re: 77,000 different foreign banks in 70 countries reporting to IRS now

Brief response to a couple of points/questions. Don't have time to go into a lot of detail, my early posts were at lunch and I'm busy now. But I promised a response to a legit question...

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I understand you apparently view American accounts yet to be identified in 77,000 banks in 70 countries as a BFD -- presumably numerous and voluminous.

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It is a big deal. Has been for a while now.

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My guess, and it's only a guess, is that newly discovered undisclosed accounts among those 77,000 banks in 70 countries will total <5000 on top of those previously identified.

You seem to be under a different impression. Why?

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This really deserves a long detailed response which I would really like to give. But for now, I try and hit the high points.

Since the IRS started going after these accounts, hundreds of thousands have been disclosed and billions in taxes and penalties paid.

I'm on the front lines with this and have been for the past 4 years. People are still coming forward to disclose accounts and make late filings constantly. I can't get into specifics, but understand this, every week or so, their is a new client in my office wanting to know what to do. I have more work than I can handle and don't need anymore right now. I'm way behind on this stuff as it is now. And the IRS is way behind. They are still processing disclosure cases from years ago. Millions are still flowing into government coffers due to these late disclosures weekly (probably daily if you took the sum total last year divided by 365) if I had to hazard a guess.

Maybe you ask why this is happening. Your answer is one word: FATCA. That's it. It is that simple.

U.S. persons will have all their foreign accounts disclosed by FATCA by next year. You think the number of remaining undisclosed foreign accounts is under 5,000? I think it is closer to 50,000. You said you have one of these. If it is over $10,000 you probably know the penalty for not disclosing it can be $10,000. It can be less under present mitigation guidance, but it can be a lot more if it is a willful violation. Up to the IRS just taking the money in the account (yes, congress has given them the authority and they have written a penalty structure that actually allows this).

That is why FATCA is a BFD and why you are very very wrong thinking this is just some propaganda deflection by the IRS. I can assure you it is not. It is a cash cow for the IRS that still has a lot of milk left in it.

And none of the above is legal advice. It is just the ramblings of an uneducated individual throwing darts at the wall, FTR.