British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday wrote to leaders of oversees tax havens, urging them to help the country's efforts to combat tax evasion and avoidance. Cameron sent a letter to 10 British crown dependencies and overseas territories regarding the "critical" issues of tax information exchange and beneficial ownership, a practice which uses a nominal third-party resident in a low-tax state to shield income from taxation.

The United States, Britain and Australia announced a joint effort Friday to expose tax dodgers with an investigation of a massive cache of bank account data from tax havens that was leaked to the authorities. The three countries said they are sharing the huge trove of data on accounts in Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Cook Islands, which includes names of account holders and their advisers. Britain said it had identified more than 100 people who have been hiding money in offshore tax havens in scouring the data.

OTTAWA - As an international investigation of tax evaders broadens to include Canadian authorities, the federal government says it has convicted just 44 individuals of offshore tax cheating since 2006. And the total amount of fines levied — $6.8 million — is less than the $7.7 million in taxes that were evaded. Between April 2006 and March 2012, a total of 44 convicted tax evaders were collectively sentenced to 337 months in jail, an average of about seven months each.

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service says it is teaming with tax agencies in Australia and the United Kingdom to share information about potential tax cheats hiding money in tax havens around the world. The IRS said Thursday that tax agencies in the three countries have acquired "a substantial amount of data" about potential tax cheats from many countries hiding assets in Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Cook Islands. The agencies are offering to share the information with other countries.