Watch nearly any entertainment program dealing with white-collar crime, spies, or assassins, and you’ll likely hear the words ‘Swiss Bank Account’ at least once. This is because, historically, sending money outside of the country is one of the primary vectors for tax evasion and money laundering.
Over the years, many financial criminals have utilized this method to accept money for illegal activities or to circumvent income reporting requirements to avoid paying taxes on money received. It is thanks to these illegal activities that the government came down hard with regulations on international finance, making law-abiding persons have to surmount enormous legal hurdles just to conduct business in the country.
One of these legal hurdles, the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or FBAR, was specifically created to combat money laundering, tax evasion, and the myriad of other financial crimes conducted across borders over the years. The FBAR is a piece of financial documentation (specifically, FinCEN Form 114) that is required to be submitted to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (a U.S. Treasury department) if you own a foreign bank account worth at least $10,000.
While its intentions are clearly good, the FBAR has highly precise and stringent reporting requirements that make it difficult to comply with and highly damaging penalties for a lack of compliance. Failure to comply comes with penalties as steep as $10,000 for non-willful offenses to a full 100% of the account’s worth if it is determined you’ve willfully failed to file the necessary information.
FBARs are complicated to complete and have a highly regulated time span for collecting, filling out, and submitting them. Suppose the bank account is in active use during the filing period. In that case, it’s very possible that the information you input on the form is not correct by the time the form is submitted, which can open you up to a costly investigation, litigation, and penalties.
This is why it is highly recommended that all citizens and residents who own a foreign account that is being actively used to conduct business or personal finance enlist the services of an experienced team of attorneys who specialize in international tax law. For San Diego residents, this means getting in touch with Southern California’s premier international tax law expert, Hone Maxwell.
Hone Maxwell has been providing top-notch international finance and taxation legal services for the better part of a decade and has helped clients save millions in penalties through conscientious filing processes and skillful litigation. The Hone Maxwell team has dedicated FBAR lawyers who walk clients through their obligations and requirements, provide timely filing assistance, help mitigate penalties, and provide legal representation for those clients currently under investigation for non-compliance.
The FBAR is just one piece of the international law puzzle, though – FBAR compliance is intersected with dozens of other tax and international legal considerations, which is why the Hone Maxwell staff works as a coordinated legal machine. Working with Hone Maxwell can help extricate you and your business from years of miring in the labyrinthine international law courts, leaving you free to conduct business.
FBAR compliance is a difficult process, and the severe penalties involved make the stakes very high. If you are facing penalties for FBAR non-compliance or are working to make sure you or your business remains compliant, contact Hone Maxwell today.
Hone Maxwell
+16199804476
3465 Camino del Rio S #400, San Diego, CA 92108