Will FBAR and FATCA Be Combined? What S. 5441 Actually Says

The short answer: not under the bill Congress is considering. The Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act (S. 5441) as reported to the Senate on 17 September 2026 would order the Treasury to study combining the FBAR with the Internal Revenue Code's foreign-asset reporting, and report back. The earlier proposal to file the FBAR with the tax return was dropped before the bill was reported. The proposed legislation has not changed your current filing obligations.

Current law: two reports, two agencies, two thresholds

Today a US person reports non-US financial accounts twice, under two statutes. The FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) is a Bank Secrecy Act filing made electronically to FinCEN when the combined highest value of your foreign accounts exceeded $10,000 at any point in the calendar year — April 15, with an automatic extension to October 15, and owed whether or not a tax return is due. Form 8938 is a tax filing under IRC §6038D, attached to the Form 1040 when specified foreign financial assets exceed the tier for your filing status and residence: living abroad and filing single, $200,000 on 31 December or $300,000 at any time in the year. Filing one does nothing for the other. The two are compared line by line on FBAR vs Form 8938.

The proposed change: what Section 201 would do if enacted

Title II of S. 5441 is headed "American Citizens Abroad". Its first section, Sec. 201 — Report on combined tax and foreign bank and financial account reporting, directs the Secretary of the Treasury to conduct a study on (A) combining and simplifying the reporting required under 31 U.S.C. §5314 — the FBAR — and IRC §§6038, 6038A, 6038B, 6038C, 6038D, 6039F, 6046A and 6048 — Forms 5471, 5472, 926, 8938, 3520 and their relatives — and (B) eliminating duplicative requests for information from nonresident US taxpayers, with input from the National Taxpayer Advocate and from nonresident taxpayers. Within 180 days of enactment the Secretary must report to Congress on the study, any actions taken, and any legislative changes needed. That is the whole section.

It is worth being precise about what that is and is not. It is a mandate to study and recommend. It is not an amendment to §5314 or to §6038D; it does not move the FBAR onto the return, change who receives it, change a deadline or a threshold, or give the IRS a role in FBAR filing. If the study recommends merging the two reports, that recommendation would need its own bill.

What was dropped: the combined-filing draft

The Senate Finance Committee's 30 January 2025 discussion draft went further. Its foreign-account provision would have required a person to file both the FATCA form and the FBAR with the IRS, with the tax return (or, when no return is due, at the same time and in the same manner as one), by the return's due date — the IRS then transmitting the FBAR to FinCEN. That is the mechanic most readers mean by "combining FBAR and FATCA", and it is not in the bill the Committee reported. The reported text keeps the study and the report and nothing else of it.

Where the bill stands

S. 5441 was reported to the Senate by the Committee on Finance on 17 September 2026 and is on the Senate calendar. It has not passed either chamber and has not been enacted. The Committee released the Chairman's Mark on 28 July 2026, marked the bill up on 30 July 2026, and reported it as an original bill (S. Rept. 119-145, Calendar No. 670) on 17 September 2026. For any of it to become law it must pass the full Senate, pass the House in the same text, and be signed by the President. The status panel above is generated from a dated registry entry and re-checked against the congressional record; the date it was last verified is printed on it.

Potential effective timing

There is no effective date to plan around, because a study has none: the only clock in Sec. 201 is the Treasury's 180-day reporting deadline, which starts on enactment and has not started. Even on the fastest imaginable path — Senate passage this session, House passage in the same text, signature, a study that recommends merging, and a second bill to enact it — no filing mechanic would change for the current filing season. The sections of Title II that do carry effective dates are narrow: a longer window (120 days instead of 60) to contest a math-error notice addressed outside the United States, applying to notices sent more than 180 days after enactment; a pre-assessment right of appeal for Form 8938, 5471, 5472, 926 and 3520 penalties — the FBAR penalty is not included; and, for tax years beginning after 31 December 2026, the repeal of the 2015 statutory due-date rules for Forms 3520 and 3520-A.

FBAR and Form 8938: the differences the bill does not change

What Americans abroad should do this year

1. Keep the two reports separate and current. File the FBAR with FinCEN for any year the combined peak exceeded $10,000; attach Form 8938 to the return for any year the assets crossed your tier. Neither waits for Congress.
2. Enter each account once and let both tests run on it. The FBAR reads the highest balance; Form 8938 reads the highest and the 31 December values. A brokerage account is reported as an account on both — the funds inside it raise a separate PFIC question, not a second account entry.
3. Convert at the Treasury year-end rate. Both reports value a foreign-currency account at the Treasury Reporting Rate of Exchange for 31 December, not the yearly average the return uses for income.
4. Check whether an earlier year is open. If returns were filed and only FBARs were missed, the late FBARs are filed with a reasonable-cause statement (the IRS withdrew its published delinquent-FBAR procedures on July 1, 2026); if returns are missing too, that is a Streamlined question — and nothing in S. 5441 changes either route.
5. Note the date on the status panel. If the bill moves, the panel and this page move with it; if the date on it is more than a couple of months old, treat the page as needing a re-check rather than as current.

Three examples

• A UBS current account and a savings account, peak CHF 40,000 combined. An FBAR is due (the peak exceeds $10,000); Form 8938 is not, on those figures alone, for a single filer abroad (under $200,000 at year end and $300,000 at any time). Schedule B Part III is answered "Yes" whatever the balance. S. 5441 changes none of it.
• An Interactive Brokers Ireland account worth $350,000 holding seven Irish ETFs. The account is reported once on the FBAR and once on Form 8938 Part I at its own value; the ETFs are not listed again, but each is a Form 8621 candidate. Under the dropped draft the FBAR would have travelled with the return; under the reported bill it still goes to FinCEN.
• Returns filed every year, FBARs never filed, accounts over $10,000 since 2020. Late FBAR filing with a reasonable-cause statement covers it today — the IRS withdrew its published delinquent-FBAR procedures on July 1, 2026 — and the proposed study does not create a new route or an amnesty. The right time to file the missing reports is before FinCEN or the IRS asks.

How Atamatax is built for this

Every foreign account a person enters is one record from which each reporting consequence is derived — the FBAR aggregate, the Form 8938 tiers, the Schedule B question, the PFIC screen for the funds inside a brokerage, the catch-up question for earlier years. The output layer, where a prepared report goes and by what channel, sits behind that record. If Congress ever moves the FBAR onto the return, that is the layer that changes; the accounts, balances, ownership and thresholds do not. Until then the flag that would turn such a path on is off, and cannot be turned on by a bill that has not been enacted.