Behind on your US taxes? There's a well-trodden way back

Your situation

Somewhere along the way you learned — from a bank letter, a news article, another expat — that US citizens are supposed to file US returns even while living in Britain. Yours are missing: a few years, or a few decades. You have been paying UK tax all along and hiding nothing. Now you are somewhere between worried and unable to sleep.

Here is the honest position. You are one of thousands in the same boat, the IRS knows this population exists, and it maintains a specific, formal route for exactly your circumstances. Handled before the IRS makes contact, this is a bounded project with a known shape — not an open-ended crisis.

What each country expects from you

The United Kingdom is almost certainly fine: if you have been within PAYE or filing Self Assessment, your UK house is in order, and those UK records become the raw material for fixing the US side.

The United States expects annual returns from citizens and Green Card holders above the filing thresholds, plus FBARs whenever non-US accounts together topped $10,000. For missed years, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures are the main road back: generally three years of returns, six years of FBARs, and a certification explaining that the failure was non-wilful — with the usual penalties waived. Where returns were fine and only FBARs are missing, the delinquent FBAR submission procedures are simpler still.

Because the UK generally taxes income at rates at least as high as the US, foreign tax credits mean the catch-up returns frequently show little or no US tax due. The most common streamlined surprise is a small one.

The classic traps

• Waiting. The streamlined route is for people who come forward before the IRS raises the issue. A FATCA-prompted letter can end the option.
• Quiet disclosure. Filing old returns cold, or starting fresh this year as if the past did not happen, forfeits the programme's protections while highlighting the gap.
• Overkill. You do not need twenty years reconstructed; the procedures define the scope, and paying someone to exceed it helps no one but them.
• Ignoring the investments. The catch-up years must handle ISAs, funds and pensions correctly — this is where DIY streamlined submissions most often go wrong.

One firm, both returns

Your UK filings are the evidence that makes the streamlined case work. Because we prepare both UK Self Assessment and US returns, we build the catch-up directly from your real UK records, prepare the returns, FBARs and non-wilful certification as one package, and then keep you effortlessly compliant in both countries afterwards. Fixed fees are agreed before we begin, so the cost is known before you commit.

When to get advice

Now — while coming forward is still your choice and the penalty-waived route is open. Bring whatever you have — UK returns, P60s, a list of accounts — to a conversation with us, and you will leave with the scope, the timeline and the fee, and usually with the problem feeling considerably smaller than it did on the way in.