# FBAR - Spousal Information?



## ab2010

Hello,

I am a dual American-Canadian citizen (born in Canada to an American parent, lived my entire life in Canada) married to a Canadian with no ties to the US. We have two joint accounts and just want to make sure that I am completing the FBAR fillable-PDF correctly. Under each of these accounts, I have put "NonResidentAlien" in the TIN section and "NRA-Spouse" in the section requesting his last name. In the remaining name sections (first, middle), I have put N/A. And then I just put my address in for the address fields. Should this be sufficient or do I need to put more identifying information on the form?

Thanks so much!


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## BBCWatcher

I realize there's popular support around here for putting "NRA spouse" in place of his/her name on the FinCEN 114 form, but there's no support for that viewpoint in the instructions. (Can anybody find otherwise? I sure can't.) It also strains credulity that you don't know your own spouse's name, and the instructions ask for that joint account holder's details (including name) if "known."

So why pick this place and this moment to be evasive? (Isn't that "suspicious"?) Especially when your spouse is probably posting everything to Facebook anyway.

No, don't write "NRA Mistress" either if you have a mistress and a joint account with her.


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## Nononymous

How about writing "NRA Al Quaeda Paymaster" just to see if anyone actually reads the damn things?


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## maz57

Many NRA spouses object to having their personal details sent off to a foreign government and I don't blame them. (I had standing orders from mine to leave them out of it.) While a US citizen has filing and reporting obligations their spouses do not if they have no US connection. I suppose folks who fill out the forms like that are registering their own little protest about the invasive nature of the forms.

It's not being evasive; it's simply telling the US government that it doesn't need to know such information. The account details are there; if the US government wants to know more, they'll get in touch. I've never heard of anyone being questioned further.

Sometimes creative form filling can not only be enjoyable it can convey a message that the forms are getting out of hand. I think the polling business is having a hard time because people are so sick of filling out forms they'll write anything in the blanks. I wouldn't recommend that for FBARs though; the USG doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humour.


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## Bevdeforges

From what I've seen in the past, it's probably best to write in "NRA spouse" rather than just NRA for the joint holder's name. It is not a requirement for all joint holders to have ITINs, so you could just leave that blank.

Can't recall where I first saw that advice, but it seems to work just fine for FBAR filings, now that they have the pdf fillable forms for individuals.
Cheers,
Bev


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## BBCWatcher

So the answer is no, there's no support for this "NRA Spouse" approach in the instructions -- rather the opposite. It's an act of civil disobedience, agreed?

OK then. If you want to engage in some civil disobedience, that's your call.

Alternatively, if providing your spouse's name to the U.S. government offends anyone, one effective, legal solution (before the fact) is not to have a joint account. As another option, if you're going to engage in civil disobedience, you could not file a FBAR.

This seems very weird to me that a spouse's name would be the one big secret in this context. Mostly because it's not actually a secret from the U.S. government, so there's no secret to keep. In my case we got married in the U.S., so it's _really_ not a secret. But OK, different strokes and all.


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## Nononymous

It's not actually the US citizen's decision. It's the spouse's decision. Maybe it's irrational, maybe it's a pointless act of civil disobedience, maybe it's just naive. But it's their decision, and one of those compromises one makes in a marriage. 

My wife made it pretty clear that (a) if I put her name on an FBAR form she'd have my balls on a plate and (b) if I decided to become compliant and file FBAR forms she would get her own bank account.

Does it ultimately matter? Probably not. But non-US citizens married to accidental US citizens who don't intend to live in the US typically don't feel an overwhelming desire to supply personal information to the US government.


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## Bevdeforges

BBCWatcher said:


> So the answer is no, there's no support for this "NRA Spouse" approach in the instructions -- rather the opposite. It's an act of civil disobedience, agreed?
> 
> OK then. If you want to engage in some civil disobedience, that's your call.
> 
> Alternatively, if providing your spouse's name to the U.S. government offends anyone, one effective, legal solution (before the fact) is not to have a joint account. As another option, if you're going to engage in civil disobedience, you could not file a FBAR.
> 
> This seems very weird to me that a spouse's name would be the one big secret in this context. Mostly because it's not actually a secret from the U.S. government, so there's no secret to keep. In my case we got married in the U.S., so it's _really_ not a secret. But OK, different strokes and all.


I'm just curious why you think the US has all of our spouses' names on file somewhere. I know when we got married here, the mairie was asking me whether they should send notification of the marriage to the Embassy or to the Consulate (two different addresses here in Paris). Frankly, I'm not at all sure what (if anything) they do with the information - they certainly didn't send us a card to congratulate us or anything. And I'm hardly the only person in the US with my name - and my husband's name is actually pretty common here in France.

When you get divorced, you simply start filing as single again, with no indication of when the divorce became effective and no need to say who your spouse was, nor what happened to him/her. (Same as when someone is widowed. If I just start filing as single some day, how are they to know whether my DH and I split up or if he died?)

