Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Law Office video blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.
Today, I’m continuing my series of vlogs from Minnesota, more precisely, the capital of Minnesota, St. Paul.
As I have previously mentioned, SDOP is one of the major offshore voluntary disclosures options that affect a large number of US taxpayers who wish to bring themselves into full compliance with US international tax laws. The question of eligibility is critical to them.
Let’s dig into the details. First, you must be a US taxpayer which really means US tax resident, either US citizen, Us permanent resident or a person who satisfied the substantial presence test, plus a couple of smaller categories. Second, you must be in violation of US international tax compliance obligations. This is logical, if you’re not in violation of any US international tax compliance obligations why would you do a streamlined domestic offshore procedures? Third, and this is an important one, because this is where a lot of people become ineligible. You must have filed all of the original tax returns included in your offshore voluntary disclosure period. Under the terms of the SDOP, you can only amend a return; you cannot file an original return and fourth, you must be non-willful with respect to all aspects of your US international tax non-compliance. When I say all, I really mean all including US information returns such as FBAR, Form 8938, Form 3520, Form 5471, etcetera and non-reporting of foreign income.
http://sherayzenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/sherlawltd_logo.png00adminhttp://sherayzenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/sherlawltd_logo.pngadmin2025-12-22 20:04:162025-12-22 20:19:26Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures Eligibility | SDOP International Tax Lawyer St Paul MN
Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Law Office video blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.
Today, I’m continuing my series of vlogs from St. Paul, Minnesota. This vlog is devoted to Offshore Voluntary Disclosures.
In the previous vlog, I discussed the issue of the SDOP eligibility and I mentioned that one of the main factors is non-willfulness. In fact, this is the key, the heart of the Streamlined disclosure whether it’s domestic or foreign, in fact. It’s the issue of non-willfulness. You can only participate in the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures if you can establish non-willfulness. If you cannot, you should not be participating in this program and even less so, signing up for form 14654 under the penalty of perjury, you believe you were non-willful, if you believe you were not. That’s very important.
What is non-willfulness? The short answer is that this is an opposite of willfulness – not a very instructive answer if you don’t know what non-willfulness is. Let’s discuss what willfulness is first. Willfulness is an intentional or a reckless disregard of a known duty.
For example, if you know that you need to file an FBAR and you intentionally choose not to file it, the IRS may have the argument for willfulness. If you close your eyes and ears and say, ‘I don’t want to hear anything, I don’t want to see anything, that’s it, I want to be in complete ignorance’. This is called willful blindness. Willful blindness is a form of recklessness and recklessness is a form of willfulness.
Outside of the voluntary disclosure, the IRS has the ‘burden of proof’ to establish willfulness. In the voluntary disclosure, you have the ‘burden of proof’ to establish non-willfulness.
What does it mean? It means potentially that say you participate in a voluntary disclosure program, in the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures and this SDOP submission is later audited and the IRS disagrees that you’ve established the case for non-willfulness, this does not automatically mean that you were willful because once they kick you out of the program, this means that the IRS will have the ‘burden of proof‘ to establish willfulness. This is a fine distinction. Sometimes it doesn’t matter; sometimes it may make a huge difference to the entire case.
Willfulness is the opposite of non-willfulness and non-willfulness is not willfulness, seems very logical and simple but as I had just said, you have to establish non-willfulness. How do you do that? You do that based on the number of factors and arguments.
For example, you take a look at the history of your client. For example, if the client finished law school, is an international tax attorney and does not file an FBAR, while the issue of non-willfulness is going to be really difficult to establish if he did it intentionally. Similiarly, if it is a CPA, same story, it’s going to be much harder for the CPA to establish non-willfulness than it would be, for say a carpenter.
This is an example of one factor; there are a lot of them. The factors include education, work history, financial means (meaning financial means to secure professional help), the time that it took you to realize that you were non-compliant, that is the length of your non-compliance and many, many other factors.
