Doug Shulman | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 47th commissioner of Internal Revenue | |
| In office March 24, 2008 –November 9, 2012 | |
| President | George W. Bush Barack Obama |
| Preceded by | Linda Stiff (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Steven T. Miller (acting) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | May 10,1967 |
| Education | Williams College (BA) Harvard University (MPA) Georgetown University (JD) |
Douglas H. "Doug" Shulman (born May 10,1967) is president and chief executive officer of OneMain Financial. Shulman is a former U.S. commissioner of Internal Revenue. [1]
Shulman was born in 1967 to Jeff and Celia Shulman. He grew up in Oakwood,Ohio (Greater Dayton Area). He graduated from Oakwood High School in 1985. Shulman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College,a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government,and a Juris Doctor degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center.
Shulman co-founded and served as executive vice president of FoundryOne,Inc.,a company focused on building and spinning off technology-focused startups within major corporations. Previously,Shulman was vice president of Darby Overseas Investments,Ltd. and served as a senior policy advisor and as chief of staff for the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service. [2] Shulman began his career as a consultant at A.T. Kearney in New York City.
Shulman came to NASD in 2000. He first served as executive vice president,technology strategy and corporate development,before being promoted to president,markets,services and information. He then was promoted to vice chairman of NASD,and later became vice chairman of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). He played a key role in the merger between New York Stock Exchange regulatory operations and NASD,which created FINRA. At NASD,he directed NASD's efforts to restructure itself as solely a regulator and spin-off its market subsidiaries. He led the negotiations that resulted in the sale of both the NASDAQ Stock Market and the American Stock Exchange.
He also oversaw NASD's efforts to become active in the fixed income markets by launching the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE),NASD's real-time corporate bond market regulatory and information system. He was the lead executive in negotiating corporate bond transparency with the financial services industry,and hired the team that launched the product. Another main area of focus was heading the successful effort by NASD to modernize its technology systems. He also led NASD into new business segments,and helped it to re-vamp its surveillance technology in order to win contracts to regulate other exchanges besides NASDAQ. [3]
On November 22,2007,Republican President George W. Bush announced he would appoint Shulman to be commissioner of the IRS, [4] [5] despite the fact that Shulman had donated to the Democratic National Committee in the 2004 election. [6] When being questioned by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in January 2008,he said that the IRS must be "competent,fair and impartial". [7] [8] On March 14,2008,he was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate to be the 47th IRS commissioner. [9] [10] [11]
Shortly after President Obama was re-elected in the 2012 presidential election,on November 11,2012,Shulman finished serving out his full term as commissioner. [12] [13]
In March and April 2008,one of his first duties was to send out 77 million tax rebates after congress passed the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. [14] He also led the IRS after congress passed Obama's $787 billion economic recovery stimulus package. [15]
As part of the stimulus package,also referred to as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act,about one third of the $787 billion was administered through the tax system. Some of the key provisions that the IRS administered under Shulman's leadership were the first time home buyers credit,net operating loss carrybacks (which allowed businesses to get tax credits when credit lines were frozen),and expanded Earned Income Tax Credit. [15]
One of Shulman's signature initiatives was the cracking down of offshore tax evasion. He is largely credited with being the key leader in shifting the paradigm of tax evasion and bank secrecy. In August 2009,he persuaded Switzerland to turn over the identities of 4,450 Americans with secret UBS bank accounts. UBS paid a $780 million fine. This was the first time that a Swiss bank had ever broken Swiss bank secrecy,and is largely viewed as a watershed event in the erosion of bank secrecy and tax evasion. [16]
Under his leadership,the IRS launched multiple voluntary compliance programs—the offer was to have people who had been hiding money overseas to pay back taxes,pay a penalty,but avoid criminal prosecution. [17] From 2009 to 2011,the IRS collected $4.4 billion from 33,000 people who had offshore accounts. He said it was an "amount we never thought we'd reach. If we catch people before they come in voluntarily,it's going to be a much worse outcome for the taxpayer." In January 2012,he revived a program that would be even more strict toward offshore accounts. He said the "long-term goal is deterrence. We want to wake up and have the next generation of taxpayers not even think about hiding their assets overseas." [18]
The IRS was given major responsibilities for the money flows of the affordable care act. The provisions that the IRS needed to prepare for under Shulman's leadership included the individual mandate,the employer mandate,insurance company reporting of fact of coverage,and financial data for exchanges to make determinations regarding who is eligible for tax credits. There were also a number of tax provisions in which the health care industry would pay taxes to help offset the costs of the Affordable Care Act,and tax credits for small businesses to buy insurance. The mandate that individuals buy insurance or pay a fine garnered a lot of attention. [19]
In April 2010,Shulman said that taxpayers' refunds in order to collect fines from those who don't buy health coverage via Affordable Health Care for America Act. In response to Republican arguments that the IRS would abuse their powers,he said he would not allow the IRS to be "too punitive". [20]
While serving as commissioner,Shulman led a major modernization of the IRS's technology to streamline tax payment processing,facilitate compliance,and improve customer service. The core of the modernization was to move all tax returns to daily processing,as opposed to the historical batch processing of returns (every one or two weeks). The result was the customer service representatives could have access to accurate data and there was real time information to combat non-compliance,including refund fraud. The goal of daily processing was a goal that had eluded the IRS since it was first set in 1988. [21]
When Shulman came to the IRS,the modernization effort was off-track and over budget. Under Shulman's leadership,the program was turned around. [22] In 2011,the Government Accountability Office listed the program as one of seven successful major IT acquisitions across government,an achievement which attributes to strong management and oversight,and "executive-level focus and attention".
