It should be noted that under the amnesty, a taxpayer who made a voluntary disclosure was locked into the "one-size-fits-all" penaltystructure described above.
Similarly, there is a very real risk that the penaltystructure to enforce the employer mandate under Obamacare may have very perverse incentives for firms below 30 workers and 50 workers to stay below these thresholds.
"Starting this offseason, we had substantial discussion among player leadership about whether the penaltystructure we have is right whether there should be increases whether there should be a differential penalty for intentional or unintentional users, " Weiner said.
Rather, because these programs provided both protection from criminal prosecution and a potentially favorable civil penaltystructure, even taxpayers whose conduct did not evidence the willfulness necessary to support a criminal prosecution made voluntary disclosures to attain certainty regarding their civil exposure.
The 2012 OVDP offers a civil settlement structure in which taxpayers pay an offshore penalty in lieu of a number of other penalties that may be assessed in cases of offshore noncompliance.
The logic of a penalty discount rate is that the Fed prefers to let the rate structure ration Federal Reserve credit rather than having to do so administratively.
Taxpayers who have entered OVDP who disagree with the application of the offshore penalty given the unique facts and circumstances of their case may elect to opt out of the civil settlement structure of the program.