Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures

The streamlined procedures exist for people who did not know, or did not understand, that foreign accounts and foreign income had to be reported in the U.S., which describes most immigrants in their first years here. A U.S. resident uses the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures: amend the last three years of returns to add the foreign income and the missing Forms 8938, 8621, 3520, or 5471; file the last six years of FBARs; sign Form 14654 certifying that the failure was non-willful and explaining how it happened; and pay the tax, interest, and a miscellaneous offshore penalty of 5% of the highest aggregate year-end balance of the assets that were not properly reported.

Someone who met the non-residency test in one of the last three years (for example, outside the U.S. for at least 330 days in one of those years) uses the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures instead, which carry no penalty. Where the only failure was the FBAR itself and all income was reported, the simpler Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures apply with no penalty, and a missed Form 3520 or 5471 with reported income goes through the delinquent international information return procedures with a reasonable-cause statement.

Eligibility ends the moment the IRS opens a civil examination or criminal investigation for any year, so the program rewards acting first. Non-willful means negligence, inadvertence, mistake, or a good-faith misunderstanding of the law; deliberate concealment is outside the program and needs a tax attorney. Rubric Financial's streamlined work is led by Nitasha Ahuja, EA, who spent 15+ years inside the IRS, and sits alongside the ongoing cross-border engagement so the reporting stays current afterward.