Sneaky Change in the Law Could Cost You Upwards of $10,000

By Simon Black

Here’s a great example of how an important rule that may affect your life gets BURIED within a giant piece of legislation—

At first glance the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015 doesn’t seem like it should have any impact on foreign bank accounts.

But in fact it does significantly.

This piece of legislation signed into law last week, changes the filing deadline for an FBAR by over two months.

If you’re not familiar, the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, commonly known as the FBAR, is a form that US taxpayers must submit to report foreign bank and financial accounts.

In general, any US citizen, resident, corporation, partnership, LLC, etc. which either has a financial interest in, or signature authority over, a foreign financial account or accounts, must file the FBAR. Given that the aggregate total across all the accounts was at least $10,000 at any point during the previous calendar year.

Curiously, the FBAR is not filed to the IRS. It goes to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and is submitted electronically via form FinCEN 114.

The FBAR filing deadline used to be June 30th every year, meaning that you had until June 30th to report all your financial accounts for the previous calendar year.

Now, HR 3236 changes the filing date to April 15th of each year to coincide with the US tax filing deadline.

This is pretty important news if you have a foreign bank account given that there are steep penalties for not filing.