Tax Blawg

By Hale Sheppard

Taxpayers with undisclosed foreign accounts wish it were not true, but the reality is that the U.S. government, after a long period of inactivity and ineffectiveness, has taken significant steps over the past few years to identify and punish failures to file Forms TD F 90-22.1 (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts), or foreign bank account reports (“FBARs”) as they are commonly known.  These steps include enacting legislation obligating foreign institutions to automatically provide the IRS with information about U.S. account holders, paying handsome rewards to whistleblowers, introducing a new information return forcing taxpayers to report their foreign financial assets (including foreign accounts) to the IRS each year, imposing multi-million dollar fines and disclosure duties on foreign banks that collaborate with taxpayers to evade U.S. taxes, extracting valuable data about international tax transgressions from taxpayers participating in the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (“OVDP”), and criminally prosecuting FBAR offenders.  Another step has become apparent in the past few months, i.e., litigation to collect civil penalties for “willful” FBAR violations.  To date, two cases have been decided, both in favor of the U.S. government.  The attached article, “McBride Willfull FBAR Penalty Case Article,” examines the most recent case.  The article was published in the most recent version of the Journal of Taxation (April 2013).