FBAR’s no longer accepted by snail mail!

71 thoughts on “FBAR’s no longer accepted by snail mail!”

1. @ The Mom
   That’s the spirit! My husband is Mac-centric and he’s thoroughly t’d off with this — enough to risk the $500 fine. He says it’s a ploy to match your computer IP address with your physical address. I’m not computer savvy enough to know if this is possible but I have enough imagination to think they might take control of your computer somehow and do some mischief — something like the USA in cahoots with Israel did with the Stuxnet Virus/Worm. Don’t feed the data beast if you can possibly avoid it.

2. 🙁

3. @ WhiteKat
   You are a true Canadian. Don’t let the insanity of all this get you down. Enjoy the fireworks.

4. I tried out the e-filing, and it was unnecessarily baroque, with instructions that can only be understood by people with IT experience and/or a good grasp of technical English. The canonical grandma in Toronto will be hopelessly lost, not to mention the accidental citizen whose first language is not even English!

   Making e-filing mandatory is just plain abusive.

5. Being largely computer illiterate, I registered, took a chance, and tried to download the fbar on my computer.

   Google chrome never worked (don’t know why) but a very old internet explorer did download something.

   Then the computer screen turned all blue and that was that….

   [Strange coincidence that I am actually listening now to Billie Holiday sing: “I’ve gotta right to sing the blues. Nice.]

6. IRSCompliantForever,

   No one better to belt out “I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues.” She sure had that right and so do we. That Billie is one powerful female from wherever her spirit now is!

7. @ WhiteKat…don’t let the b@$tards get you down. There are OTHER true Canadians the Canadian government fails, as well.

   Seems we have something besides infancy in the US in common. I’m Metis. Wonder if I could get THAT to work for me. ; )

   I’m tempted to contact the IRS over this.

   Dear IRS,

   I have only Apple computers, and generally use only an iPad. Please create an FBAR app.

   Yours in form slavery,

   The Mom

8. Once again, in trying to do something to make filing easier they have come up with something unworkable for most people. Nobody in my home uses a PC. Everything is Mac and has been for many years now. So, there’s no way for me to use that form and no I did not get it filled out. One issue they had was problems with the pin numbers on the website. I am NOT going to a public place to fill out this type of information even if I could do so.

   We switched to Mac and one of the reasons was the ability to be safer online than with a PC. Less vulnerable to attack and many wasted hours cleaning up virus attacks, back door worms and the like. I won’t go back just to file an FBAR for goodness sakes!

   And yes, filling out the form online gives them full access to your IP address which can tell them the following: The location of your computer, the service provider you use, your identity for matching up with the IP address if you are using a personal computer from home, among other things. They can probably find out who your family is and collate a lot of data from just your IP address. They can save this information for later use. OR perhaps they can share it. I wouldn’t want to fill out something that sensitive online whether I could or not.

9. http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/blog-post/fbars-your-new-best-friend-forever-you-decide?goback=%2Egde_3694878_member_254614188

   The article mentions the likelihood of the computer automatically generating penalties

10. Well, according to Edward Snowden, the US government has all the information that would appear on an FBAR in a memory bank somewhere already. Now if they could just remember where they put it……..

11. @Mark Twain

    “http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/blog-post/fbars-your-new-best-friend-forever-you-decide?goback=%2Egde_3694878_member_254614188

    The article mentions the likelihood of the computer automatically generating penalties”

    The possibility of the computer automatically assessing penalties is something I have heard lots of rumors about. For this reason, those who want to become FBAR compliant may want to (even at the risk of a $500 fine) file by paper. Get current and then pick up with the e-filing next year.

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13. “The article mentions the likelihood of the computer automatically generating penalties.”

    Aha!!! I knew they were up to mischief even if I didn’t know exactly what kind of mischief. (I still think spyware or some other malicious virus/worm is a possibility too. I don’t trust them — not a bit.) Who here wants to try to get an incorrect computer generated FuBAR penalty fixed? ….. Amazing. I don’t hear a single Brocker saying, “Me, me. I want to try that!”

14. @Mark Twain

    Ah, a brave new future. Auto generated penalties, and no reasonable cause entry allowed! And of course, we don’t know what happens to the FBARs, according to Yates, but the FATCA form 8938 is going to be scrutinized!

15. Pingback: Cook v. Tait 10: Opinion – Those born outside the US are NOT automatically US citizens | U.S. Persons Abroad - Members of a Unique Tax, Form and Penalty Club

16. @ Garbo999,

    Re: your question “BTW: Is anyone else offended by the obligation to file paperwork with the “Financial Crimes Enforcement Network”?

    I am appalled by it! That and the entire “guilty before proven innocent” attitude the US has towards its citizens outside the US would, in itself, be enough to make me renounce US citizenship. Why would I want citizenship in a country that assumes I’m a criminal!

    I also find it sickening that to the US of today the core value of citizenship is taxation. That’s sure what comes across, not simply from yahoos commenting on newspaper articles, but in the speeches and writings of their government officials.

    If I had US citizenship, when I discovered this in 2011 I would have renounced it. Crimes Enforcement Network, my foot! So, that’s what the US thinks of me. I want to be part of that country?

