AMSTERDAM: Credit card company American Express has been told to hand over information to the US tax office tax authorities about Dutch residents with bank cards linked to accounts outside the Netherlands.
The US tax service has asked for the information to help the Dutch government determine if residents are complying with local tax laws, Bloomberg quoted a justice department statement as saying.
The Dutch authorities requested this information based on a treaty that allows the Netherlands and the United States to cooperate in the exchange of tax information, according to Bloomberg. In the United States this type of case is referred to as a ‘John Doe summons’, in which the tax authorities suspect that citizens aren’t following tax laws, but don’t know their names. Should the Dutch involved turn out to have hidden assets, they risk fines of up to three times the total of tax they owe, according to the Volkskrant.
The case focuses on tracing the identities of Dutch taxpayers who had American Express cards between 2009 and 2016 that were linked to bank accounts outside the US. Efforts to trace potential tax cheats through other payment agencies have succeeded but American Express has so far refused to cooperate, the Volkskrant said in its report.
The investigation was launched following a tip in which FIOD received the names of 3,800 Dutch believed to have hidden assets. They were all clients at Credit Suisse. FIOD also received the names of 55 thousand foreigners, which were shared with investigators in Australia, Germany, France and Britain.
Dutch investigators arrested two people last week as part of a five-country probe linked to Credit Suisse accounts.
