US Senator Threatens To Stymie Bank Account Transfers From Switzerland

Tom Burroughes

1 May 2012

The transfer of Swiss bank account details to the US could be hampered as a high-profile US senator blocks an amendment to a tax treaty with the Alpine state, media reports said.

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky and son of Ron Paul, who has contested the Republican ticket for the presidency, is stopping the amendment.

The protocol, negotiated in September 2009, would amend a 1996 treaty and make it more difficult for Switzerland to refuse requests from the IRS for tax information about US clients of Swiss banks.

Paul said the protocol is too “sweeping” and would threaten protections under the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure. Paul said he is exercising his privilege to delay a Senate vote.

“We’re concerned about the due process of whether or not people have any kind of process before their records are looked at, the privacy of your banking records,” Paul said in an interview last week. “There needs to be some constitutional protections to your banking records,” he was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

President Barack Obama sent the protocol to the Senate in January last year and the Foreign Relations Committee approved it on 26 July.

Paul, a critic of the IRS who won his seat in 2010 with the backing of the Tea Party movement, could require Democrats who control the Senate to spend a week of floor time before voting to ratify the protocol, which requires assent by two- thirds of the senators. He said his office discussed changes with the Swiss ambassador.

“The hard part about finding a compromise is it’s a treaty and I don’t know that they’re willing to rewrite the treaty for me,” Paul said. “But I don’t know any easy way out of the situation.”

Under the current treaty, the Swiss authorities can grant a US request seeking data on a taxpayer suspected of tax fraud. Tax evasion is not a crime in Switzerland.

The Swiss federal government will not ratify the protocol until both countries agree on a solution that ends negotiations on the investigation of Swiss banks, Finance Minister Eveline Widmer- Schlumpf has reportedly said before a vote in the Swiss parliament in early March.