Failed to File Your FBAR? With the recent increase in enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service on matters involving foreign accounts, assets, and investments, many U.S. taxpayers who find themselves out of international information reporting compliance may feel especially overwhelmed or hopeless about what they […]
What You Must Know About FBAR Before Filing While Taxpayers may be required to file many different types of international information reporting forms each year in order to report their foreign accounts, assets, investments, and income — the FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) is the most common […]
  8 Details About Form 8938 That All Taxpayers Should Know   With tax season in full swing, one of the most important international information reporting forms that a U.S. Taxpayer may have to file is IRS Form 8938. The Form 8938 is used by U.S. persons […]
6 Key Things You Must Know For IRS Form 5471 While it would appear that there are an infinite number of international information reporting forms required for taxpayers with overseas accounts and assets, Form 5471 is one of the more common and complicated forms. That is […]
A Primer on IRS Tax Form 3520 While the FBAR is the most common type of international information reporting form that U.S. persons with foreign accounts may have to file, there are several other types of IRS foreign tax forms that U.S. persons may have to […]
  An Overview of IRS Non-Willfulness Certification The Streamlined Offshore Procedures is a program developed by the IRS to allow non-willful Taxpayers to safely disclose their previously unreported foreign accounts, assets, investments, and income. When it comes to submitting to the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures or […]
Examples Cases For Failing to File FBAR With the close of 2023 comes five (5) very important foreign bank and financial account reporting (FinCEN Form 114 aka FBAR) case rulings that continue to help shape the way the Internal Revenue Service may enforce penalties and fines. […]
Retroactive Compliance For Malta Pension Plan Taxes  Back in 2021, the United States and Malta issued a CAA (Competent Authority Arrangement) acknowledging, that US Taxpayers’ attempts to utilize certain Malta personal pension and retirement schemes as Roth IRA alternatives were not going to fly. In other […]
Can IRS Voluntary Disclosure Limit Criminal Tax Prosecution Risks? U.S. Taxpayers who are out of compliance for failing to report foreign or domestic income and/or overseas accounts, assets, and investments have many different opportunities to safely get into compliance with the IRS. For non-willful taxpayers, there […]
How to Make Sense of PFIC While there are many complicated aspects to international tax and reporting, the IRS requirements for having to report Passive Foreign Investment Companies (PFIC) are some of the most daunting and complex. Technically, the PFIC is an acronym for Passive Foreign […]
Common Defenses to FBAR Violations This article will serve as a follow-up to a previous article we wrote a few years back regarding defenses to FBAR penalties.  Over the past several years, foreign bank and financial account reporting penalties have become an enforcement mainstay for both […]
A Form 3520 Penalty for Failure to Report a Foreign Gift At the international tax law firm of Golding & Golding, our Board-Certified Tax Law Specialist Team focuses exclusively on matters involving international tax. We have written many articles over the past several years about challenging […]
Golding & Golding’s Foreign Trust Reporting Overview When it comes to international tax and reporting, foreign trust tax and reporting are two of the most complicated aspects of annual foreign investment compliance. This is because of many different reasons, such as: What is a foreign trust? […]
Will Puerto Rico Act 60 Trigger a Tax Audit? In recent years, more and more U.S. taxpayers are seeking to circumvent certain income taxes they are required to pay as a U.S. person taxed on their worldwide income, by relocating to Puerto Rico in conjunction with […]
New Form 8300 Filing Requirements for Cash Transactions  Certain businesses that conduct cash transactions over $10,000 are required to report the transactions on Form 8300. In addition, effective January 1st, 2024, the Internal Revenue Service will now require businesses to file this form electronically by e-filing […]
IRS International Penalties and Relief Unlike many other types of penalties assessed by the Internal Revenue Service (which go through the typical deficiency procedures process), foreign account penalties operate differently — to the detriment of the taxpayer. When it comes to foreign account penalties, oftentimes the […]
Form 1040-NR Filing Taxpayers who are considered U.S. Persons and required to file a tax return, are required to file an IRS Form 1040 each year to report their worldwide income. For taxpayers who are considered non-residents (usually by either making a treaty election to be […]
Foreign Money Transfers to the United States The United States tax rules can be very complicated and especially when international components are introduced into the mix, it can be downright overwhelming for U.S. Taxpayers who are not originally from the United States and/or have foreign income […]
Foreign Inheritance Form 3520 Reporting When a US Person receives an inheritance from a foreign person, a non-resident alien who has no US tax nor reporting requirement — the main requirement for the US person (not decedent) is to file a Form 3520 to disclose the […]
How to Avoid Common FBAR Errors Each year, US Persons who have foreign financial accounts and meet the threshold for reporting may have to report these accounts annually on the FBAR (Foreign Bank and Financial Account Reporting aka FinCEN Form 114). In general, the FBAR is […]
What is Foreign Taxable Income? The United States tax system is much different than many other tax systems across the globe. In general, the US tax system is very complex and even issues that seem relatively benign on the surface can become very complicated when it […]
International Tax Evasion and Fraud In recent years, there has been a significant uptick in the U.S. government’s enforcement of international criminal tax violations. New technological advances — coupled with the globalization of the U.S. economy — have made it significantly easier for US Taxpayers to […]
All About Penalties for Tax Evasion and Tax Fraud When it comes to US tax violations they can generally be broken down into two different categories: civil tax violations and criminal tax violations. While tax evasion is a criminal tax violation (and a felony), tax fraud […]
About the Shakira Tax Fraud Cases in Spain  Unfortunately, it seems like the tax problems for Shakira in Spain have gone from bad to worse. It turns out that the Spanish Tax Authorities are preparing a new tax fraud case against the global entertainer. It is […]
Treaty Election for US Tax Treatment as a Non-Resident Unlike almost every other country across the globe, the United States income tax rules are based on U.S. Person status and not residence. This is referred to as Citizenship-Based Taxation — although this term is a misnomer […]
Was Your Form 3520 CDP Claim Denied? The Collection Due Process Hearing (aka CDP Hearing) is an opportunity in which some Taxpayers may have the chance to challenge certain outcomes and penalties issued by the IRS. Over the past few years, using CDP to challenge Form […]
  Reporting of Foreign Accounts on FBAR When it comes to getting into international tax compliance for previously undisclosed foreign accounts, assets, investments, and income — one of the most common types of unreported assets is still foreign bank accounts. Foreign bank accounts come in all […]
  What if You Do Not File FBAR? While there are many different international information reporting forms a US Taxpayer may have to file each year in order to report their foreign accounts, assets, investments, and income — the FBAR (aka FinCEN Form 114) is the […]
IRS Appeals Farhy Form 5471 Ruling  The case of Farhy was one of the most taxpayer-friendly case rulings in an international information reporting case ever issued by the Tax Court. That was because, in the case of Farhy, the Tax Court ruled in favor of the Taxpayer […]
What is a John Doe Summons? The Internal Revenue Service will issue a Summons when it wants a person to produce certain documentation relevant to an IRS (or related) tax investigation. The IRS can ask for items such as books, papers, records, and other data in […]
IRS Criminal Investigations Recently, in July of 2023 the Internal Revenue Service issued a criminal tax press release placing U.S. Taxpayers on notice that the IRS has every intention of pursuing criminal investigations of taxpayers they believe are willfully seeking to evade tax. This specific list […]
  What Can I Do if I Missed the FBAR Deadline? An update to our June 2020 article: If you missed the FBAR filing deadline, do not worry — you still have options available to satisfy the filing deadline — and possibly avoid (if not minimize) […]