FBAR filing requirement criminalizes common immigrant banking behavior with disproportionate penalties

Any US person with aggregate foreign financial accounts exceeding $10,000 at any point during the year must file FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR) by April 15. Willful failure to file carries penalties of up to $100,000 or 50% of the account balance per violation, per year. Even non-willful failure carries penalties of up to $10,000 per account per year. So what? Many immigrants maintain bank accounts in their home country for routine purposes -- receiving family transfers, paying local bills, maintaining emergency funds -- and these accounts easily exceed the $10,000 threshold (which has not been adjusted for inflation since it was set in 1970). So what? The filing requirement is separate from the tax return (filed with FinCEN, not IRS), uses a different form, has a different deadline extension process, and is not mentioned by most tax preparation software. So what? Immigrants who diligently file their US tax returns using TurboTax or H&R Block are never informed about FBAR, and discover the requirement only when a CPA reviews their situation years later, at which point they have multiple years of non-filing. So what? The IRS Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures exist for catching up, but require a certification of non-willfulness, and if the IRS later determines willfulness, the penalties retroactively become the higher criminal tier. So what? Immigrants who were simply unaware of an obscure filing requirement face potential penalties exceeding the entire value of their foreign accounts, creating existential financial risk from mere ignorance of a form that their tax software never mentioned. The problem persists because FBAR was enacted in 1970 under the Bank Secrecy Act to combat money laundering, not to track immigrants' ordinary bank accounts. The $10,000 threshold in 1970 dollars is approximately $80,000 today, but Congress has never inflation-adjusted it. FinCEN and the IRS have different jurisdictions, creating a gap where tax software companies feel no obligation to mention a FinCEN filing requirement. The penalty structure was designed to deter wealthy tax evaders but applies identically to a graduate student with $15,000 in a home-country savings account.