Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

US expat tax and FBAR: Discussion thread (Ask your questions) Part Two

Please ask your questions here about US Expat tax and FBAR.

Participants will need to provide their e-mail address (real or fake) and an alias. The only written rule is that participants must use a same alias each time they post (and not “anonymous” or derivatives thereof).

Bear in mind that any responses that you get from participants is peer-to-peer help, and it is not intended as a replacement for professional advice. Also, the Isaac Brock Society provides this disclaimer: neither the Society nor any of its members are professionals. We offer our advice here only in friendship and we recommend that our readers seek professional advice if they need it.

If you wish to receive an e-mail notification of comments, check the box to that effect when making your first comment.

NB: This discussion is a continuation of an older discussion that became to large for our software to handle well.  See US expat tax and FBAR: Discussion thread (Ask your questions) Part One.

3,618 thoughts on “US expat tax and FBAR: Discussion thread (Ask your questions) Part Two”

  3. Just realized that there’s a form called 8938 in IRS website. Does that mean if one living abroad hasn’t filed his FBAR and taxable income before, aside receiving penalty under the the current OVDI, will also be penalized if he didn’t fill the form 8938? How many more penalties are they going to charge, huh>?

  6. @Clara. Look for the “Streamlined Procedure” on the IRS site in the same area. The concept is to file taxes back 3 yrs and FBARs back 6 years.

    Educate yourself.as to what situation is right for you.

    The streamlined procedure states that some will be “low risk” and some will be “high risk” after going through that procedure. Not sure what that will mean.

    on this site,.there is a special category hear warning about (against) using the Offshore Disclosure Program (OVDI/OVDP)

  7. Filed in late December, and in March received a letter saying something like “According to our calculations, you are owed a refund to the sum of xx$”.
    I suppose you could call me an ultra-minnow: Student with little income, though enough on the savings account to need to fie FBARs. Born in Switzerland with one (now deceased) US Parent and no more links to the US. Soon I should have five years of compliance and a way out.

  8. Thank you AJ. That will at least help people to get an idea of the potential timeline in the Streamlined for ultra-minnows or krill. Glad to see you were able to get through and are on your way.

  10. that doesn’t stop the IRS from assignment to enforce new rules and laws.
    Wait til Obamacare kicks in together with FATCA, certainly they will be able to handle those enormous workloads.

  12. Quite interesting. Canada is no 1 in number of returns closely followed by UK. A grand total of 30,000 returns in 2006 reporting 2.67 billion in income (average of 89K per return). The vast majority would owe no taxes. What a waste of time and money. Great for H&R Block tho.

  13. @KalC
    If you look at this one: “Individual Income Tax Returns With Form 1116: Foreign-Source Income, Deductions, and Taxes”, Classified by: Country for 2006, the numbers are even more “impressive”: Number of returns in Canada: 240.191 and in the UK: 127.572.

  14. THis could be used for 2 arguments—as mentioned above, what a waste of Money, and also to counter the uber-rich and Global Elite tags

  15. All geographic areas: Foreign-source gross income (119.963.255) / Number of Returns (2.941.952) =
    $40.78 gross income per return. Forty dollars and seventy-eight cents! Well, they’ve really exposed us expats as the cash-cows they claimed we were all along, havent they. 😉

  17. If Expats are filing ccompletely correctly, I’d imagine that many could wind up owing double tax from PFIC taxation on foreign mutual funds or capital gains taxes on the sale of their primary residence. Many will have created messes, because they’ll have been unaware of all the anomalies.

  18. @notamused. Likely, the foreign income exclusion is used on only a portion of income in many returns. For example, a person with primary income from USA but some side income from outside the country. Can’t assume that the IRS Revenue gain on people living overseas is positive with that data.

  20. @Mike Tarrantes
    That last comment was for you… I left out the heading. Sorry…. Petros… still waiting for that edit function to come back. 🙂

  22. @ just me …..They make mistakes, assess penalties on their own mistakes, then make it virtually impossible to get to someone to fix the mistake. No taxpayer or accountant should have to endure the intended torture of trying to deal with the current bureaucratic structure of the IRS…… I think that says it all and yes it is a classic – “Groundhog Day“ . Oh btw. this comment about not receiving mail on time .. I had a similar encounter just 8 weeks ago and here is what my “legal superstar“ wrote to me : About the IRS holding back correspondence to make sure it is impossible for you to make a timely response, I am afraid you are attributing far more intelligence and purpose to the IRS than it really has. They are not that smart and even if it were to try what you are suggesting, anyone involved in that kind of conspiracy against the IRS Manual and taxpayers would be summarily fired if not brought up on corruption charges. This doesn’t happen. If you were ever to spend more than five minutes in an IRS mail room you would know I am telling the truth.—— I think we all know who said that , wink,wink.

  23. Random thoughts on Ethics, Tax Opinions and A Tax Lawyer’s Life at a Big Law Firm
    http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.ch/2013/03/random-thoughts-on-ethics-tax-opinions.html?utm_source=BP_recent
    my response was : ..And the liberal churning of legal hours was staggering, overstaffing and useless research projects the norm…… YES this sounds familiar but why do we call it here liberal ? It seems to me that doing something knowingly unethical like “tax driven deals“ justifies automatically to profit in an unethical way as well – like one hand washes the other. Sorry “sissyfussy“ and others you have to recognize that you are part of the problem and not the solution. For me to use the word “liberal“ here is very synical – fraud is more like it ! Yes of course you will say now if we didn`t some other firm would have done it – true but FRAUD stays FRAUD ! I realy wonder what they have taught you in law school regarding ethics and morals – passing the Bar exam is not – I should say – should not be a carte blanche to abandon certain principles – what kind of role model do you think you are ? Remember the fish stinks always from the head !

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: