Tag Archives: Willful FBAR penalty

Part 4: Mr. FBAR’s Civil Penalty – 5321(a)(5): Toth – Excessive Fine, Based On Willfulness Decreed By Sanction And Not Factual Determination

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This Is Post 4 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“.*

On August 26, 2022 Ms. Toth filed a PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI to the Supreme Court of The United States.

QUESTION PRESENTED

The Bank Secrecy Act and implementing regulations require U.S. persons to file an annual report — called an FBAR — if they have foreign bank accounts containing more than ten thousand dollars. The maximum civil penalty for willfully failing to file the report is either $100,000 or half the balance in the unreported account, whichever sum is greater. 31 U.S.C. § 5321(a)(5)(C)-(D). Using this formula, the government imposed on petitioner a civil penalty of $2,173,703.00.

The question presented is whether civil penalties imposed under 31 U.S.C. § 5321(a)(5)(C)-(D) — penalties that are avowedly deterrent and noncompensatory — are subject to the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.

The petition describes the facts and procedural history as follows:

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Mr. Pomerantz meets Mr. #FBAR in the Homeland: The "willful" FBAR penalty requires proof of "willfulness"

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Looking for Mr. FBAR

This is one more in a series of posts discussing the FBAR rules. The FBAR rules were born in 1970, laid virtually dormant until the 2000s and then were then unleashed in their full “ferocity” on U.S. persons. A good review of the history of Mr. FBAR is here. A discussion of how the discovery of Mr. FBAR can lead to larger problems is here. Finally, a discussion of of why people must exercise caution in “fixing problems with FBAR” is here.

Mr. FBAR has not visited Canada, but he has visited Canadian citizens


Mr. Pomerantz returns …
Readers of this blog (particularly those in Canada) may recall that I have previously written about the adventures of Mr. Jeffrey P. Pomerantz (currently of Vancouver, Canada) with Mr. FBAR. At that point (March 2017) it was clear that the U.S. Department of Justice planned to sue Mr. Pomerantz to collect the FBAR penalties to which it felt entitled. It is worth noting that FBAR penalties are assessed under the Bank Secrecy Act (Title 31 of U.S. laws) which is different from the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26 of U.S. laws.) In order to collect FBAR penalties the U.S. Government must sue, and sue it did. The purpose of this post is to tell the story of what happened when the U.S. Government sued Mr. Pomerantz in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

But, before we begin our story, this post is more about “Civil Procedure” than it is about “Mr. FBAR” …
Bottom line: Although the U.S. Government suffered a temporary (probably) defeat, the defeat was because the Government failed to follow the rules of “Civil Procedure”. In other words, whether Mr. Pomerantz actually violated the FBAR statute was NOT the issue in this case. The issue was whether the Government followed the rules that they were required to follow in order to win their case. The Government did NOT follow the rules. Therefore, the Government lost. With that disclosure, we are no ready to begin yet another example of an adventure with Mr. FBAR.

Once upon a time in District Court in Seattle …

It appears that the hearing took place in early June of 2017. In any event, the court’s judgement was dated June 8, 2017.

Interesting fact: Mr. Jeffrey P. Pomerantz appeared “pro se” – he represented himself at the hearing. He may have had “legal advice” prior to the hearing. On the other hand, he may have had the assistance of the judge who recognized that he did NOT appear with a lawyer.

The judgement references the fact that Mr. Pomerantz sought to transfer the venue from Washington State to Washington, DC. Apparently his “lawyer of choice” was in Washington, DC. The court (for various procedural reasons) denied his request for this “change in venue”. In other words, the hearing took place in Seattle.

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