Still Have $10,000+ Back Home? The U.S. Wants It Reported by October 15

By Max Stephani

You moved to the U.S., started working, got your life set up, and maybe kept the bank account you had back home.

A savings account. A fixed deposit. Maybe a brokerage account or mutual fund you never bothered to close.

There is a good chance the U.S. government expects you to report those accounts.

And the deadline is coming up.

For the 2025 calendar year, the FBAR is due April 15, 2026, but everyone who misses that date gets an automatic extension until October 15, 2026. You do not have to request the extension.

If the combined value of your foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any point during 2025, you may have an FBAR filing requirement.

That can catch new immigrants and visa workers completely off guard.

You do not have to be a U.S. citizen. And the account does not have to generate any income for the FBAR reporting requirement to exist.

The $10,000 rule that catches people

The FBAR is the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, filed electronically on FinCEN Form 114.

It is not part of your normal federal tax return. You file it separately through FinCEN’s BSA E-Filing System.

The basic trigger is surprisingly low:

If the aggregate value of your foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any point during the calendar year, you generally have an FBAR filing obligation.

It is not $10,000 per account.

Imagine you had:

• $6,000 in a savings account
• $3,500 in a fixed deposit
• $2,000 in a brokerage account

You never had more than $6,000 in any single account.

But together, the accounts exceeded $10,000.

That can be enough to trigger the FBAR requirement.

And this is not limited to ordinary checking accounts. Foreign financial accounts can include bank accounts, securities accounts and certain other financial accounts. The exact treatment can depend on the type of account, so complicated investments should not be treated as automatically reportable or automatically exempt.

“But I’m not a U.S. citizen”

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings.

The FBAR rules apply to a U.S. person, which includes U.S. citizens and U.S. residents for tax purposes. A green card holder is generally a U.S. resident for federal tax purposes, while many visa holders become tax residents after meeting the applicable residency rules.

That means your immigration status and your U.S. tax status are not always the same thing.

Green card holders

A green card holder is generally treated as a U.S. resident for federal tax purposes and can therefore have FBAR obligations if the foreign-account threshold is met.

H-1B workers

H-1B holders generally count their days in the U.S. when applying the substantial presence test. If they meet that test, they can become U.S. tax residents and therefore subject to the FBAR rules.

F-1 students

This is where things get more complicated.

Certain F-1 students can exclude their days of U.S. presence when applying the substantial presence test for up to five calendar years, subject to the specific IRS rules. That can mean an F-1 student remains a nonresident alien for tax purposes during those years.

But “F-1 means no FBAR” is too simplistic. Your individual history, visa status and previous exempt years matter.

The same warning applies to J-1 holders because the exemption rules depend on whether the person is a student, teacher, trainee or another category.

What exactly do you report?

The FBAR is about the foreign financial accounts themselves.

If you have to file, the report generally asks for information such as the financial institution, account number and the maximum account value during the year.

The $10,000 test is based on the aggregate value of all qualifying foreign financial accounts, not whether one individual account crossed $10,000.

And there is an important distinction:

The FBAR does not replace your normal tax reporting.

If your foreign bank account earned interest, your foreign investments generated income, or you sold foreign investments at a gain, those transactions can create separate U.S. tax-reporting obligations.

So filing an FBAR does not mean you have reported everything the IRS needs to know about your foreign assets.

What if you simply forgot?

This is where the situation can get complicated.

If you were supposed to file an FBAR but didn’t, the right fix depends on why you failed to file and whether you properly reported the income associated with your foreign assets.

For someone who simply missed the FBAR while otherwise properly reporting their foreign income, the IRS has a delinquent FBAR submission procedure. The IRS says taxpayers who meet the conditions can file the delinquent FBARs electronically and explain why they are late.

But that is very different from a situation where foreign income or assets were also left off tax returns.

In that situation, the IRS has separate compliance procedures, including the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures for eligible U.S. residents whose failure was non-willful.

