Hide your money from the taxman in Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein has long been thought of as a country which is a tax haven for those who wanted to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. And now, a former banker with UBS, a Swiss bank with a license to do business in the United States, says employees were trained on helping customers avoid U.S. tax laws. Bradley Birkenfeld has pleaded guilty to tax evasion in the U.S. and is helping federal prosecutors investigate banking practices.

It is alleged that UBS Bank helped at least 19,000 U.S. consumers to create "undeclared" bank accounts in Liechtenstein, which hid $18 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) is head of a Senate committee that held a hearing about this issue today. He released a list of "secrecy tricks" to the media, which include some of the following tactics to help hide assets: give clients code names, use pay phones instead of business phones, create undeclared accounts, transfer companies to cover tracks, use foreign shell companies, create fake charitable trusts, use anonymous wire transfers, disguise business trips, and shred mail.