# File Going Forward or Delinquent FBAR



## benrhymes (Mar 6, 2020)

I am looking for some help with my situation. I moved to the US in 2016 on an R-1 Visa and had a Canadian TFSA in Mutual Funds worth $30,000 Canadian Dollars. I also had an RRSP (retirement savings) of about $16,000 Canadian that I mostly had forgotten about until recently. I believe the only year I reported having a foreign bank account was 2016 because using Turbo Tax it implied that if the account was not owned at the end of the year it did not need to be reported, so I did not say I had one in 2017.The mutual fund grew to $35,500 by end of 2016 but only gave out $185 of income. This income was never reported. I sold the mutual fund in November 2017 right after I got married to an American. That year married filing jointly our total income was only $44k. I now have a green card that I received at the start of 2020.

I have spoken with two tax professionals including one that is local that has a few Canadian clients and one that specializes in cross-boarder banking with Canada and the US. The local guy told me to just file FBARs going forward and not worry about the income from 2016. The cross-boarder guy told me to file FBARs for 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 but not to worry about the income either. They both said to not worry about the capital gains because I would not owe the IRS due to the long-term capital gains tax being 0% in our tax bracket.

My question is:

1) Should I file the delinquent FBARs that include my former TFSA or just going forward for solely my RRSP?

Thanks so much!

I previously posted this in the US section but I could see it being more applicable to the tax section. I have also refined my question.


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## Moulard (Feb 3, 2017)

In light of the fact you are now a green card holder, I would probably back-file.. only in as much as the FBAR are pretty easy to prepare and its never going to be looked at, so it leaves you with one less thing to worry needlessly over.

Prepare the 2019 one, and then save it out for the back years... and then simply update the values accordingly. If you have past statements handy, probably it will take you 15 minutes for the 2019 one, and then 5 mins for each past one.


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