With the price of commodities sky-rocketing in the past decade, many individuals have made substantial gains by directly investing in physical gold and other precious metals, especially in popular investment vehicles such as gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s). However, there may be a downside for unsuspecting investors when it comes to paying taxes on those [...]

On June 16, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service issued IRS Notice 2011-54, granting additional relief to persons with signature or other authority over, but no financial interest in, a foreign financial account held during calendar year 2009 or earlier calendar years. Previous, IRS Notices 2009-62 and 2010-23 already extended this deadline until June 30, 2010: [...]

The Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) was enacted as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act of 2010 (“HIRE Act” or “Act”). In addition to specific requirements and a withholding tax, FATCA imposed a new foreign asset disclosure requirements on U.S. persons. This article will give a general summary about FATCA disclosure [...]

Using Technology to Improve Delivery of Legal Services At Sherayzen Law Office, we are always thinking about how to use new technology to improve the delivery of legal services to our clients. For this reason, we have been investing in the acquisition of new technologies and finding better ways to use the existing ones. Starting [...]

Congress enacted the Passive Foreign Investment Company provisions (PFIC) as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 in order to deter U.S. investors from deferring or avoiding payment of U.S. taxes by investing in offshore entities. The PFIC rules are structured to provide a disincentive for U.S. investors to defer investment income taxes by [...]

Despite the potentially grave consequences, many U.S. taxpayers are completely unaware of the extensive reporting requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act, particularly of the disclosure of ownership or other interest in or authority over financial accounts in a foreign country by filing the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (the “FBAR”). While one can [...]

One of the major requirements that gives rise to the obligation to file the FBAR is that a U.S. person has either a financial interest in, or a signature authority or other comparable authority over the relevant foreign financial accounts. In deciding whether the FBAR is required, it is useful to go through all three [...]

In this essay, I would like to discuss some of the penalties that may be imposed as a result of the failure to file the FBAR even though you were required to do so. In particular, I will focus on three general scenarios describing specific penalties commonly attributed to each of them. The first scenario [...]

FBAR filing is required only if the aggregate balances of a U.S. person’s foreign financial accounts exceed $10,000. Despite appearances, the requirement that the aggregate value of all of the foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during a calendar year is not without complications. In order to figure out the account value in [...]

Under I.R.C. §911, if certain conditions are met, a qualified individual can exclude his foreign earned income from taxable gross income for the U.S. income tax purposes. This income may still be subject to U.S. Social Security taxes. The income exclusion amount for 2010 has increased to $91,500.