News Release
March 5, 2004 - Columbus, Ohio
- Ohio Joins With Other States to Catch Tax
Cheats
Columbus -- (March 4, 2004) The Ohio
Department of Taxation (ODT) today joined 34 state tax
agencies and New York City in signing an information-sharing
agreement designed to combat abusive and illegal tax shelters
and transactions.
Ohio Tax Commissioner William W. Wilkins said sharing
information will benefit all the taxpayers that play by the
rules by helping shut down those individuals and companies
trying to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, "It is a
basic issue of fairness. We have a responsibility to the
honest taxpayer to weed out abuse."
In addition to sharing information, the agreement provides a
framework for states to organize and coordinate joint audits
and enforcement actions. It also provides a clearinghouse for
exchanging tax cases and documents.
Organizers of this national coalition say states must
cooperate because increasingly complex tax avoidance schemes
often involve scattering taxable income in many states,
"Abusive tax avoidance transactions have
become a threat to the fiscal health of our states," said
Stephen M. Cordi, president of the Federation of Tax
Administrators (FTA). "We can only uncover these types of
schemes by sharing knowledge." The FTA is an association of
tax agencies in all states, the District of Columbia and New
York City.
State tax agencies routinely share confidential tax data but
this agreement will focus solely on tax evasion schemes
seeking to avoid state taxation.
This new agreement complements the Abusive Tax Avoidance
Transactions (ATAT) partnership signed last September by the
IRS and FTA members. The ATAT agreement calls for the federal
and state governments to coordinate their efforts and share
data on illegal schemes to evade federal and state taxes.
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For more information contact Gary Gudmundson, ODT
Communications Director, at 614-644-6903.