In addition to our taxes, we have to file FBAR each year (reporting of foreign bank accounts). This is in addition to showing any interest earned or money earned in Ireland on our taxes.
You have to do this if at any point during the previous year the total of your foreign accounts was over $10k. Not euro10k, but in dollars. We've had to do it the past five years or so.
The thing I don't like about it is that it it is under FinCen (the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network). It's like the assumption is that your committing a crime by having a bank account in another country.
Since I married my husband, there have been a lot of judgements (why couldn't you meet someone in the US? why did you keep the Irish house? why didn't you cut your ties to Ireland/UK? is your marriage real since you're older and he's younger? don't you like American men?). These are real questions from real people. It just gets old. This feel like one more example: "why do you still have a foreign bank account when you live in the US now?"
We have nothing to hide. We have that account because we lived in that country and I am very glad we kept it. We earn rental income on our house there (yes, we pay Irish taxes on that income, and we declare it on our US taxes). The bank account is the easiest way to transfer money between countries (we use Transferwise) and when we travel there, we just use that account (taking money out at ATMs) rather than out of our US account.
Do any of you also file FBAR? Does it make you kind of annoyed each time you file also?
FBAR (reporting foreign bank accounts)
February 10th, 2018 at 12:11 am
February 11th, 2018 at 02:04 pm 1518357886
On a lighter note, my friend recently had an appointment with immigration after marrying her foreign-born husband to start his citizenship process. She's also a hardcore scrapbooker, and was nervous they might be accused of having a fake greencard relationship (definitely not the case), so she brought their very elaborate wedding planning/wedding and honeymoon scrapbooks as proof they do things together, have joint friends, etc. She said the immmigration officer laughed and said he has never been more convinced that anyone's relationship was sincere!
February 11th, 2018 at 08:53 pm 1518382397
We don't have any foreign accounts.
February 12th, 2018 at 08:01 pm 1518465671
February 12th, 2018 at 11:23 pm 1518477793
February 13th, 2018 at 04:27 pm 1518539241