Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures: When You Owe No Tax but Missed the Form

The delinquent FBAR submission procedures are the IRS's route for a specific kind of mistake: you filed your US tax returns every year and paid everything you owed, but you never filed FinCEN Form 114 for your UK bank accounts, ISAs or pensions. If that is your situation, you do not need the Streamlined program, you do not need an amnesty, and in most cases you will not pay a penalty. You need to file the missing forms correctly, with a short explanation, before the IRS asks for them.

This guide explains who the procedures are for, how to file, what the IRS says about penalties, and the one distinction that trips people up: the difference between a missed form and missed income. If you have not been filing US returns at all, start instead with our guide to the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures.

What is the FBAR, and why do so many Americans in the UK miss it?

The Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts is an annual information report, not a tax form. The IRS's FBAR page sets the rule: a US person must file if "the aggregate value of those foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any time during the calendar year reported". It is due April 15, with an automatic extension to October 15, and it is filed electronically through FinCEN's BSA E-Filing System, separately from Form 1040.

That separation is why it gets missed. Tax software asks about income, not accounts. A domestic preparer who has never had a client abroad does not ask about a Barclays current account or a Vanguard ISA. And the $10,000 test is aggregate across all accounts and based on the highest balance at any moment, so a salary landing in a current account on the same day as a savings balance sits there can cross it. Our guide to FBAR requirements for expats covers which UK accounts, pensions and ISAs count.

Who qualifies for the delinquent FBAR submission procedures?

The IRS sets three conditions. You may use the procedures if:

1. You are not under a civil examination or a criminal investigation by the IRS.
2. The IRS has not already contacted you about the delinquent FBARs.
3. You properly reported the income from the foreign accounts on your US tax returns and paid all tax on it.

The third condition is the one to be honest with yourself about. "Properly reported" means every pound of UK bank interest, every dividend from an ISA fund, every gain inside a UK investment account appears on the Form 1040 for the year. If you treated your ISA as tax free on the US side, or never reported the £40 of savings interest because it was below the UK allowance, the income was not properly reported and these procedures are not available. That is not a disaster, but it points you to a different door, covered below.

How do you file under the procedures?

Step	What to do	Notes
1	Build a complete account list for each missing year	Every non-US account, including ISAs, SIPPs and workplace pensions, with the maximum value in the year converted to dollars
2	Confirm the income was reported	Check each year's Form 1040 shows the interest, dividends and gains from those accounts
3	Prepare one FBAR per missing year	Normally the last six years, matching the statute of limitations; only years above the $10,000 aggregate need a form
4	File electronically through the BSA E-Filing System	Paper FBARs are not accepted
5	Select a reason for filing late on the cover page	The form offers a menu of reasons; pick the accurate one
6	Include a statement explaining the delay	Brief, factual and consistent across years: for example, that you were unaware of the requirement until a specific date
7	Keep the confirmations and your records	FBAR records must be kept for five years from the due date

The statement does not need to be a legal brief. It needs to be true, specific about why the forms were missed, and the same story in each year's filing. Inconsistent explanations are what turn a routine late filing into a question.

What goes in the statement explaining the late filing?

The statement is short and factual. It should say when and how you became aware of the FBAR requirement, for example that your new accountant raised it when you engaged them in a named month, that the income from the accounts was reported on your returns for each of the years in question, which years you are now filing and which accounts they cover, and that you have not been contacted by the IRS about the accounts. It should not argue law, assign blame to a previous preparer or bank, or offer more detail than the facts need. Use the same wording in every year's filing, adjusted only for the year and the accounts. If a professional prepares the FBARs, the statement is usually drafted once and attached to each submission.

What to expect afterwards

The BSA E-Filing System issues an acknowledgement for each submission; keep it with the FBAR itself, because the IRS's FBAR page says records must be kept for five years from the due date. Nothing further normally happens: FBARs filed under the procedures are not automatically audited. From that point on, the FBAR becomes an annual task due April 15 with the automatic extension to October 15, and the same account list should be checked against the Form 8938 thresholds each year. Many people find that the exercise of building the account list for the late FBARs is what finally gets their ongoing reporting right.

What does the IRS say about penalties?

Under the procedures, the IRS states that it will not impose a penalty for the failure to file the delinquent FBARs if the income from the accounts was properly reported on your returns, the tax was paid, and you had not previously been contacted about an income tax examination or a request for delinquent returns for those years. FBARs filed this way are not automatically subject to audit, although, like any filing, they can be selected under the IRS's normal procedures.

That is a very different position from the statutory penalty regime. Our post on FBAR penalties, non-willful versus willful explains what is at stake when the procedures are not used or not available: inflation-adjusted non-willful penalties that the Supreme Court's Bittner decision confirmed apply per report rather than per account, and willful penalties that can reach half the account balance. The point of filing voluntarily, with a statement, is to stay firmly on the non-willful side of that line and inside the IRS's stated no-penalty position.

Delinquent FBAR procedures or Streamlined? The decision

Your situation	Correct route
Filed every US return, reported all account income, missed the FBARs	Delinquent FBAR submission procedures
Filed returns but left out UK interest, dividends or ISA income	Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures (amended returns, six FBARs, certification)
Never filed US returns at all	Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures (three returns, six FBARs, certification)
Filed returns and FBARs but missed Form 8938, 8621, 3520 or 5471	Delinquent international information return procedures: file the forms with a reasonable-cause statement
Already contacted by the IRS about the accounts	Neither; respond to the IRS with professional representation

The Streamlined route requires a signed non-willful certification on Form 14653 and covers the FBARs as part of the package, so you do not use the delinquent FBAR procedures alongside it. If you are unsure which applies, our guide to how many years of back taxes an expat needs to file walks through the look-back periods, and our Streamlined filing service handles both routes.

Common mistakes with late FBARs

• Using the delinquent procedures when income was missed. If the Form 1040s were wrong, the FBAR fix does not cure them, and the statement that income was properly reported would be untrue.
• Leaving pensions and ISAs off. They are the accounts most often omitted and the ones most likely to push the aggregate over $10,000.
• Different reasons in different years. One consistent, accurate explanation.
• Filing the FBARs but not Form 8938. The two forms have different thresholds and different homes; check both. See Form 8938 vs FBAR thresholds.
• Waiting. The procedures close the moment the IRS contacts you about the accounts, and FATCA means UK banks report US-citizen account holders to HMRC, which shares the data with the IRS.

Illustrative example: an American teacher in Manchester has filed a Form 1040 every year since arriving in 2019, reporting her UK salary with Form 1116 and the small amount of interest from her two UK accounts. She has a Teachers' Pension and a cash ISA. Nobody told her about the FBAR. Because her income was fully reported, she files FBARs for 2020 to 2025 through BSA E-Filing, selects the reason for late filing, attaches a one-paragraph statement, and includes the ISA and the accounts. No tax changes and, on the IRS's stated position, no penalty applies. Had her ISA been a stocks and shares ISA whose fund income was never reported, she would have needed the Streamlined route instead. This is illustrative only.

The bottom line

A missed FBAR with fully reported income is a paperwork problem with a published fix. File the missing six years electronically, select the reason, write one honest statement, and keep the confirmations. Do it before the IRS writes to you. If any income was also missed, go to Streamlined instead. Our FBAR and FATCA reporting service prepares either package, and if you have never filed at all, start with filing an FBAR for the first time.