FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) is required if your foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 in aggregate at any point in the year. FATCA (Form 8938) is filed with your tax return at much higher thresholds — for filers living abroad, $200,000 at year end or $300,000 at any time for single filers, doubled for joint. They overlap but neither replaces the other.
The two regimes are administered by different agencies under different statutes. FBAR sits under Title 31 with FinCEN; Form 8938 sits under Title 26 with the IRS. That is why the thresholds, the definitions and the penalties do not line up, and why filing one and assuming the other is covered is such a common and expensive error.
The $10,000 FBAR threshold is aggregate, not per account, and it is tested on the maximum value each account reached during the year. Two accounts that each peaked at $6,000 on the same day trigger a filing, even if they were nearly empty at year end.
| FBAR (FinCEN 114) | FATCA (Form 8938) | |
|---|---|---|
| Threshold, living abroad | $10,000 aggregate, any time in the year | $200,000 at year end or $300,000 at any time (single); $400,000 / $600,000 (joint) |
| Threshold, living in the US | $10,000 aggregate, any time | $50,000 / $75,000 (single); $100,000 / $150,000 (joint) |
| Filed with | FinCEN, via BSA E-Filing | Your Form 1040 |
| Measured on | Maximum value during the year | Year-end value, plus a during-year test |
| Covers | Financial accounts you own or can sign for | A wider class of specified financial assets |
Signature authority is the most commonly missed category. It creates an FBAR obligation over money that is not yours and that you may never have spent.
FBAR penalties are the reason this matters. A non-willful violation carries a penalty of up to $10,000 per violation before inflation adjustment; the Supreme Court's decision in *Bittner* confirmed that non-willful penalties apply per report rather than per account, which materially reduced exposure for people with many accounts.
A willful violation is a different order of magnitude: the greater of $100,000 or 50% of the account balance at the time of the violation, per year. Wilfulness includes reckless disregard, not only deliberate concealment.
Form 8938 penalties start at $10,000 for failure to file, rising to $50,000 for continued failure after IRS notice, plus a 40% accuracy-related penalty on any understatement attributable to undisclosed foreign assets. Crucially, a failure to file Form 8938 keeps the statute of limitations open on the entire return.
Part III of Schedule B asks directly whether you had an interest in or signature authority over a foreign financial account. Answering “no” while holding one is a false statement on a signed return, and it is the single most damaging fact in a later non-willfulness argument.
If you are correcting historic FBARs, expect that question to be read back to you. It is why a truthful streamlined certification is easier for someone who left the box blank than for someone who ticked “no” for six consecutive years.
For most people the route is the streamlined foreign offshore procedures: six years of FBARs filed electronically, three years of returns filed on paper, and no penalty where the conduct was non-willful.
Filing delinquent FBARs quietly, without a disclosure route, is riskier than it looks — the IRS retired its published Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures, so what remains is the statutory reasonable-cause exception rather than a published safe harbour.
$10,000, measured as the aggregate maximum value of all your foreign financial accounts at any point during the calendar year. It is not per account and it is not a year-end test — accounts that each peaked below $10,000 can still trigger a filing between them.
Often yes. They are separate obligations under separate statutes with different thresholds, and filing one does not discharge the other. Many people abroad meet the $10,000 FBAR threshold without approaching the $200,000 Form 8938 threshold, so the FBAR is filed alone — but where both are met, both are due.
In most cases yes. A UK workplace or personal pension is generally a foreign financial account for FBAR purposes, including auto-enrolment pots people forget they have. The treaty may affect how the pension is taxed, but it does not remove the reporting obligation.
Yes, both cash and stocks and shares ISAs. The UK wrapper has no effect on either regime. A stocks and shares ISA usually brings a separate and more serious problem as well, because the funds inside it are typically passive foreign investment companies requiring Form 8621.
Up to $10,000 per report for a non-willful violation, before inflation adjustment — the Supreme Court confirmed in Bittner that the non-willful penalty is per report, not per account. A willful violation carries the greater of $100,000 or 50% of the account balance, per year, and reckless disregard can be enough to count as willful.
Yes. If you can direct the disposition of funds in a foreign account you have a reporting obligation over it, even with no beneficial interest — an employer account, a relative's account or a club account you administer all count. This is the most commonly missed category.
Send us the account list. We will tell you which regime catches what, and whether a disclosure route is needed.
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