Shulman focused on completing the modernization during his term that would end in 2012. He recruited a new team to build the database and secured funding. On January 17,2012,Shulman oversaw the transition to the Customer Account Data Engine 2, [23] moving the data of 140 million taxpayers into a modern database environment. This was the first successful major upgrade of the IRS data repository for more than 50 years.
In addition to modernizing IRS's core technology,Shulman also significantly increased electronic filing of tax returns when he was commissioner. This digitization effort led to better customer service and more efficiency at the IRS. By the end of his tenure,approximately 80% of all individual tax returns were filed electronically. [24]
The IRS released a number of guidelines to help the 4,800 victims of the Bernie Madoff $65 billion scandal. Shulman said the IRS will allow the amount of the theft loss to include the investor's unrecoverable investment for Ponzi scheme victims. Victims who are part of small businesses will be able to go back 5 years to recover investments and so-called "phantom profits". [25] [26] [27]
Douglas Shulman was the commissioner of the IRS during some of the time when new criteria, including the name of organizations, were used to identify tax exempt applications for review. However, Douglas Shulman was not mentioned in the Inspector General report that uncovered and detailed this issue. [28] [29] In a congressional hearing held on May 21, 2013, Douglas Shulman denied responsibility for the policy, stating that he found out some facts, but not all the facts about a list of names, from Steven T. Miller and at that time he was also informed that the practice had been stopped and the issue had been referred to the Inspector General for review. [30]
In May 2013, he told Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn "I certainly am not personally responsible for making a list that had inappropriate criteria on it. With that said, this happened on my watch, and I very much regret that this happened on my watch." [31]
On July 13, 2018, OneMain Holdings, Inc., announced Shulman as its next President and Chief Executive Officer. [32]
Earlier, he was an executive at BNY Mellon [33] and had been a Senior Advisor with McKinsey & Company. [34]
An offshore bank is a bank that is operated and regulated under international banking license, which usually prohibits the bank from establishing any business activities in the jurisdiction of establishment. Due to less regulation and transparency, accounts with offshore banks were often used to hide undeclared income. Since the 1980s, jurisdictions that provide financial services to nonresidents on a big scale can be referred to as offshore financial centres. OFCs often also levy little or no corporation tax and/or personal income and high direct taxes such as duty, making the cost of living high.
Tax noncompliance is a range of activities that are unfavorable to a government's tax system. This may include tax avoidance, which is tax reduction by legal means, and tax evasion which is the illegal non-payment of tax liabilities. The use of the term "noncompliance" is used differently by different authors. Its most general use describes non-compliant behaviors with respect to different institutional rules resulting in what Edgar L. Feige calls unobserved economies. Non-compliance with fiscal rules of taxation gives rise to unreported income and a tax gap that Feige estimates to be in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually for the United States.
Tax amnesty allows taxpayers to voluntarily disclose and pay tax owing in exchange for avoiding tax evasion penalties. It is a limited-time opportunity for a specified group of taxpayers to pay a defined amount, in exchange for forgiveness of a tax liability relating to previous tax periods. It typically expires when some authority begins a tax investigation of the past-due tax.
The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, also known as Taxpayer Bill of Rights III, resulted from hearings held by the United States Congress in 1996 and 1997. The Act included numerous amendments to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. The bill was passed in the Senate unanimously, and was seen as a major reform of the Internal Revenue Service.
