How to Fight the IRS | Hacker News Reader

How to Fight the IRS

online.wsj.com

17 pointsrobg9 comments

Oh boy, does the first paragraph ever press one of my hot button issues. The US Treasury FBAR (foreign bank account reporting) rules represent very bad law. The rule requires that all foreign accounts be disclosed. The penalty for non-compliance is $100,000 per year or 20% of the amount of undisclosed funds, whichever is greater. It was intended to catch people who have large off-shore tax shelters. That's a good idea in principle, but they severely botched the implementation of this law.

The threshold for reporting is $10K. This means that if someone is not aware of the requirement as has $11K overseas, they can be hit with a $100,000 fine. The penalty is grossly inappropriate. Worse, the definition of "account" is so vague that it is very easy to accidentally be in non-compliance.

I inadvertently ran into this problem myself and now I need to find a tax lawyer to help me, even though the cost of the lawyer will probably be at least half the almost-nominal value of the assets involved.

PS: Can anyone recommend a good tax lawyer experienced in handling FBAR issues?

If I had to guess, 'good' or reputable attorney in this area probably do not price for people in your situation. They probably have plenty of wealth clients that give them more than enough work.

You probably will do fine with a tax attorney. For your sake I hope you didn't inadvertently also not report the income that was the source of those funds. Hard to make that look like an honest mistake.

IANAL but spent a long time researching FBAR. It's pretty straightforward. If you didn't declare in the past, declare ASAP. Make sure you post two copies - one with your 1040 and one to whatever the other address is.

If you've been hit with a penalty on the other hand, not much advice I can give you sorry.

Actually I was doing this last night and forgot that it was just the information box on Schedule B with your 1040 - you definitely don't send the actual form to the IRS. Just send the FBAR itself to the treasury.

They forgot my favorite strategy: burn your house to the ground and fly your plane into their building. You certainly won't have to pay your taxes anymore.

Bummer this was downvoted; I laughed. Perhaps you could use Wesley Snipes jokes here to greater effect.

Or, emigrate to a country with a more reasonable tax system, especially one that doesn't spend ~25% of its budget on the military.

No, emigrating doesn't help. U.S. citizens and green card holders living overseas still have to pay U.S. taxes on all their investment income, as well as on wages over $91,400.

Giving up your U.S. citizenship doesn't help either, they make you continue to pay U.S. taxes for the next 10 years or bar you from the U.S. for life.

(And the banks overseas aren't in the habit of helping you generate all those IRS forms, the way banks in the U.S. will do when you earn interest on your savings account or whatever).

Great, more conspiracy minded "fight the power" crap from people who watched the Bush administration trample our rights for 8 years and called us traitors if we said anything.

At least they're not advocating firing shotguns at census workers, yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com