The IRS maintains a list of Foreign Financial Institutions or Facilitators, essentially a blacklist of institutions which have been determined to be complicit in evasion of U.S. taxes.  While taxpayers who enter the IRS’ Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program are normally subject to a penalty of 27.5%, those whose assets are on the ‘blacklist’ are instead subject to a 50% penalty on the highest aggregate balance of their accounts in the last eight years.  To make matters worse, even one account in a ‘bad bank’ will taint the remainder of the assets and up the penalty to 50%.

The latest banks added to the blacklist are as follows:

The list is continuing to expand. Foreign Financial Institutions or Faciliators