A political party in Switzerland is seeking to ban Microsoft PowerPoint presentations in meetings. The Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP), founded in May by Matthias Poehm, claims that wasted time from sitting through PowerPoint presentations costs the Swiss economy $2.5 billion per year. The party estimates Europe-wide costs to be $160 billion.
In Switzerland, 100,000 signatures is enough to trigger a referendum on almost any issue. The 245-member (and growing!) APPP is currently rounding up signatures for a referendum on PowerPoint presentations. Poehm, who founded the party to promote his new book, The PowerPoint Fallacy, urges public speakers to use flipcharts instead.
Poehm deserves credit for being a creative promoter. And I share many of his sentiments about PowerPoint. But PowerPoint policies are best set by individuals, not binding referenda. His book, now available in several languages, will hopefully persuade many individuals to spare their colleagues some tedium. But politicizing the issue, humorous though it is, might not be the best way to improve the quality of public speaking in Switzerland.
Richard Morrison, Marc Scribner and Josh Barro join forces to being you Episode 79 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take on barriers to job creation, anti-capitalist murmurs in Davos, the iPad’s unapproved technology, laws against motorized texting and why it’s all or nothing in the healthcare debate.
Today, after a long and protracted battle between the U.S. and Swiss government, Swiss bank UBS AG agreed to turn over the names of at least 4,450 U.S. holders of accounts in Switzerland who may have violated U.S. tax laws. While the Obama administration may paint this as a victory, this number is less than 10 percent of the 52,000 names it had originally asked for. It is even lower than the estimate of 5,000 to 10,000 names that news reports speculated UBS would turn over once the agreement was announced.
Yet in a sense, this settlement is at least a partial victory — for privacy rights, international relations, and the rule of law. The U.S was forced to back away from its outrageous demands that would have set a precedent endangering U.S. competitiveness as well as civil liberties throughout the world.
The case began earlier this year after UBS – with the Swiss government’s full cooperation – turned over the names of 250 customers suspected of violating U.S. tax laws. But the U.S. government then turned around and asked for a whopping 52,000 additional names. The Swiss government naturally objected to such a fishing expedition as a violation of the nation’s privacy laws.
Switzerland rightly argued that such a large volume of names could not be justified by probable cause or “reasonable suspicion,” a requirement of the tax treaty Switzerland had negotiated with the U.S. In addition, such a fishing expedition would have gone against the spirit of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects Americans from “unreasonable searches.” A forensic analysis commissioned by UBS from Alix Partners found that many international students, diplomats, and Americans who work in Switzerland – and banked in Switzerland by necessity – could have been swept up in this dragnet.
It’s far from clear that if the shoe were on the other foot, and a foreign country were to demand the names of 52,000 customers of an American bank, the U.S. would have complied. The United States Model Income Tax Convention of 2006, used as a template by the U.S. to negotiate tax treaties, states that no country should be required to honor “a request in which a Contracting State simply asked for information regarding all bank accounts maintained by residents of that Contracting State in the other Contracting State, or even all accounts maintained by its residents with respect to a particular bank.”
The Swiss government maintains that the surrendering of these names, in contrast to the Obama administration’s previous demand, does not violate Swiss privacy laws because there was “reasonable suspicion” of tax breaches covered under the U.S.-Swiss treaty. Regardless, American civil liberties advocates on either side of the political fence should be alarmed by the U.S. government’s sweeping disregard of privacy interests in its original demands to the Swiss government, and should encourage their home country to never treat privacy and another country’s sovereignty so cavalierly again.
Lawyers for the U.S. government and the Swiss bank UBS AG have announced that they have reached a deal on releasing to the US the names of UBS account holders. No new details of the agreement have been released, other than what was previously speculated on a week ago.
I will be watching for and examining details that are released. Whatever deal is reached, the Obama administration’s conduct in the case, disregarding both privacy interests and the sovereignty of other nations, has been deplorable. It has set a precedent that could endanger U.S. competitiveness as well as civil liberties throughout the world.
As Fred Smith and I had explained in a Washington Times op-ed, after UBS, with the Swiss government’s full cooperation, turned over the names of 250 customers suspected of violating U.S. tax laws, the U.S. government turned around and asked for a whopping 52,000 names. The Swiss government objected to such a fishing expedition as violating the nation’s privacy laws.
Switzerland rightly argued that such a large volume of names could not be justified by probable cause or “reasonable suspicion,” a condition of the tax treaty Switzerland had negotiated with the U.S. In addition, such a fishing expedition goes against the spirit of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S Constitution, which protects Americans from “unreasonable searches.” A forensic analysis commissioned by UBS from Alix Partners (scroll down the right side of this page to open the PDF) found that many international students, diplomats, and Americans who work in Switzerland – and banked in Switzerland by necessity — could have been swept up in this dragnet.
