US Expatriate Tax Planning - Part 2 - A Podcast with Janathan Allen
Foreign Bank Account Reporting and Employment Tax Enforcement: Ronn Owens interviews Steve Moskowitz
BakerHostetler Attorneys James Mastracchio and Jay Nanavati Discuss Global Tax Enforcement
You may recall that earlier this year the IRS launched an initiative to pursue 125,000 “high-income, high-wealth” taxpayers who have not filed taxes since 2017. These were cases where the IRS received third party information...more
In US Expatriate Tax Planning – Part 2, Ms. Allen picks up the conversation regarding tax and legal issue U.S. expatriates might face. The discussion turns to real estate matters, and the issue of moving money from the United...more
Taxpayers recently won a significant victory at the Supreme Court in a penalty case involving a non-willful failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (“FBAR”) under the Bank Secrecy Act (the “BSA”)....more
After years of litigation, the United States Supreme Court, in Bittner v. United States, 598 U.S. ____ (2023), determined that the penalty for a non-willful failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts...more
Taxpayers who hold foreign accounts finally received clarity as the Supreme Court ruled that the $10,000 non-willful penalty for failure to file a FinCEN Form 114, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) applies...more
If you have unreported foreign accounts, you are not alone. Every year, I speak with hundreds of clients with tax non-reporting issues (e.g., FBARs, Form 8938, Form 3520, Form 3520-A, etc.). The good news: the IRS offers...more
The Bank Secrecy Act requires certain taxpayers to submit timely FBARs to the United States reporting their interests in foreign accounts. If a taxpayer has an FBAR filing requirement and misses it, the taxpayer can be...more
As a general matter, the FBAR is not a difficult tax form to prepare, at least for most taxpayers and their tax professionals. At its very basics, it merely asks for identifying information regarding the taxpayer and certain...more
The IRS and FBARs - On March 30, 2022, the IRS issued Publication 5569, Report of Foreign Bank & Financial Accounts (FBAR) Reference Guide. The 12-page publication provides helpful information to both taxpayers and tax...more
FBAR Penalties - On March 8, 2022, the Southern District of New York issued its Opinion in the case of United States v. Schik, No. 20-cv-0221 (MKV), 2022 U.S. Dist. Lexis 41148 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 8, 2022). In that case, the...more
The concept of “willfulness” is an important one in the FBAR civil penalty context. Indeed, a taxpayer’s willful failure to file a timely and accurate FBAR may result in significant penalties: the higher of 50-percent of...more
In the recent case of United States v. Hughes, a federal district court upheld willful FBAR penalties against a taxpayer for failing to report foreign accounts. The court, siding with the government in two out of four years...more
The "Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts" (FBAR) penalty has been the subject of much litigation. This Holland & Knight alert focuses on the non-willfulness element of 31 U.S.C. § 5321(a)(5)(B). Both the U.S. Court...more
On November 30, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its opinion in U.S. v. Bittner. Contrary to decisions of other federal courts, the Fifth Circuit concluded that it was proper for the IRS...more
On November 30, 2021, the Fifth Circuit parted ways with the taxpayer friendly decision of the Ninth Circuit that non-willful penalties are capped at $10,000 per FBAR filing instead of the $10,000 per unreported bank account...more
A recent IRS Criminal Investigation press release announced an indictment against a businessman charged with defrauding the United States by not disclosing offshore assets, failing to report income to the IRS, and submitting...more
The Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (i.e., the “FBAR”) was for many years confined to the lonely backwaters of Title 31 of the United States Code—the intriguingly-named Bank Secrecy Act. For years, compliance...more
What is the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR)? Congress enacted the statutory basis for the requirement to report foreign bank and financial accounts in 1970 as part of the “Currency and Foreign...more
IRS is interested in U.S. Taxpayer financial accounts everywhere in the world. If the IRS learns that a Taxpayer has undisclosed reportable accounts or income before a US Taxpayer reports them, the Taxpayer can face serious...more
Benjamin Franklin once famously wrote in a 1789 letter, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Many recognize the truth in Mr. Franklin’s statement. Some may also believe that certain death...more
I have previously written on the Bittner (E.D. Tex.) case in a prior Insight. Briefly summarized, the taxpayer, Mr. Bittner, was a dual citizen of both Romania and the United States. However, in 1990, he moved back to...more
U.S. Taxpayers (includes a citizen, permanent resident, corporation, partnership, limited liability company, trust and estate) are required to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) if they have...more
If you have a foreign bank account (or signatory authority on a foreign bank account), you are required to file a Form 114 (commonly called an FBAR) if at any point during the calendar year the combined balance in all of your...more
El 15 de marzo del 2019, el IRS informó que la ocultación de dinero o activos en cuentas extraterritoriales (“offshore”) no declaradas permanece en la lista de las estafas tributarias conocidas come la Docena Sucia o "Dirty...more
On March 15, 2019, IRS reported that hiding money or assets in unreported offshore accounts remains on the Internal Revenue Service’s “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams for 2019....more