I would support a temporary amnesty on just the interest penalties, not the back payment of taxes.
There is a view by lawyers—and I haven't seen a study on this—that the interest penalty is supposed to help us get at the present value of the tax debt. If people haven't been paying taxes for several decades, the interest penalty will bring it up to the present. But because the interest is applied on an accrued basis, then the tax debt or the ultimate penalty far exceeds both the original tax debt and any kind of return the person may have earned on this investment.
There is a view that this would help clean up a number of dishonest secret accounts. I'm basing this on discussions with international tax lawyers working out of Toronto, whose clients are not entering into the voluntary disclosure program because first they ask, “Will I get caught”? and then they ask, “How much is this going to cost me?”
If you compare our program with the American one, in some respects the American program is more lenient. Maybe they've seen a great uptick in people stepping forward with voluntary disclosures.