Tag Archives: civil FBAR penalty

November 2, 2022 Supreme Court FBAR Case: ALEXANDRU BITTNER, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES Respondent – No. 21-1195

Here is the audio recording of the November 2, 2022 Bittner FBAR hearing …

On November 2, 2022 the Supreme Court Of The United States heard the Bittner case. The issue was whether in the context of a non-willful FBAR penalty:

1) The government is restricted to imposing one penalty based on the failure to file one FBAR; or

2) The government is authorized to impose one non-willful penalty for each of the accounts that should have been reported on the single FBAR form.

For example, let’s imagine that a US citizen has ten accounts that are “foreign” and he fails to file an FBAR form. Is the penalty based on the failure to file the form itself (one form means one $10,000 penalty)? Or may the government impose a penalty based on the failure to disclose each of the accounts on the FBAR form (10 times $10,000 = $100,000)?

Mr. Bitter is/was a dual US Romanian citizen who was living in Romania during the years that the FBAR penalties were imposed. According to the closing comments of his lawyer, Mr. Bittner (while living in Romania) had filed US tax returns for years that he had a business connection to the United States (apparently investing in a relative’s business in California). In other words, there is some evidence that Mr. Bittner was not fully aware that as a US citizen, his US tax and reporting obligations applied even when he did not live in the United States. In any case, Mr. Bitter argues that he should have received one $10,000 penalty for each of the five years ($50,000). The government imposed penalties of 2.7 million dollars based on a failure to report 52 accounts.

On Wednesday November 2, 2022 the Supreme Court of the United States heard argument on the “per account vs. per form” issue.

The above podcast contains the audio file of the live arguments.

A transcript of the arguments is here:

http://citizenshipsolutions.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/21-1195_5i36.pdf

A recording from C-span is here:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?523324-1/bittner-v-united-states-oral-argument

The following twitter thread reflects my impressions while listening to the arguments …

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1587807427327655937.html

Earlier podcasts discussing this case are included as an *Appendix to this post.

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Part 6: Mr. FBAR’s Civil Penalty – Does 31 USC 5321(a)(5) Authorize The Imposition Of ANY Civil Penalty For Failure To File An FBAR?

This Is Post 6 in a series of posts describing the statutory and regulatory history of Mr. FBAR.

These posts are organized on the page “The Little Red FBAR Book“.*

Mr. FBAR Visits The Supreme Court Of The United States!

But, maybe the issue is whether a civil FBAR penalty can be imposed at all instead of how much of a penalty can be imposed?

All of which is explained in the following video discussion

Conclusion:

The existing statutory scheme 31 USC 5321(a)(5) combined with 31 USC 5314 does NOT authorize the imposition of a civil penalty on an individual for the failure to file an FBAR prescribed by 31 C.F.R. § 1010.350. Furthermore, the original 5321(a)(5)created in 1986 is written in the same way and fails to authorize the civil FBAR penalty for the same reasons.

For more extensive analysis and parsing of the statutes read on …

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