Of course, if you're actually a secret agent for the IRS, I'll understand if you just don't answer the question. Can't be giving away trade secrets... :spy:
Cheers,
Bev


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## maz57

In my case I'm more scared of my spouse than I am of the US government!


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## BBCWatcher

Bevdeforges said:


> I'm just curious why you think the US has all of our spouses' names on file somewhere.


The U.S. government is a big institution and, collectively, holds a lot of data. That's of course widely known. Mr. Edward Snowden has helped illuminate that subject lately.



> Of course, if you're actually a secret agent for the IRS, I'll understand if you just don't answer the question. Can't be giving away trade secrets...


Please. I'm just another schlub trying to understand and navigate the rules. I never said I agree with them. There are many things I don't enjoy doing.

Bottom line, unless anyone can find instructions or regulatory guidance that suggests otherwise, if you don't answer the government's questions (that they're legally entitled to ask) then you're committing an act of civil disobedience. (Or in a few narrow cases you may be asserting a Fifth Amendment right -- I suppose that's theoretically possible if you're married and have a joint account with one of the very few individuals the U.S. government and usually other governments don't like. Like one of the 21 Russians or Ukrainians just added to an asset freeze list.) Which I can respect, but let's not kid ourselves. If you're going to do commit an act of civil disobedience, don't pretend it isn't. Man or woman up and do it, and let the chips fall where they may.

I have no idea why this question is the particular "beyond the pale" question, but to each his/her own, I guess.

By the way, please note that the form doesn't ask for your spouse's name as such. It asks for the joint account holder's or holders' name(s). The joint account holder can be your brother, sister, mistress, boyfriend, barber, third wife, priest, rabbi, drug dealer, or some random individual -- it doesn't matter. Is anybody writing "NRA Mistress" on the form? 

Who came up with this idea anyway?


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## BBCWatcher

....There is instructional/regulatory guidance to write "NRA" on tax and financial reporting forms in place of the ITIN/SSN when that individual is a non-resident alien, does not have a Social Security number or ITIN, and is not required to. (Or to select that option on an electronic form.)

I cannot find any instructional/regulatory guidance suggesting that you can refuse to supply the name of a joint account holder if you know it on a FBAR. (Or on a 1040 for that matter.) I keep looking, but I just can't find it.

To be clear, I don't care if someone wants to do that. ("NRA Rabbi"?) What I do care about is representing that advice as conforming with the U.S. Treasury's rules and with the law. Otherwise we might have a Wesley Snipes scenario where there's bad advice (at the very least) being spread, and somebody gets hurt.

That's really my only point here. Let's make sure we're crystal clear about what the law and regulations require -- filling out an invasive form, stipulated -- then people can and will do what they want in that knowledge.

As another aside, spousal name sharing is by no means unique to the United States. I'm personally familiar with two other Western governments that legally require their citizens to report all their marriage and divorce details (including spouses' names and more) no matter where they reside in the world, and I'm quite sure there are more than that. For example, it's really difficult to bring any child under 16 across an international border without both parents' consent, and that requires lots of information disclosure to at least two governments. Marriage is, in part, a legal arrangement, and as a legal arrangement government(s) demand certain particulars. Though again, in the case of FBARs, the government doesn't care what your relationship is or isn't with your joint account holder(s).


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## Bevdeforges

I have actually seen an instruction somewhere (sorry, but I'm not able to search for it just now) saying that you "may" simply write "spouse" in the section that asks for the joint holder on an account if the joint holder is, indeed, your spouse. It may have been an instruction from one of the tax prep sites, but I tend to think I have seen this somewhere in the instructions for the old TD90 form.

That said, in the spirit of "render unto Caesar" and full disclosure, I have no accounts in joint name with my NRA spouse so I suppose you could say I have no skin in this game. (This is not "for tax purposes" - just turns out that way.) However, I have a friend who was married to a German Steuerbeamter (basically an official with the German version of the IRS) and he was always quite adamant that he did NOT want his name on his wife's IRS forms, nor would he allow her to get an ITIN for him for any reason. (I suppose we're talking some sort of "professional courtesy" here, at a minimum.)

I will say that, for all information I "withhold" or choose not to disclose or report in a manner other than the "usual" interpretation of the rules, I do have a "position" on - that I would use if questioned. The "spouse" information is requested so that they can match up a MFS return to the spouse's return and because my spouse is not subject to IRS reporting, the response "NRA spouse" is entirely adequate, indicating that there is no other return to match up with mine.

US law is full of interpretations like this. (And yeah, I was taught to interpret the instructions and the laws in this manner when I worked at one of the big accounting firms. They called it "taking an aggressive tax stance.") 

But while the US government holds a lot of data, they don't actually know how many of their own citizens are resident overseas, nor who exactly out there is a US citizen (particularly those who are "accidental" Americans and may not know it themselves). While there are countries that require their citizens abroad to register at the local Consulate, the US is not one of those and I find it unlikely that they could effectively match up overseas residents with their NRA partners on an overall basis.
Cheers,
Bev


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