Oversea account

[AccTaxMan]

Client told me he has an account oversea and the balance has been over $10,000 for a long time. Obviously, I explained to him the requirement of filing the FBAR. He has no problem doing it this year except he is worried about the penalty because of those FBARs that had not been filed before. And in order not to "open a can of worms", he is thinking just not to file the FBAR even this year.

He is a very nice person so I really want to help him to put this issue back on track. So what is the best way to handle the situation? Would it be enough to avoid the possibility of any penalty if he files the FBAR for the last 3 years? Please share your advice.

[JG EA]

This happened to me. My client had reported all the foreign interest each year and I blithely checked "no" to foreign bank accounts each year. My client noticed the question on the organizer and asked about it.

To make a long story short we filed forms for every year since 2001 under the advice of someone who said this is really when the US started being more concerned with this issue. My client had all of her statements fortunately. We included a letter apologizing for the error and everything was fine.

[FEDUKE404]

Paperwork

I might be more concerned as to whether the income from the foreign accounts had been reported on the tax returns....

FE