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Over the past several years, the Internal Revenue Service has focused much of its attention on offshore bank accounts and the obligation of U.S. taxpayers to report such accounts on the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (“FBAR”) form. The FBAR rules require taxpayers to annually report whether they have a financial interest in, or signature or other authority over, foreign bank accounts, and may impose substantial civil and criminal penalties for failing to do so. In addition taxpayers have an obligation to report their worldwide income, whether earned domestically or offshore.
The IRS has also imposed additional reporting requirements that obligate U.S. taxpayers to annually disclose specified foreign financial assets on an IRS Form 8938 when they file their income tax returns. The IRS Form 8938 requirement is part of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”) which was enacted by Congress in 2010 as a measure to prevent U.S. taxpayers from hiding their wealth overseas. At its core, FATCA is mechanism for the IRS to receive a wealth of information with respect to a U.S. taxpayer’s foreign bank accounts in that FATCA requires foreign banks and financial institutions to annually disclose to the IRS information about their U.S. depositors. FATCA has significant tax consequences for those U.S. taxpayers who have previously undisclosed foreign bank accounts. In this webinar, you will learn about: (1) the FATCA foreign asset reporting rules; (2) updates to the existing FBAR reporting regime for foreign bank accounts; (3) the FATCA information reporting regime for foreign banks; and (4) the U.S. government’s enforcement efforts in this area.
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