The Ninth Circuit – known as one of the most taxpayer friendly of the federal circuit courts – has joined many other courts in holding that reckless violations of the Bank Secrecy Act were sufficient to uphold willful FBAR penalties. The Court af… Read More

There have been a lot of cases in the last several years defining willfulness in the context of failures to file FBAR forms with the IRS. But a recent decision from the Northern District of California addresses the issue slightly differently. Instead… Read More

Small businesses, and even large ones, depend on their top employees to do everything from interfacing with customers to filing company tax returns. When a key employee has a serious physical or mental illness at tax time, it can create problems for… Read More

U.S. taxpayers with foreign business interests must disclose those interests to the IRS or face substantial penalties. But for the past year, the IRS’s foreign business assessment authority has been off-line. A 2023 Tax Court decision held that the… Read More

Imagine working as an employee for a company for two years and then having the IRS impose trust fund recovery penalties worth more than 10 times your annual salary. That’s exactly what happened in Powell v IRS, but when it came time for trial, the… Read More

Can the IRS present new evidence in support of its administrative innocent spouse determinations? A recent Tax Court decision on a motion to strike provides new insight on what counts as evidence in an innocent spouse lawsuit. While the party present… Read More

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which controls much of the Midwest, has joined several other appellate courts to confirm that recklessness is enough to support willful penalties for FBAR filing failures. Reviewing the case of United States v. Kel… Read More

Expatriates often have a foot in two (or more) countries, physically and financially speaking. This can make it difficult to understand their U.S. tax filing requirements. Add to that the extra requirement of filing FBARs disclosing foreign financial… Read More