The job of establishing non-willfulness is for an international tax attorney to do. I would strongly recommend that it would be an attorney who would draft your non-willfulness statement that you will submit as part of your SDOP package to the IRS because otherwise, you may unintentionally open a can of worms that could lead to a fishing expedition by the IRS if they think you do not have a solid case for non-willfulness simply because of the way you presented the facts of your case, not necessarily because you were willful but because you created a doubt in the mind of the IRS that you were non-willful. They will start thinking that maybe they should audit your case. Even if you end up in this situation, proving that you were non-willful, you will have by your incorrect non-willfulness statement, raised the chance of a follow-up audit.
If you would like to learn more about non-willfulness and whether your international tax compliance was non-willful, you can call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]
Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Law Office video blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.
The other advantages of SFOP include a shorter voluntary disclosure period – only three years for tax returns and six years for FBARs. This is much shorter say than the OVDP program that used to be in existence that required eight years of compliance: eight years of amended tax returns.
A lower legal standard is also part of Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, so all of the US international tax reporting requirements have a reasonable cause exception that if established, you are not paying any penalties. However, reasonable cause standard is an extraordinarily difficult standard to satisfy. Non-willfulness that is required by SFOP is a difficult standard but is much easier compared with the reasonable cause exception.
Basically, Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures is a low-risk, high reward option and whenever you’re eligible to participate in it, my general recommendation is to actually do it.
If you would like to learn more about Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures and how I can help you bring your US tax affairs in full compliance with US international tax laws, call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]
Thank you for watching, until the next time.
http://sherayzenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/sherlawltd_logo.png00adminhttp://sherayzenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/sherlawltd_logo.pngadmin2025-09-09 22:44:272025-12-17 19:46:17Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures Advantages | International Tax Lawyers St Paul Minnesota
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Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures Eligibility | SDOP International Tax Lawyer St Paul MN
/in International tax attorney & lawyer Video /by adminHello and welcome to Sherayzen Law Office video blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.
Today, I’m continuing my series of vlogs from Minnesota, more precisely, the capital of Minnesota, St. Paul.
As I have previously said, this series is devoted to offshore voluntary disclosures and today, I would like to discuss the very important subject of streamlined domestic offshore procedures or SDOP eligibility.
As I have previously mentioned, SDOP is one of the major offshore voluntary disclosures options that affect a large number of US taxpayers who wish to bring themselves into full compliance with US international tax laws. The question of eligibility is critical to them.
Let’s dig into the details. First, you must be a US taxpayer which really means US tax resident, either US citizen, Us permanent resident or a person who satisfied the substantial presence test, plus a couple of smaller categories. Second, you must be in violation of US international tax compliance obligations. This is logical, if you’re not in violation of any US international tax compliance obligations why would you do a streamlined domestic offshore procedures? Third, and this is an important one, because this is where a lot of people become ineligible. You must have filed all of the original tax returns included in your offshore voluntary disclosure period. Under the terms of the SDOP, you can only amend a return; you cannot file an original return and fourth, you must be non-willful with respect to all aspects of your US international tax non-compliance. When I say all, I really mean all including US information returns such as FBAR, Form 8938, Form 3520, Form 5471, etcetera and non-reporting of foreign income.
If you would to learn more about Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures and how it may benefit you to participate in this offshore voluntary disclosure option, you can call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]
Thank you for watching, until the next time.
Non-Willfulness vs. Willfulness | Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures Attorney Minnesota
/in International tax attorney & lawyer Video /by adminHello and welcome to Sherayzen Law Office video blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.
Today, I’m continuing my series of vlogs from St. Paul, Minnesota. This vlog is devoted to Offshore Voluntary Disclosures.
In the previous vlog, I discussed the issue of the SDOP eligibility and I mentioned that one of the main factors is non-willfulness. In fact, this is the key, the heart of the Streamlined disclosure whether it’s domestic or foreign, in fact. It’s the issue of non-willfulness. You can only participate in the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures if you can establish non-willfulness. If you cannot, you should not be participating in this program and even less so, signing up for form 14654 under the penalty of perjury, you believe you were non-willful, if you believe you were not. That’s very important.
What is non-willfulness? The short answer is that this is an opposite of willfulness – not a very instructive answer if you don’t know what non-willfulness is. Let’s discuss what willfulness is first. Willfulness is an intentional or a reckless disregard of a known duty.
