Form 8938 (FATCA) for Americans Abroad

Form 8938, Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets, is the individual reporting half of FATCA. Your foreign bank reports you to the IRS under an intergovernmental agreement; Form 8938 is where you report the same assets, attached to your Form 1040. The two sides are meant to match, which is why a missing 8938 is a conspicuous gap rather than a quiet one.

It is filed with the return. There is no separate 8938 filing, no separate deadline, and no way to file one without filing a return — a point that matters if you are catching up on several years at once.

Do you have to file Form 8938 from abroad?

Only if you cross a threshold. Living abroad, the thresholds are substantially higher than they are for someone in the United States — but you have to qualify as living abroad first, by meeting the bona fide residence or physical presence test the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion uses. Someone who moved mid-year may still be on the domestic thresholds for that year.

What counts as a specified foreign financial asset

This is where Form 8938 is wider than the FBAR, and where most under-reporting happens. The FBAR asks about accounts. Form 8938 asks about assets, and an asset does not need a custodian to count.

• Financial accounts held at a foreign financial institution — banks, brokerages, and generally the accounts you already list on the FBAR.
• Foreign stock or securities held directly, i.e. not inside an account at a financial institution — including shares in a non-US fund held on a share register.
• An interest in a foreign pension or deferred-compensation plan, which the FBAR may or may not reach depending on how the plan is held.
• Foreign-issued life insurance or annuity contracts with a cash value.
• An interest in a foreign entity — a foreign partnership, trust, or non-US company.

What does not count: foreign real estate held directly, physical assets held directly (gold in a safe, art, a car), and foreign currency held as cash rather than in an account. Put the same property inside a foreign entity, though, and your interest in that entity is reportable — the exclusion is narrower than it first reads.

Form 8938 and the FBAR are not the same form

They are different forms, filed with different agencies, under different statutes, on different thresholds — and filing one does nothing for the other. The overlap is real: most people who file both list several of the same accounts on each. That duplication is expected, not an error. The side-by-side comparison lives on FBAR vs Form 8938.

The PFIC exception people miss (Part IV)

If you hold non-US funds, you may already be reporting them on Form 8621. Form 8938 has an excepted-asset rule for exactly that: an asset reported on Form 8621, 3520, 3520-A, 5471, or 8865 is not itemised again in Parts I–II. Instead you state in Part IV how many of each of those forms you filed.

Penalties, and the part that outlasts them

The failure-to-file penalty is $10,000, rising to a maximum of $50,000 for continued failure after IRS notice (IRC §6038D(d)), with reasonable cause available as a defence. The more durable consequence is procedural: under IRC §6501(c)(8), a missing required international information return can keep the assessment period open on the whole return, not merely on the unreported asset, until the return is supplied. That is why "it was only an information form" understates the exposure.

How to work out whether you have to file it

1. Establish whether you meet the living-abroad test for the year — bona fide residence or physical presence. This decides which pair of thresholds applies, and it is decided per year, not once.
2. List every specified foreign financial asset, not just accounts: brokerage and bank accounts, directly-held foreign shares and funds, pension interests, cash-value insurance, and interests in foreign entities.
3. Value each one in US dollars at the year-end rate, and record the highest value each reached during the year. Both figures are needed because either test can trigger the form.
4. Compare the two totals against your filing status's thresholds. Crossing either one means Form 8938 is required for that year.
5. Check Part IV before itemising. Assets already reported on Form 8621, 3520, 3520-A, 5471, or 8865 are counted toward the threshold but reported by form count, not line by line.
6. Run the FBAR test separately. It is a different threshold on a different asset set, and clearing one form tells you nothing about the other.

What Atamatax does with Form 8938

From the accounts and holdings you enter, Atamatax applies both threshold tests for the year, tells you whether Form 8938 is triggered, and fills selected lines on the official form in the paid package alongside the return. It classifies your funds first, so assets that belong in Part IV are not double-counted in Parts I–II. It does not e-file, does not decide questions of reasonable cause, and identifies any field it cannot complete rather than guessing at it.