The False Claims Act of 1863 (FCA) is an American federal law that imposes liability on persons and companies who defraud governmental programs. It is the federal government's primary litigation tool in combating fraud against the government. The law includes a qui tam provision that allows people who are not affiliated with the government, called "relators" under the law, to file actions on behalf of the government. This is informally called "whistleblowing", especially when the relator is employed by the organization accused in the suit. Persons filing actions under the Act stand to receive a portion of any recovered damages.
Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, underground sex work, terrorism, corruption, embezzlement, and gambling, and converting the funds into a seemingly legitimate source, usually through a front organization.
The United States has separate federal, state, and local governments with taxes imposed at each of these levels. Taxes are levied on income, payroll, property, sales, capital gains, dividends, imports, estates and gifts, as well as various fees. In 2020, taxes collected by federal, state, and local governments amounted to 25.5% of GDP, below the OECD average of 33.5% of GDP.
The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (BSA), also known as the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, is a U.S. law requiring financial institutions in the United States to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering. Specifically, the act requires financial institutions to keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, file reports if the daily aggregate exceeds $10,000, and report suspicious activity that may signify money laundering, tax evasion, or other criminal activities.
Banking in Switzerland dates to the early 18th century through Switzerland's merchant trade and over the centuries has grown into a complex and regulated international industry. Banking is seen as emblematic of Switzerland and the country has been one of the largest offshore financial centers and tax havens in the world since the mid-20th century, with a long history of banking secrecy and client confidentiality reaching back to the early 1700s. Starting as a way to protect wealthy European banking interests, Swiss banking secrecy was codified in 1934 with the passage of a landmark federal law, the Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks. These laws were used to protect assets of persons being persecuted by Nazi authorities but have also been used by people and institutions seeking to illegally evade taxes, hide assets, or to commit other financial crime.
HSBC Holdings plc is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business links to East Asia and a multinational footprint. It is the largest Europe-based bank by total assets, ahead of BNP Paribas, with US$2.919 trillion as of December 2023.
In financial regulation, a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) or Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) is a report made by a financial institution about suspicious or potentially suspicious activity as required under laws designed to counter money laundering, financing of terrorism and other financial crimes. The criteria to decide when a report must be made varies from country to country, but generally is any financial transaction that either a) does not make sense to the financial institution; b) is unusual for that particular client; or c) appears to be done only for the purpose of hiding or obfuscating another, separate transaction. The report is filed with that country's Financial Intelligence Unit, which is typically a specialist agency designed to collect and analyse transactions and then report these to relevant law enforcement teams.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA) is a United States federal law that prohibits U.S. citizens and entities from bribing foreign government officials to benefit their business interests.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is a United States law that imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interests. It requires "foreign agents"—defined as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons —to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation.
The USA PATRIOT Act was passed by the United States Congress in 2001 as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. It has ten titles, each containing numerous sections. Title III: International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 is actually an act of Congress in its own right as well as being a title of the USA PATRIOT Act, and is intended to facilitate the prevention, detection and prosecution of international money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The title's sections primarily amend portions of the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 and the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.
Tax protester arguments are arguments made by people, primarily in the United States, who contend that tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid.
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a 2010 U.S. federal law requiring all non-U.S. foreign financial institutions (FFIs) to search their records for customers with indicia of a connection to the U.S., including indications in records of birth or prior residency in the U.S., or the like, and to report such assets and identities of such persons to the United States Department of the Treasury. FATCA also requires such persons to report their non-U.S. financial assets annually to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on form 8938, which is in addition to the older and further redundant requirement to report them annually to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on form 114. Like U.S. income tax law, FATCA applies to U.S. residents and also to U.S. citizens and green card holders residing in other countries.
Under the federal law of the United States of America, tax evasion or tax fraud is the purposeful illegal attempt of a taxpayer to evade assessment or payment of a tax imposed by Federal law. Conviction of tax evasion may result in fines and imprisonment. Compared to other countries, Americans are more likely to pay their taxes on time and law-abidingly.
The Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, better known as the Kingpin Act, is landmark federal legislation in the United States intended to address international narcotics trafficking by imposing United States sanctions on foreign persons and entities involved in the drug trade.
An accidental American is someone whom US law deems to be an American citizen, but who has only a tenuous connection with that country. For example, American nationality law provides that anyone born on US territory is a US citizen, including those who leave as infants or young children, even if neither parent is a US citizen. US law also ascribes American citizenship to some children born abroad to a US citizen parent, even if those children never enter the United States. Since the early 2000s, the term "accidental American" has been adopted by several activist groups to protest tax treaties and Inter-Governmental Agreements which treat such people as American citizens who are therefore potentially subject to tax and financial reporting requirements – requirements which few other countries impose on their nonresident citizens. Accidental Americans may be unaware of these requirements, or their US citizen status, until they encounter problems accessing bank services in their home countries, for example, or are barred from entering the US on a non-US passport. Furthermore, the US State Department now charges USD 2350 to renounce citizenship, while tax reporting requirements associated with legal expatriation may pose additional financial burdens.
Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. 212 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.
Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, 598 U.S. 175 (2023), was a United States Supreme Court case related to administrative law.
Tyler v. Hennepin County, 598 U.S. 631 (2023), was a United States Supreme Court case about government seizure of property for unpaid taxes, when the value of the property seized is greater than the tax debt. A unanimous court held that the surplus value is protected by the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause.
Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States, 598 U.S. 264 (2023), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the exposure of Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank to prosecution by the Department of Justice under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, and more broadly, the limits imposed by the sovereign immunity doctrine on criminal prosecution.
The use-of-money principle, also written as the use of money principle, is a principle invoked in the context of taxation in the United States, that states that the government can charge interest for unpaid tax only if the government did not have use of that tax money. In other words, interest can only be charged on the amount of tax that is both due and unpaid, regardless of whether the taxpayer has fulfilled other obligations, such as filing a tax return. The interpretation that the Internal Revenue Service has for this is described in Revenue Ruling 99-40 of the Internal Revenue Manual, that uses the term "use of money". The corresponding statutory guidance is in Section 6601(a) of the Internal Revenue Code.