It’s far from clear if the shoe were on the other foot, and a foreign country were to demand the names of 52,000 customers of an American bank, the U.S. would have complied. The United States Model Income Tax Convention of 2006, used as a template by the U.S. to negotiate tax treaties, states that no country should be required to honor “a request in which a Contracting State simply asked for information regarding all bank accounts maintained by residents of that Contracting State in the other Contracting State, or even all accounts maintained by its residents with respect to a particular bank.”
Previous reports had indicated that UBS would surrender 5,000 names, a large amount but still less than a tenth of what the U.S. had originally called for. It will be important to scrutinize if there is indeed “reasonable suspicion” for however large the volume of names that are released. American civil liberties advocates on whatever side of the political fence should be alarmed by the U.S. government’s sweeping disregard of privacy interests in its demands to the Swiss, and should encourage their home country to never treat privacy and another country’s sovereignty so cavalierly again.
Today, Wall Street Journal reports that a Miami court has set meeting Friday between the IRS and UBS to look at where they are in settlement negotiations over the case of the IRS demanding that the Swiss bank turn over the names of more then 50,000 U.S. citizens alleged to be tax evaders.
As I have said in past posts on this issue (in which I have been admittedly hard on UBS-but with a purpose), and as UBS seems to now be reiterating, turning over those names would be in contradiction of Switzerland’s banking privacy laws and its legal view of tax evasion. Banks in Switzerland are not required to ignore their country’s banking secrecy laws simply because another nation requests them to do so. This is a sticking point for the IRS, who is using the DoJ to try and get after UBS. Another factor in the fight to get UBS to crack is the growing pressure from other nations and international NGOs like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with its agenda, and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) with its “retaliatory measures,” mentioned in earlier posts. These groups are using the straw men of money laundering and terrorism to force Swiss capitulation. It has reached a point of absurdity. Aside from the U.S. government’s attempts at intimidation, the German government even suggested placing Switzerland on the international blacklist. I guess “Everybody Hates Switzerland” now, until they can get their hands on that money.
Of course, the average citzen is not concerned about the rights of those who can afford to have swiss bank accounts. Although they should be. This not only raises concerns about financial privacy, it also raises concerns about sovereignty, civil rights, and a host of other things. A person’s financial records should be considered as sacred as their medical records. However, we may soon be entering an era where both are collected and archived by the government. Only a person who believes Stalin was an OK guy would think that was a good idea.
Your LibertyWeek hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist welcome you back with a rousing discussion of the much-debated Stimulus to Nowhere and the website where you can evaluate it, StimulusWatch.org. We get an update from the billionaire’s club known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and then lament the lack of income tax integrity among President Obama’s cabinet nominees in Scandal Watch: Daschle Edition. Finally, you can put this Olympic News in your pipe and smoke it.
Listen here. Also, thanks to @JerryBrito for the Tweet of the Week™!
Last week, the German government said that Switzerland should be placed on the international blacklist for tax havens. Really? That is, according to Peer Steinbruck (German finance minister):
Speaking to reporters in Paris after a conference on measures to combat tax avoidance, Steinbrück said Switzerland deserved to be on the list being drawn up by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development because Swiss investment conditions encouraged some German taxpayers to commit fraud.
The French budget minister, Eric Woerth, even raised the prospect of ‘retaliatory measures’ (these are FATF’s, who knows what the French’s are) against “territories that refused to exchange tax information” with the money police in other countries, from international code thought up by the OECD.
France and Germany are determined to raise the pressure on countries that refuse to exchange tax records. They believe the financial crisis, with calls for market regulation and a downturn in tax receipts, will inject political impetus into the OECD’s hitherto technical efforts to clampdown on uncooperative tax havens.
Countries like France and Germany are looking to put increased pressure on countries–who provide a financial service to their citizens–participating in what they claim are “harmful tax practices.” Here is a bit from OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration that sums up their alleged ‘reasoning’:
Competitive forces have encouraged countries to make their tax systems more attractive to investors. However, some tax practices are anti-competitive and undermine fair competition and public confidence in tax systems. OECD and non-OECD economies are working together through the Global Forum to address harmful tax practices by improving transparency and establishing effective exchange of information.
That sounds eerily familiar and a bit contrived.
Unfortunately for them, as I have pointed out in an earlier post, tax avoidance is not exactly a crime in Switzerland–and Swiss law interprets tax crime differently than most.
Swiss banking and tax laws make Switzerland a desirable place for those who don’t like being robbed by their governments to keep their money or even relocate to. Along with the other so-called tax havens, Switzerland is now being targeted for being good at what they do. And of course ‘blacklisting’ these countries gives those bureaucracies obsessed with appropriating people’s money an excuse to try and do an end-run around sovereignty.
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