Many Americans dread April 15, the deadline for filing their income tax returns. But

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some well-heeled people are trembling over another looming tax day: October 15.

Thursday is the deadline for Americans to come clean about the money they have hidden offshore, in places such as Swiss bank accounts. No one can say with certainty how much money is out there -- the accounts are secret -- but the hoard may be billions of dollars.

Several thousand wealthy people have come forward, hoping to avoid large fines or possibly even prison. But many others are still weighing their options.

The choice is stark: They can confess and pay the penalties, or gamble that they will not get caught.

With the deadline only days away, tax lawyers say they are being inundated by anxious clients.

"We're seeing a flood of people," said Scott D. Michel, a tax lawyer in Washington. His firm, Caplin & Drysdale, has 350 clients who are preparing to report their offshore accounts to the Internal Revenue Service. The firm has 14 lawyers handling their cases, one of which involves a tax bill of millions of dollars.

The deadline is part of a broad crackdown on Ame ricans who use offshore ac counts to evade federal tax es. As part of the effort, au thorities have challenged the long tradition of bank ing secrecy in Switzerland, and, in particular at UBS.

The IRS is offering tax dodgers some leniency.

Penalties will be reduced for people who come for ward by October 15. They will be assessed fines equal to 5 to 20 per cent of their tax bills, rather than the usual 50 per cent. They al so will pay that penalty once, based on the highest balance in their offshore accounts over the last six Pallavi years, rather than for each of those six years.

At least 4,000 clients of UBS and other private banks have come forward in recent months, a government official who had been briefed on the matter said.

One of those clients was Bruce Krasting. Last December, UBS, under sharp scrutiny from federal officials, told him that the bank was closing his offshore account and mailing him a check for the balance: $830,000.

Krasting, 59, realised that if he didn't own up to the IRS, he had just two other options: Find another offshore bank in Switzerland or the Caribbean -- and risk being discovered -- or leave a trail for the IRS by depositing his money into a United States bank.

International Herald Tribune