If you have an interest in an offshore bank account or another type of foreign financial account, you may be required to file a yearly report for the account with the Department of Treasury. The penalties for not filing Form FinCEN 114 are costly, and if you have been putting…
The other day our tax lawyers posted the materials we have received so far in response to our FOIA request regarding Australian Superannuation accounts and other foreign retirement plans. The most interesting thing we found was a series of emails between various technical specialists in the IRS’ Offshore Compliance Group,…
Our tax attorneys have had many clients with Superannuation accounts in Australia. For those of you not familiar with Superannuation accounts, these are the Australian version of our tax-favored retirement plans. These Superannuation accounts, sometimes referred to as Supers, can be very problematic for immigrants from Australia to the U.S.,…
One of the top priorities for the IRS and Department of Justice has been the focus on offshore financial accounts held by U.S. taxpayers, and used to avoid or defeat the assessment of tax. Underscoring the need for an increased focus on offshore tax enforcement is a 2008 U.S. Senate…
In yet another sign of the rapidly expanding reach of FATCA and the U.S. government’s increased access to account data from around the world, the Turkish government reached a reciprocal information sharing agreement with the United States government. The bottom-line here is that taxpayers holding undisclosed accounts and assets in…
On July 9, 2015, the United States and Indian governments announced that they had entered into a Foreign Account and Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) agreement. FATCA is a U.S. law that has been described by some as a “global banking law.” The reason for this characterization is because the law…
On July 31, 2015, President Barack Obama signed into a law HR 3236 a highway funding bill. Buried in the Bill is a provision which changes the filing date for Foreign Bank Account Reports (FBARs) to April 15th. Up until now the due date for the FBAR, which must be…
On Friday the IRS released new guidance on how examiners should determine the amount of any penalty for the failure to file an FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank Account, FinCEN Form 114). The guidance is effective for all open cases as of May 13, 2015. It does not appear to…
U.S. citizen, resident aliens and others who are U.S. taxpayers face a unique mode of taxation in the United States. That is, U.S. taxpayers are taxed on their worldwide income regardless of where it was earned. Predictably and understandably, this method of taxation results in many expatriates worrying about whether…
Since FATCA’s passage, critics of the law have assailed its provisions and the IRS’ interpretations of the law. However one of the most oft-repeated charges against the account disclosure statute was that the IRS, itself, was not ready for the law and could not handle the influx of data including…