In an announcement today, IRS officials stated that they taxpayers can now depend on the defined “United States person” status as put forward earlier in an instruction to the FBAR form for determining eligibility rules.
This is applicable to the taxpayers who are nearing the 30th June 09 last date for filing the FBAR form.
This is a welcome move as new instructions issued last year aroused confusion among taxpayers as to who should file the revised Form TDF 90-22.1 (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts/FBAR).
Taxpayers can now depend on the previously issued instruction defining a “United States person” as
(1) Citizen/Resident of U.S.,
(2) A U.S. based domestic corporation,
(3) A U.S. domestic Estate/Trust.” or
(4) A U.S. domestic partnership.
Requirements and Instructions for filing the latest version of the FBAR form (last revised in October 08) still hold good. The latest version should be used for filing the FBAR form this year. This would affect only those tax payers who would be filing the FBAR form on 30th June 09. IRS would soon issue additional guidelines on the eligibility requirements for filing FBAR in the years to follow.
