Taxable Talk

Joe Kristan reported last week that you cannot use Adobe Acrobat to file the FBAR; you must use Adobe Reader. In fact, if you have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer and use Adobe Reader it won’t work either. Well, I have some mild good news about this.

It appears that if you’re using an older version of Adobe Acrobat (Acrobat 9 or earlier), you will get a warning from FINCEN that the program isn’t right but the filing will go fine. However, the filing will not work with Acrobat X and XI; apparently Acrobat X or XI cannot even be installed on your computer for the filing to work. I guess I’m lucky in that I use Acrobat 9. (We also file most, but not all, of our FBARs using our tax software. Our tax software, ProSeries, added that ability in April.)

I echo what Joe wrote:

Requiring taxpayers to screw around with their computer setup just to meet their FBAR requirements is outrageous. Even if FBAR filing is not merely a sadistic plot — and it sure acts like one — it seems more designed as a hook to punish violators — purposeful and accidental — than a way to gather compliance information. As usual, Congress goes after a small set of violators by firing into the crowd.

The idea that an older piece of software works just fine but the new one doesn’t is ridiculous. It’s also par for the course when dealing with the FBAR.

Tags: FBAR

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2014 at 4:16 pm and is filed under FINCEN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.