Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR)

As of 1 July 2013, yes. See:

The e-file site is:

"A United States person who has a financial interest in or signature authority over foreign financial accounts must file an FBAR if the aggregate value of the foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the calendar year. Currently, FinCEN can only accept FBAR E-filings when one signature is required. "

if a US citizen owns a foreign company, and that foreign company holds foreign bank accounts (but not the US taxpayer directly, does the US taxpayer need to file an FBAR?

It seems that this would be exactly what "has a financial interest in" would seem to cover.

Does it? I own shares in a publicly traded foreign corporation that has bank accounts, but obviously I am not expected to report anything about this. What exactly is the criteria?

I think also form 5471 is required but not the FBAR forms:

Reporting other foreign financial as- sets. If you have other foreign financial assets, you may be required to file Form

END QUOTE

Form 5471 is required if you own more than 10% of the company, and there are other requirements too.

I had some troubles filing the electronic version of the FBAR and had to contact the BSA E-Filing Help Desk.

You might want to make note of the below-mentioned information that they sent me, particularly that which concerns the browser settings. There is yet no support for Apple computer users, let alone the Linux crowd!

• Windows PC * Internet Explorer 8.0 or higher * FireFox 19.0.2 or higher * Chrome 25 or higher * Safari and Opera are not compatible with the BSA E-Filing System on Windows * Apple Mac * E-Filing is not compatible with the Apple platform at this time. (Currently in testing)

The links below contain directions for updating the respective browser settings on Windows PCs.

Internet Explorer

Chrome

FireFox

Our system requirements can be located here: