# Shares in brokerage



## Leopard123 (Feb 23, 2019)

My sister just received her brokerage statement there in Pakistan. The statement contains 100000 shares in October 2015. Of these, only 20000 shares are hers. The rest 80000 were transferred to other family members in December 2015. Her October 2015 share count shows 100000, and her December 2015 is 20000. 

Through bonus shares, her share count has increased to 30000 now. She has not received any interest, cash dividends until this year.

She is confused how to report the shares, especially the 2015 shares, since the October count is very large, and 80% of the shares were not hers, and were distributed in December.

Thanks so much for the help.


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Quick question here: to what government is she reporting them and for what purpose?

Shares, in and of themselves, aren't reportable on a US FBAR. (I only mention this because you were asking about the FBAR in a previous thread.) And while the number of shares in 2015 seems large, if that really only represents 1.7% of the company, there is no reporting requirement (i.e. as holdings in a "Foreign Controlled Corporation") because the threshold for that is 10% ownership.


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## Leopard123 (Feb 23, 2019)

Thanks so much for your reply. She is confused as to what goes into FBAR and Fatca regarding shares. 

She reports shares to the Pak government.

So am I right when I say that only the cash dividends, interest gets reported in fbar, but fatca should have the record of all the shares. Is there a threshold for cash dividend interest for fbar.

Also, in her case, if she has to report cash value for the number of total shares (100 K) in fatca, she will cross the threshold. But if she reports only the shares that she really owns (20k), she won't cross the theshold.

Thanks again and best regards.


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

There are two sorts of reporting for the US government. FBAR is simply a listing of your non-US financial accounts - banks or investment account. If she holds the shares directly, she doesn't need to report them. If she holds them in a brokerage account, then she needs to report the brokerage account.

For each account you report, you give the name and address of the financial institution, the account number (or identifier) and the maximum balance in the account for the year for which you are reporting. There is no need to identify the actual shares held in the account.

FATCA is a series of rules that play into the declaration of US income taxes. For a US taxpayer (citizen or green card holder) living overseas, there isn't really much "FATCA stuff" to report until and unless your total foreign holdings exceed $200,000. Then, there are some additional forms that need to be filed with the tax return (1040 and other supporting schedules), the key one being form 8938. But that form is filed with your 1040 income tax return. For more information, take a look here https://www.irs.gov/businesses/smal...t-of-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts-fbar and scroll down to where they discuss the 8938 form and who needs to file it.


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## Leopard123 (Feb 23, 2019)

I think I get what you are saying now. Her biggest concern is the value of acct for FBAR in Oct 2015 will be much bigger than the value of her real account - 5 times more. In 2015 the max value will be much higher than the following years. How will IRS see that.

Thanks


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

To be perfectly honest, they don't seem to do much with the FBAR information unless they notice some real problem with your tax returns (1040s) that they want to investigate. I help a friend with her FBARs, where she reports a bank account containing quite a bit more than the threshold amount. She has not filed 1040s for the past several years because her overall income is under the filing threshold for her filing category. They have never come back to her about any of this.


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