For example, if you know that you need to file an FBAR and you intentionally choose not to file it, the IRS may have the argument for willfulness. If you close your eyes and ears and say, ‘I don’t want to hear anything, I don’t want to see anything, that’s it, I want to be in complete ignorance’. This is called willful blindness. Willful blindness is a form of recklessness and recklessness is a form of willfulness.
Outside of the voluntary disclosure, the IRS has the ‘burden of proof’ to establish willfulness. In the voluntary disclosure, you have the ‘burden of proof’ to establish non-willfulness.
What does it mean? It means potentially that say you participate in a voluntary disclosure program, in the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures and this SDOP submission is later audited and the IRS disagrees that you’ve established the case for non-willfulness, this does not automatically mean that you were willful because once they kick you out of the program, this means that the IRS will have the ‘burden of proof‘ to establish willfulness. This is a fine distinction. Sometimes it doesn’t matter; sometimes it may make a huge difference to the entire case.
Willfulness is the opposite of non-willfulness and non-willfulness is not willfulness, seems very logical and simple but as I had just said, you have to establish non-willfulness. How do you do that? You do that based on the number of factors and arguments.
For example, you take a look at the history of your client. For example, if the client finished law school, is an international tax attorney and does not file an FBAR, while the issue of non-willfulness is going to be really difficult to establish if he did it intentionally. Similiarly, if it is a CPA, same story, it’s going to be much harder for the CPA to establish non-willfulness than it would be, for say a carpenter.
This is an example of one factor; there are a lot of them. The factors include education, work history, financial means (meaning financial means to secure professional help), the time that it took you to realize that you were non-compliant, that is the length of your non-compliance and many, many other factors.
The job of establishing non-willfulness is for an international tax attorney to do. I would strongly recommend that it would be an attorney who would draft your non-willfulness statement that you will submit as part of your SDOP package to the IRS because otherwise, you may unintentionally open a can of worms that could lead to a fishing expedition by the IRS if they think you do not have a solid case for non-willfulness simply because of the way you presented the facts of your case, not necessarily because you were willful but because you created a doubt in the mind of the IRS that you were non-willful. They will start thinking that maybe they should audit your case. Even if you end up in this situation, proving that you were non-willful, you will have by your incorrect non-willfulness statement, raised the chance of a follow-up audit.
If you would like to learn more about non-willfulness and whether your international tax compliance was non-willful, you can call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]
Thank you for watching, until the next time.
Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures Advantages | International Tax Lawyers St Paul Minnesota
/in International tax attorney & lawyer Video /by adminHello and welcome to Sherayzen Law Office video blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.
Today, I’m continuing my series of vlogs from St. Paul, Minnesota. This series is devoted to offshore voluntary disclosures and in the last dozen or so videos, I focused on Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures.
Today, I would like to discuss Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures and I would like to begin the discussion with deliberation of the advantages, enormous advantages that Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures offers to its participants.
Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures is a true amnesty program and this is its biggest advantage. When you participate in the SFOP (Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures), you’re not paying any penalties for your prior US noncompliance with US international tax reporting obligations. If you are in violation of the FBAR requirement, Forms 5471, 8938, 926, what have you, for reporting requirements, you are eligible for the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures and you actually do it, then you will not be required to pay any penalties even if you have income tax noncompliance. This is a huge advantage of the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures which is unmatched by any other offshore voluntary disclosure option.
The other advantages of SFOP include a shorter voluntary disclosure period – only three years for tax returns and six years for FBARs. This is much shorter say than the OVDP program that used to be in existence that required eight years of compliance: eight years of amended tax returns.
A lower legal standard is also part of Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, so all of the US international tax reporting requirements have a reasonable cause exception that if established, you are not paying any penalties. However, reasonable cause standard is an extraordinarily difficult standard to satisfy. Non-willfulness that is required by SFOP is a difficult standard but is much easier compared with the reasonable cause exception.
Basically, Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures is a low-risk, high reward option and whenever you’re eligible to participate in it, my general recommendation is to actually do it.
If you would like to learn more about Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures and how I can help you bring your US tax affairs in full compliance with US international tax laws, call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]
Thank you for watching, until the next time.