Asia and the Middle East,” a transcript of the speech Shulman gave states.

Shulman also said that there would be some fundamental differences between the two programs including higher penalties.

“To be fair to those who came in before the deadline, the penalty – and thus the financial cost to participate – will increase.”

While the details of the program are not yet known, it seems likely that the IRS will require taxpayers to pay six years of back taxes, interest and a sizeable penalty, according to law firm Withers.

“The 2009 program levied a penalty of 20 per cent of the total asset value in all unreported foreign bank accounts and entities (calculated by reference to the year in which the value of such accounts and entities was the highest for the six year period at issue),” Withers said.

In his speech Schulman offered some humor:  “Tax evasion and avoidance by wealthy individuals is nothing new. In the ancient world, there were all sorts of dodges they could use to hide assets from the taxman. In ancient Rome, the easiest was to flee your native city or simply bury your treasure,” he quipped.

The IRS did not provide comment to FWR before this story went to press.