FBAR: Reporting Your UK and Foreign Bank Accounts to FinCEN

What the FBAR is

The Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts — FinCEN Form 114, universally called the FBAR — is an annual disclosure of financial accounts held outside the United States. It goes to FinCEN, the US Treasury's financial crimes network, not to the IRS, and it is filed electronically and separately from your tax return.

It exists because the US wants visibility of money its citizens hold abroad. For an American in the UK that means the FBAR is not an exotic edge case: it is a routine annual filing that most US expats with a UK bank account will owe.

Who has to file

You must file an FBAR for a calendar year if both of the following are true:

1. You are a US person — a US citizen or US tax resident (which includes Green Card holders), wherever in the world you live.
2. The combined highest balances of all your non-US financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any point in the year.

The second test trips people up constantly. It is an aggregate: each account is measured at its own highest moment in the year, and those peaks are added together. Three accounts that each briefly held £3,000 can cross the line together. Moving money between your own accounts can effectively double-count the same funds. The threshold has never been indexed for inflation, so an entirely ordinary UK salary account often exceeds it on its own.

Which UK accounts count

Reportable accounts include far more than current accounts:

• Current and savings accounts, including joint accounts
• Cash ISAs and stocks & shares ISAs
• Investment and brokerage accounts
• Premium Bonds and other NS&I holdings
• Some pension arrangements, depending on their structure
• Accounts you can sign on but do not own — including an employer's account
• Business accounts of companies in which you hold a large enough interest

Whether a particular UK pension must be included is a genuinely technical question that depends on the arrangement — one of several reasons pensions deserve their own review on both sides of your filings.

Deadline and how it is filed

The FBAR is due on 15 April, with an automatic extension to 15 October — you do not need to request it. Filing is electronic, through FinCEN's BSA e-filing system, and there is no fee. You will need each account's institution, account number and maximum value during the year, converted to US dollars.

Penalties: why this form matters

The FBAR carries some of the heaviest penalties in the US system. Non-wilful violations can attract a civil penalty per report (inflation-adjusted, in the low five figures); wilful violations can reach the greater of a six-figure sum or half the account balance, per year. Following the Supreme Court's Bittner decision in 2023, non-wilful penalties apply per report rather than per account — a significant mercy, but hardly a reason to relax.

In practice, the IRS and FinCEN reserve the harsh outcomes for people who hide. Expats who genuinely did not know and come forward have well-established, penalty-managed routes back — which is exactly why acting before they contact you matters.

Missed years: the way back

If you have unfiled FBARs, resist the urge to quietly file them all late. The right route depends on whether you also have unfiled or incorrect tax returns:

• Tax returns also behind or wrong: the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures usually cover both problems at once — three years of returns, six years of FBARs, usual penalties waived for non-wilful conduct.
• Returns fine, only FBARs missing: the delinquent FBAR submission procedures allow late filing with a reasonable-cause statement, generally without penalty if your income was properly reported.

Choosing the wrong door — or filing "quiet disclosures" with no explanation — can convert a fixable situation into an expensive one.

FBAR and Form 8938 are not the same thing

The FBAR goes to FinCEN; Form 8938 goes to the IRS with your tax return under FATCA, with different thresholds and a wider asset definition. Many expats must file both, reporting the same accounts twice to two arms of the same government. Irritating, but routine once your filing process is set up properly.