Update 2020 …
US citizens and residents – Report early! Report often! Report everything! Keep a record of what you report! "Looking for Mr. #FBAR: John Richardson @Expatriationlaw in discussion with Virginia La Torre Jeker @VlJeker" https://t.co/GcMxzsmWj7 via @YouTube
— John Richardson – lawyer for "U.S. persons" abroad (@ExpatriationLaw) October 15, 2020
Prologue: Circa 1948 – George Orwell anticipates the arrival of Mr. FBAR
A recent U.S. District court case has again shone a spotlight on the lack of a clear statutory or regulatory definition of “willful” for purposes of applying the more severe penalties for failure to file the FBAR.
In Bedrosian v. United States, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56535 (ED PA 2017), the Court denied summary judgments by the both taxpayer and government on the issue of the taxpayer’s culpability in failing to report a Swiss bank account on a timely-filed FBAR.
Remember all that excitement around the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act? Yes, I bet you do! We talked about it here. So it is here- the new FinCEN Form 114 (aka FBAR) filing deadline!
If you thought FBAR penalties were more bark than bite, a recent U.S. District court case is sure to change your mind.
In United States v. August Bohanec et ux, USDC CD Ca., No. 2:15-cv-04347 (December 2016), the Court found that the taxpayer’s failure to file the FBAR was willful and affirmed the IRS’s enhanced FBAR civil penalty, i.e., a fine equal to the greater of $100,000 or 50% of the balance in their unreported accounts.
I suspect that history will show that that the growth in renunciations of U.S. citizenship (and abandonment of Green Cards) continued in 2016. Absent a change in the way that the United States treats its “U.S. Persons Abroad”, I suspect that the growth in renunciations of U.S. citizenship will continue.
The purpose of this post and a short summary:
The IRS has just issued a reminder to taxpayers that the FBAR filing deadline of June 30th is fast approaching. Unlike other tax forms, extensions for filing the FBAR are not allowed, so June 30th remains a hard deadline.
Beware! IRS is stepping up enforcement action of the Bank Secrecy Act in closing out bank accounts of U.S. taxpayers making cash deposits.
Ronald Malone and his wife Janet Malone of Dubuque, Iowa lived a simple life and enjoying their retirement. Shortly before Ronald’s death in October 2011, Ronald told his wife about a briefcase containing $180,000 cash that he accumulated from his job as a publishing executive and from gambling winnings and investment income. After Ronald died, Janet who at the time was 68 years old, deposited this cash into her bank account in increments of anywhere from $5,800 to $9,000.
Unknown to Janet, these cash deposits were being reported by the bank to the IRS. Read More
This is a continuation from yesterday’s post of the interview with Bill Yates:
Yates: Everyone in the room who knew me turned and looked at me. I’ve been involved in horses since I was five. Believe me, no one makes $50 million raising bucking horses. That is patently ridiculous. What it shows is that LGT would accept any explanation regarding the source of a prospective client’s funds or assets. Then, the UBS scandal broke. That’s when things really got ridiculous.
La Torre Jeker: How?
Yates: Well, we started seeing how European governments were shocked, I mean shocked, really, to find out that any of their banks could be involved in promoting and facilitating tax evasion. Give me a break. How could you live in the EU and not know about what was going on in Switzerland, Lichtenstein and the Caribbean tax havens, many of which by the way are British protectorates?
La Torre Jeker: So, are you saying that foreign banks had it coming to them? I mean FATCA. Read More
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