Here is something that is not made clear to me in the FBAR instructions.
I have a member account at a credit union. Within that account I have savings, chequing, term deposits, shares, etc.
On my FBAR can I aggregate all of those (sub) accounts, and report the sum as one account? Or must I itemize each as a separate account?
What is an "account" on the FBAR?
Moderator: Mark T Serbinski CA CPA
Personally, if there was a "root" account, wherebely all other accounts have a similar first X disgits, with the last 1 or 2 being differnt. I would just list this one. If there was an associated brokerage account, I would list this one separately, since it is of a bifferent type.
This issue comes up with firms that create "accounts" for each GIC that a client buys. So if you have 5 GICs, you have 5 distinct account numbers. I would find some "umbrella number in taht case, or failing that, pick one of the GICs.
This issue comes up with firms that create "accounts" for each GIC that a client buys. So if you have 5 GICs, you have 5 distinct account numbers. I would find some "umbrella number in taht case, or failing that, pick one of the GICs.
After 20 years, I am severely cutting back on responses. Do not ask specifically for my help. There are a few others on this board that can answer most questions. All the best
An issue which comes up for me and my wife is with TD Waterhouse. They give us an "account number", say xxxxxx. There are really two parts, xxxxxxA and xxxxxxB, and sometimes on their documents these two (sub-)accounts are spelled out. I would be glad to report on FBAR only the one account, xxxxxx, but xxxxxxA is reported in Canadian dollars and xxxxxxB in US dollars. I guess it would be easy enough to convert the Canadian sub-account, add it to the US sub-account, and just make one report. However, on form 8938 the IRS wants basically the same stuff, but there they want to know which currency the account is held in, and that pretty much forces separate reporting. So I report them separately on FBAR too, so they will match, just in case anyone is listening at the other end, fat chance. It's only a little extra typing, and might save some computer a headache matching things up some day.