The United States Department of Justice Tax Division is responsible for the prosecution of both civil and criminal cases arising under the Internal Revenue Code and other tax laws of the United States. The Division began operation in 1934, under United States Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings, who charged it with primary responsibility for supervising all federal litigation involving internal revenue.
The IRS Whistleblower Office is a branch of the United States Internal Revenue Service that will "process tips received from individuals, who spot tax problems in their workplace, while conducting day-to-day personal business or anywhere else they may be encountered." Tipsters should use IRS Form 211 to make a claim.
Taxation of illegal income in the United States arises from the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, enacted by the U.S. Congress in part for the purpose of taxing net income. As such, a person's taxable income will generally be subject to the same federal income tax rules, regardless of whether the income was obtained legally or illegally.
Roscoe Lynn Egger Jr. served as Commissioner of Internal Revenue from 1981 to 1986 and received the Tax Executive Institute's Distinguished Service Award in 1986. He led the Internal Revenue Service through a tumultuous time in its history and pushed for numerous reforms in order to modernize the tax service.
Raoul Weil is a Swiss banker. Weil is best known as being the former chairman and chief executive officer of Global Wealth Management & Business Banking at UBS AG. Weil eventually became a member of UBS's group executive board.
Elisse B. Walter was the 30th Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from December 14, 2012 – April 10, 2013. She was appointed chair by President Barack Obama on November 26, 2012, and sworn in on December 14, 2012. She was originally appointed as one of five SEC Commissioners by President George W. Bush and sworn in on July 9, 2008. Under designation by President Obama, she later served as Acting Chair during January 2009. She served as a Commissioner of the SEC until August 9, 2013.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax law. It is an agency of the Department of the Treasury and led by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The duties of the IRS include providing tax assistance to taxpayers; pursuing and resolving instances of erroneous or fraudulent tax filings; and overseeing various benefits programs, including the Affordable Care Act.
Bradley Charles Birkenfeld is an American private banker, Author of Lucifer's Banker, convicted felon, and whistleblower. During the mid- to late-2000s, he made a series of disclosures about UBS Group AG clients, in violation of Swiss banking secrecy laws, to the U.S. government alleging possible tax evasion. Known as the 2007 "Birkenfeld Disclosure", the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had reached a deferred prosecution agreement with UBS that resulted in a US$780 million fine and the release of previously privileged information on American tax evaders.
The IRS Return Preparer Initiative was an effort by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to regulate the tax return preparation industry in the United States. The purpose of the initiative is to improve taxpayer compliance and service by setting professional standards for and providing support to the tax preparation industry. Starting January 1, 2011 and, until the program was suspended in January 2013, the initiative required all paid federal tax return preparers to register with the IRS and to obtain an identification number, called a Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN). The multi-year phase-in effort called for certain paid tax return preparers to pass a competency test and to take annual continuing education courses. The ethics provisions found in Treasury Department's Circular 230 were extended to all paid tax return preparers. Preparers who have their PTINs, pass the test and complete education credits were to have a new designation: Registered Tax Return Preparer.
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.
In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), under the Obama administration, revealed that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to wide condemnation of the agency and triggered several investigations, including a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder. Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
Igor Olenicoff is an American billionaire and real estate developer. In 2007, he was convicted of tax evasion stemming from his use of off-shore companies and Swiss banks to hide his financial assets.
The Swiss investment bank and financial services company, UBS Group AG, has been at the center of numerous tax evasion and avoidance investigations undertaken by U.S., French, German, Israeli, and Belgian tax authorities as a consequence of their strict banking secrecy practices.
J. Richard Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Practice at Villanova University School of Law and Graduate Tax Program. He joined the faculty in 2010, and previously served as professor at Bucknell University and The College of New Jersey. He is a frequent speaker quoted in the press, and has delivered speeches to the Canadian Tax Foundation, Multistate Tax Commission, American Bar Association, Tax Executive Institute, Wall Street Tax Association, and the Institute for International Bankers. He has also testified before the United States Congress on the international tax planning done by Apple, Inc. and other multinational companies.
The Indian Revenue Service , often abbreviated to IRS or IRS , now called IRS(C&IT) is a part of central civil service of the Government of India. It functions under the Department of Revenue of the Ministry of Finance and is under the administrative direction of the Revenue Secretary and the ministerial command of the Minister of Finance. The IRS is primarily responsible for collecting and administering indirect taxes accruing to the Government of India. It is one of the largest civil service amongst the organised civil services in the Indian government and serves the nation through discharging sovereign functions of collection of revenue for development, security and governance.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)