It's Time to Bare Your Soul to the U.S. Treasury
By Mark Nestmann (June 17, 2008)
It's that time of year again where almost every American with a "foreign account" must "tell all" to the U.S. Treasury Department.
This means you if you have a foreign account or accounts with a total value of US$10,000 or more. (In other words: It's NOT US$10,000 per account.) If so, you must file Form TD F 90.22-1 by June 30. You must also declare that you have a foreign account or accounts on Schedule B of your personal tax return. (Click here for the link to the form.)
Trust me: It's definitely worth your time. If you don't report your foreign account, you could face serious penalties. For starters, you could be prosecuted. In fact, prosecutions for failing to report foreign accounts have risen sharply in recent years.
If you "willfully" fail to file the form, or acknowledge your account(s) on Schedule B, you face a fine up to US$500,000 and a five-year prison sentence. Let me put this another way: You would likely receive a shorter prison sentence if you were convicted of manslaughter rather than willfully failing to file your TD F form each year!
If you merely forget to file your form, you're subject to a civil penalty of US$10,000. And that's for each year you fail to file the form, going back at least to 2004, when Congress imposed the civil penalty provision.
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