    At any rate, I had already relinquished my US citizenship years ago, as I didn’t want to have dual citizenships, but never dreaming that US citizenship would be what it has become. I sure feel like I left a different country than the one that’s there now. As I posted the day I got my CLN in November 2012,

    “…. Funny thing, back when I actually relinquished my citizenship in 1979, leading up to it my thinking basically was, “You have two good countries. Choose one.” The day I actually became a Canadian and relinquished 34 years ago was not emotional for me, it was a logical progression of my life. I was neither happy nor sad to lose my US citizenship. But times have changed, specifically the US’ attitude has changed – and so getting that CLN was emotional and joyful! If was a sense of relief that I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams when I chose between “two good countries” many years ago.”

17. Canada does have a equivalent to FINCEN called FINTRAC, The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. Of course Canada has FBAR so the only reporting FINTRAC gets is large cash, suspicious activity, etc.

    http://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/intro-eng.asp

18. Canada does have a equivalent to FINCEN called FINTRAC, The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. Of course Canada has no FBAR so the only reporting FINTRAC gets is large cash, suspicious activity, etc.

    http://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/intro-eng.asp

19. @Tim, Canada does have something similar to the FBAR: form T1135. However, the threshold is $100,000, and the penalties are high but not draconian. Also, the Canadian voluntary disclosure program has no penalties, only back taxes and interest.

    And of course, this only applies to people actually living in Canada.

20. Em, it’s like when you have an overdue book at the library. As soon as you renew it or return it and it’s logged in, the fine pops up on your account. But given how the site and online form is a piece of crap, how well do you think the automatic fining will work?

21. @Tim,

    I don’t have a problem with the existence of FINCEN (or FINTRAC) nor investigation of suspicious, even possibly suspicious, behaviour. What I have a problem with is I see requiring all USCs abroad to report to Financial Crimes Enforcement Centre as the US considering the fact of being a US citizen outside the US to be a status offence.

    I do not have problems with tax agencies doing their job. I’ve written on another thread about my CRA audit experience. There was not even a hint of accusations or threats (or loss of sleep), and I was in no way offended at all that they wanted more information about my tax return. The audit occurred because of a specific tax matter, not because I was a member of a “particular social group.”

22. @ Shadow Raider
    T1135 is also a very easy form to fill in and does not require precise balances (like the FBAR did up to 2007). Amounts are simply recorded in a range of say $100K to $300K. No account numbers, no bank names, no bank addresses required but the late penalty is $25 per day. T1135 is included with your annual tax forms. Because individual accounts are not listed, only aggregate amounts, the form is only 1 page long. Of course the IRS has nothing, absolutely nada, it can learn from the CRA. (snark)

    @ YogaGirl
    Automatic fining will work great — for the IRS. For filers — not so much. This e-Fubar obstacle looks like pure SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for the US tax dys-system.

23. pacifica777, exactly. From what I have observed of the CRA, it’s a matter of fact/nothing personal system that assumes nothing negative and makes its assessments based on factual info without punishing judgement. I know folks who’ve been “remiss” in their filings on the order of several years (young people) and are catching up now and it’s a straight forward process that doesn’t seek to financially cripple them for the remainder of their lives – just get everything square. The US system has been – from its inception almost – a tool to remind the folk that they are minions and that’s when it isn’t being used a a weapon by this or that POTUS or other govt official. I have a high school classmate who worked for them and at a class reunion we got into a discussion where he basically told me that the negative, fear-provoking image is a calculated one. “People wouldn’t pay taxes otherwise,” he said though I don’t know that he truly believed that. He was a decent guy and I think he has since left the IRS.

24. Korea has an FBAR-like tax form too. The reporting threshold is much higher (a billion won, or ~US$1 mil), but the fines are pretty severe — they’re also based on asset value rather than tax deficiency. Can’t find any English articles about it offhand, here’s a Korean article & its machine translation

    http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20120606800016

    http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=ko&to=en&a=http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20120606800016

25. Canada’s Form T1135
    Moodys Tax Advisors, June 28, 2013: The devil’s in the details – the new form T1135 is released

    Earlier this week, the CRA released the revised Foreign Income Verification Form (“T1135”) as had previously been announced by the Federal government in their 2013 Budget. Consistent with our blog posted on March 26, 2013, taxpayers are now required to report additional information which makes the T1135 more comparable to its US cousin – the FBAR.

    Overall, the changes to the T1135 are not significant, but will serve to make its preparation more laborious. Taxpayers must provide the following additional information:

    whether the form is an amended return;
    whether the taxpayer or the taxpayer’s spouse (or both) are self-employed;
    where the form is prepared by a partnership, the nature of the partners (individuals, trusts, or corporations) must be disclosed;
    whether foreign income received by the taxpayer is reported on a T3 or T5 from a Canadian issuer in respect of a specified foreign property;
    the name of the bank or other entity holding funds outside of Canada;
    if foreign shares are held by the taxpayer, the name of the corporation issuing the shares;
    a description of any indebtedness owed to the taxpayer by a non-resident;
    the name of any non-resident trust in which the taxpayer holds an interest;
    a description of all real property outside of Canada (except for personal use property and real estate used in an active business); and
    a description of all other property held outside of Canada.
    …

    This blog entry then goes on to discuss “compliance.”