This should be fun. The incoming Obama administration has eyed a new revenue source to help defray some of the budget shortfall.

Cracking down on offshore tax havens.

President-elect Barack Obama plans to crack down on international tax havens, including Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, within weeks of taking power in January, putting him on a collision course with Gordon Brown.

There is growing international pressure to outlaw the secretive practices of tax havens as a key part of reforms to the world's battered financial system, as the leaders of the world's 20 most powerful economies gather for a major conference in Washington next weekend....

Obama advisors estimate the measure could raise at least $50bn (£32bn) per year in lost US tax revenues, and Washington sources say leading accountancy firms have already hired lobbyists in anticipation of a fierce battle to water down the proposals.

Key measures are likely to include: revealing the beneficial owners of secretive trusts; prohibiting accountants from charging fees on specific tax services; and identifying 'offshore secrecy jurisdictions' that 'unreasonably restrict US tax authorities from obtaining needed information'. The measures could end years of financial secrecy that have protected the super-rich and international businesses as they move money from one jurisdiction to another.

This should be fun.

The German BND (equivalent to the Secret Service, more or less) paid $5 million for a CD containing information about German tax evaders, including the CEO of Deutsche Post, Germany's largest postal company. That information brought down a slew of high profile German businessmen who had screwed Berlin out of something like €4 billion ($5.1 billion) in tax revenue.

US tax officials paid for a copy of the CD which is said to include information on large scale tax evasion by Americans who transferred their assets to Lichtenstein. During hearings last summer, the informant who provided the BND the disk with account information indicated how the scam worked.

Heinrich Kieber, the same informant who provided the German government with the DVD containing information about German tax dodgers, provided videotaped testimony to the US Congress Thursday. In the tape, a disguised Kieber told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee about how European banks concealed money from government tax authorities.

For example, Kieber -- who now lives in the witness protection program under an assumed name -- described ruses the LGT Group bank used to hide money, such as setting up shell companies, which he described as "high-grade camouflage."

The testimony came one day after the same panel took aim at the LGT bank and Swiss banking giant UBS in a report accusing the banks of helping Americans evade paying up to $100 billion (€63.3 billion) annually.