# What is the difference between IRS and Treasury Dept?



## P123

Hi all,

I am in the process of amending an FBAR for 2014 and I was curious as to the difference between the IRS and the Treasury Dept?

I know about the difference between the FBAR and form 8938, however, is the information cross reference by the two institutions?

If I file an FBAR is the information also automatically made available to the IRS? 

Thanks!


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## iota2014

FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) and the IRS are both part of Treasury.

FBARs belong to FINCEN but are nowadays administered by the IRS. When you file a FBAR, it goes to the IRS and gets linked with your return. Whether a particular FBAR will ever get any attention beyond the automatic processing, is a good question.


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## Bevdeforges

The Treasury Department is a rather large function within the government. The IRS is one of many agencies that reports to the Treasury Department. Take a look at this for an idea of how it's all organized: https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-structure/Pages/default.aspx
Note that FinCen is a bureau on a peer level with the IRS.

Generally speaking the various bureaus don't "automatically" share information, but the information would certainly be available to other bureaus if a request was made, say, in case of an audit.
Cheers,
Bev


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## iota2014

There's a section in the IRS Manual about the IRS duties with respect to the FBAR. See https://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/irm_04-026-016.html

It's full of IRS-speak, and hard to read, but it indicates that the IRS FBAR enforcement respinsibilies are separate from its Tax Code responsibilities.

All the same, if I was filing a 1040 and FBARs for a given year, I would want to double check to make sure that I had filed Schedule B and ticked "yes" on the foreign account question.


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