Understanding FBAR: When You Need to File FinCEN 114

The FBAR — Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, formally FinCEN Form 114 — is one of the most misunderstood US filings for expats. It is not part of your tax return, it is filed separately with the US Treasury, and the penalties for missing it are far worse than for tax mistakes.

Who has to file

Any US person — citizen, Green Card holder, or US tax resident — whose aggregate foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 USD at any point during the calendar year. The threshold is across the total of all accounts combined, not per account.

What counts as a foreign account

• UK bank accounts (current, savings, joint).
• UK brokerage and investment accounts (Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, etc.).
• Cash ISAs, Stocks & Shares ISAs, Junior ISAs.
• Workplace pensions, SIPPs, and most personal pensions.
• Premium Bonds and National Savings products.
• Accounts where you have signature authority but no ownership (e.g. for a UK employer or a relative).

How to file

FBAR is e-filed through the BSA E-Filing System — not through your tax return. The deadline is 15 April with an automatic extension to 15 October. There is no form to request the extension, it is automatic.

Penalties

These are maximum civil penalties, not automatic charges. The IRS decides on the facts whether to assert a penalty at all, and how much.

• Non-willful: up to $16,536 per late or missing annual FBAR — per report, not per account.
• Willful: up to the greater of $165,353 or 50% of the account balance at the time of the violation.
• Criminal: in the most serious willful cases, fines and imprisonment can also apply.

The $10,000 and $100,000 amounts written in the statute are base figures; the amounts above are the current inflation-adjusted maximums (see the source notes below).

Source notes

• 31 U.S.C. § 5321(a)(5): the statutory base amounts — $10,000 for a non-willful violation; the greater of $100,000 or 50% of the account balance for a willful one.
• 31 CFR 1010.821 and FinCEN's inflation adjustment of 17 January 2025: adjusted maximums of $16,536 (non-willful) and $165,353 (willful) for penalties assessed on or after 17 January 2025, for violations after 2 November 2015. The 50% limb is not inflation-adjusted. There was no 2026 inflation adjustment (OMB Memorandum M-26-11), so these were still the current figures at our October 2026 review; penalties assessed later may use different amounts.
• Bittner v. United States (US Supreme Court, 2023): the non-willful penalty applies per annual report, not per account. It did not change willful penalties.
• 31 U.S.C. § 5322: criminal penalties for willful violations — up to $250,000 and 5 years, or up to $500,000 and 10 years where the violation is combined with other unlawful activity.
• IRM 4.26.16.3.11: IRS examiners do not assert a penalty for a delinquent FBAR where the failure was non-willful, due to reasonable cause, and the account is properly reported — an examination standard, not an automatic waiver.
• The IRS Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures page is no longer available on irs.gov (checked 18 October 2026).