US Citizens Living Outside America: Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedure Offers Tax and Compliance Relief (2024)

United States Citizens Living Abroad: New IRS Streamlined Procedure Offers Relief

A couple of weeks ago, I had someone come in my office who has lived abroad since he was 7 years old. He is a citizen of the United States and Netherlands. He has never filed United States income tax returns. We discussed the general rule that US citizens must file returns and pay tax on their worldwide income. This meant that he should be filing a Form 1040 Return each year. It also meant that he should have been filing for the last 20 years or so of his adult working years a Form 1040 even though he is not living or working in the US. We discussed that although there may be a Netherlands tax treaty with the United States it does not eliminate the need to file tax returns. To add insult to injury, there could be taxes due, along with a whole host of penalties.

Benefits of the New Streamlined Program:

A taxpayer who is eligible to use these Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures and who complies with its requirements can avoid:

Failure-to-file penalties
Failure-to-pay penalties
Accuracy-related penalties
Information return penalties, or
FBAR penalties.

Even if returns properly filed under these procedures are subsequently selected for audit under existing IRS audit selection processes, the taxpayer will not be subject to failure-to-file and failure-to-pay penalties or accuracy-related penalties with respect to amounts reported on those returns, or to information return penalties or FBAR penalties, unless the examination results in a determination that the original tax noncompliance was fraudulent and/or that the FBAR violation was willful.

Eligibility For The Streamlined Program

In addition to having to meet the general eligibility criteria of these offshore programs, individual U.S. taxpayers, or estates of individual U.S. taxpayers, seeking to use the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures must:

Meet the applicable non-residency requirement described below (for joint return filers, both spouses must meet the applicable non-residency requirement described below) and
Have failed to report the income from a foreign financial asset and pay tax as required by U.S. law, and
May have failed to file an FBAR (FinCEN Form 114, previously Form TD F 90-22.1) with respect to a foreign financial account, and
Such failures resulted from non-willful conduct.

Non-willful conduct is conduct that is due to negligence, inadvertence, or mistake or conduct that is the result of a good faith misunderstanding of the requirements of the law.

Non-residency requirement applicable to individuals who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents (i.e., “green card holders”): Individual U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, or estates of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, meet the applicable non-residency requirement if, in any one or more of the most recent three years for which the U.S. tax return due date (or properly applied for extended due date) has passed, the individual did not have a U.S. abode and the individual was physically outside the United States for at least 330 full days.

Under IRC section 911 and its regulations, which apply for purposes of these procedures, neither temporary presence of the individual in the United States nor maintenance of a dwelling in the United States by an individual necessarily mean that the individual’s abode is in the United States.

What Has To Be Done To Qualify Under This Program

U.S. taxpayers eligible to use the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures must do the following:

Income Tax Returns: For each of the most recent 3 years for which the U.S. tax return due date (or properly applied for extended due date) has passed, file delinquent or amended tax returns, together with all required information returns (e.g., Forms 3520, 5471, and 8938) and
FBAR: For each of the most recent 6 years for which the FBAR due date has passed, file any delinquent FBARs.
Tax and Interest Must Be Paid With Filings: The full amount of the tax and interest due in connection with these filings must be remitted with the delinquent or amended returns.
Compliance Details: There are other submission details and the IRS warns that “Failure to follow these instructions or to submit the items described below will result in returns being processed in the normal course without the benefit of the favorable terms of these procedures.” So extreme care must be taken to comply with all the details of this IRS program.

Conclusion:

This is a very favorable development to US citizens living abroad who have no idea of their tax responsibilities to the United States. As always, the devil is in the details, so tax counsel should be sought to insure that the various submissions meet all requirements under this Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures. There is just too much at stake to do otherwise.

Disclosure and Disclaimer: As required by United States Treasury Regulations, you should be aware that this communication is not intended by the sender to be used, and it cannot be used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties under United States federal tax laws. This article has been prepared and published for informational purposes only and is not offered, nor should be construed, as legal advice. For more information, please see the firm’s full disclaimer.