Does a Nonresident Alien Spouse that Has Elected to be Treated as a US Person Need to File an FBAR?

With the FBAR deadline upon us, an interesting question arose: Does a spouse covered by the §1.6013-6 regulation allowing a nonresident alien individual to be treated as a resident need to file an FBAR? Logic says no; the FBAR comes out of the Bank Secrecy Act, not the Tax Code. And the IRS agrees with logic: “If the wife is non us person for FBAR therefore she does not have a filing requirement.” (That quote comes from a question I submitted to the FBAR group at the IRS.)

But beware, if the taxpayers have a Form 8938 filing requirement the wife’s accounts will need to be reported on that form. That’s a tax form, so the accounts would need to be included.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2015 at 8:23 pm and is filed under FINCEN, International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Does a Nonresident Alien Spouse that Has Elected to be Treated as a US Person Need to File an FBAR?”

  1. Tax Roundup, 6/30/15: It’s FBAR Day! Foreign and gaming account owners, do or die. « Roth & Company, P.C says:
    June 30, 2015 at 6:40 am

    […] Related: Russ Fox, Does a Nonresident Alien Spouse that Has Elected to be Treated as a US Person Need to File an FBAR? […]