The streamlined process is not simply “file your late FBAR and move on.” Eligible taxpayers generally have to file amended returns for the required years, submit the required FBARs, certify that the failure was non-willful and pay the applicable miscellaneous offshore penalty. The penalty is generally 5% of the highest aggregate balance/value calculated under the program’s rules.

That distinction matters.

If you have several years of unreported foreign accounts or income, don’t blindly pick a filing procedure because you saw it mentioned in an article. The wrong filing strategy can create a much bigger problem.

How serious are the penalties?

The FBAR penalties are one reason this reporting requirement gets so much attention.

Civil penalties for FBAR violations are adjusted for inflation and can be substantial. The amount can also depend on whether the violation is treated as non-willful or willful.

For 2025 filings, the inflation-adjusted maximum for a non-willful violation is commonly cited as $16,536, while willful violations can carry dramatically higher penalties.

But don’t interpret the maximum penalty as a bill automatically sent to everyone who misses an FBAR.

The circumstances of the violation matter, including whether the failure was willful, and the applicable penalty rules are more complicated than a simple “miss the deadline, pay $16,536” formula.

The important takeaway is simpler:

Do not ignore an FBAR problem because you assume the account is too small to matter or because you didn’t owe additional U.S. tax.

FBAR is not the same as FATCA

This causes another common headache for immigrants.

The FBAR and FATCA Form 8938 are separate reporting requirements.

The FBAR goes to FinCEN through its electronic filing system.

Form 8938 is filed with your federal income tax return and is administered by the IRS.

And the thresholds are different.

For a single taxpayer living in the United States, Form 8938 generally starts at more than $50,000 on the last day of the tax year or more than $75,000 at any time during the year. Higher thresholds apply to married taxpayers filing jointly.

That means someone can have an FBAR requirement without having a Form 8938 requirement.

And in some situations, the same foreign financial assets can appear on both forms.

They are not interchangeable.

What about your house back home?

This is another area where people get confused.

The FBAR is about foreign financial accounts, not every piece of property you own outside the United States.

Owning a house or apartment in your home country does not automatically mean you have an FBAR filing requirement for the property itself.

But if you rent that property out, sell it, hold it through a foreign entity, or have other financial arrangements around it, separate U.S. tax and information-reporting rules can come into play.

So don’t use the $10,000 FBAR threshold as a general “foreign assets” threshold. It isn’t one.

The October 15 deadline

If you had qualifying foreign financial accounts during 2025 and their aggregate value exceeded $10,000 at any point, the deadline is now the date to pay attention to.

The regular FBAR deadline was April 15, 2026.

The automatic extension runs through October 15, 2026. You don’t have to request the extension.

That gives you less than a month.

If you’re a recent immigrant or visa worker and you’ve never heard of the FBAR before, don’t assume that means you are exempt.

Check your U.S. tax residency status, add up your qualifying foreign accounts for 2025, and determine whether you have a filing obligation.

If you discover that you should have filed FBARs in earlier years, don’t simply start filing random late forms without understanding the compliance options. Your situation may require a different procedure.

The numbers at a glance

Bottom line

That savings account you left behind when you moved to America may not feel like a U.S. tax issue.

It can be.

If you are a green card holder or a visa holder who became a U.S. tax resident and your foreign financial accounts crossed $10,000 in aggregate value during 2025, the FBAR may be waiting for you.

And October 15, 2026, is the deadline you should know about.

The FBAR is not a tax payment. It is an information report.

But ignoring an information-reporting requirement simply because you didn’t owe additional tax can be an expensive mistake.

If you’re not sure whether your accounts qualify, check before the deadline rather than discovering the answer from an IRS notice later.

Sources

• IRS, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR): https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/report-of-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts-fbar
• FinCEN, Report Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts: https://www.fincen.gov/report-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts
• IRS, Comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR Requirements: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/comparison-of-form-8938-and-fbar-requirements
• IRS, Substantial Presence Test: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/substantial-presence-test
• IRS, Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/streamlined-filing-compliance-procedures
• FBAR penalty amounts, 31 CFR 1010.821: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-X/part-1010/subpart-H/section-1010.821