Do I have to report a Canadian RRSP on the FBAR if US tax on it is deferred?

Yes, in our preparation practice. The IRS announcement of Revenue Procedure 2014-55 says the deferral treatment for RRSPs and RRIFs does not affect other reporting under the Bank Secrecy Act or section 6038D. The FBAR retirement exception in 31 CFR 1010.350 refers to US-qualified plans, not Canadian registered plans, so the RRSP balance is listed and counts towards the 10,000 US dollar aggregate.

Is Form 8891 still required for an RRSP or RRIF?

No. The IRS announced in October 2014 that Form 8891 was eliminated and that taxpayers are no longer required to file it for any year, past or present. Eligible US citizens and resident aliens who filed US returns and report distributions as income are treated as qualifying for deferral automatically. FBAR and Form 8938 reporting of the plan still applies where the thresholds are met.

Is a Canadian TFSA tax-free for a US citizen living in the UK?

Not on the US return. The 2014 IRS relief names only the RRSP and RRIF, so we report interest, dividends and gains inside a TFSA as current US income each year. The account also goes on the FBAR and, above the thresholds, Form 8938. Its classification for further US information reporting has to be analysed in preparation, and its UK treatment is considered separately on the Self Assessment return.

How many years of FBARs do I file under the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures?

The IRS requires FBARs for the most recent six years for which the FBAR due date has passed, together with tax returns for the most recent three years and a signed Form 14653. The FBARs are filed electronically through BSA E-Filing, selecting Other as the late-filing reason and entering Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures. A qualifying non-wilful filer pays tax and interest but no penalty.

Which exchange rate converts Canadian dollar balances for the FBAR?

The maximum value of each account is first determined in Canadian dollars and then converted to US dollars at the end-of-calendar-year exchange rate, as the IRS comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR requirements explains. The IRS FBAR page links to the Treasury Department's published rates. Look up the year-end rate separately for every year being filed instead of applying one rate throughout.

Does HMRC need to know about interest on my old Canadian savings account?

If you are UK resident, normally yes. GOV.UK states that foreign income includes savings interest and dividends from outside the UK, that UK residents normally pay tax on it, and that it is usually reported in a Self Assessment tax return. Relief may be available where the same income is taxed in more than one country, and some people may qualify for Foreign Income and Gains relief.

Missed FBAR on Canadian Accounts, RRSPs and TFSAs

A Missed FBAR on Canadian accounts is corrected by filing the overdue FinCEN Form 114 for each open year through the BSA E-Filing System, with every Canadian chequing, savings, brokerage, RRSP and TFSA account listed at its maximum value for the year. If you are a US citizen or green-card holder now living in the UK, the accounts you left behind in Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver count towards the same 10,000 US dollar aggregate test as your UK accounts, and the fact that Canada treats a plan as registered or tax-free does not remove it from the report. Where income from those accounts was also left off your US returns, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures are usually the cleaner route, and for a qualifying non-wilful filer they carry no penalty.

We prepare US and UK returns for people whose careers ran through Canada before London: bankers, lawyers, energy and mining executives, and US-Canadian dual citizens who never thought of their Canadian accounts as foreign. The pattern is consistent. The UK accounts are known and often already reported; the Canadian ones are dormant, half-forgotten and missing from every FBAR ever filed.

What is the FBAR and when does a Canadian account trigger it?

The FBAR is the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, filed on FinCEN Form 114. It is an information report made to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, not a tax return, and no tax is calculated on it. The IRS explains at https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/report-of-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts-fbar that a US person must file if they have a financial interest in, or signature or other authority over, at least one financial account located outside the United States and the aggregate value of those accounts exceeded 10,000 US dollars at any time during the calendar year reported.

Three features of that test catch former Canadian residents. First, it is aggregate: UK and Canadian accounts are added together, so a small Canadian savings balance is reportable once the combined total crosses the line. Second, the same IRS page states that whether an account produced taxable income has no effect on whether it is reportable. Third, the test covers signature authority as well as ownership, which matters for executives who kept signing rights on a Canadian employer's accounts after relocating.

The same IRS page confirms the mechanics. The form must be filed electronically through FinCEN's BSA E-Filing System and is not attached to the federal tax return. It is due on 15 April following the calendar year reported, with an automatic extension to 15 October that does not need to be requested. Records supporting each account, including the account number, the name and address of the institution, the type of account and the maximum value during the year, must be kept for five years from the due date of the report.

Which Canadian accounts have to be listed?

The regulation behind the FBAR is 31 CFR 1010.350, which can be read at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/1010.350. It defines the reportable account types broadly: a bank account includes a savings deposit, demand deposit, checking or any other account maintained with a person engaged in the business of banking; a securities account is an account with a person engaged in the business of buying, selling, holding or trading stock or other securities; and other financial accounts include insurance or annuity policies with a cash value and mutual fund accounts. A US person has a financial interest in an account where they are the owner of record or hold legal title, and also where an agent or nominee holds it for them.

Applied to a typical Canadian footprint, the accounts we list are:

Chequing and savings accounts, in Canadian or US dollars, held at a Canadian branch, including joint accounts with a spouse or former spouse.
High-interest savings accounts and guaranteed investment certificates held with a Canadian deposit-taking institution.
Self-directed and managed brokerage accounts, reported at account level rather than holding by holding.
Registered Retirement Savings Plans, and Registered Retirement Income Funds where the plan has since been converted.
Tax-Free Savings Accounts, whether invested in cash, funds or securities.
Canadian mutual fund accounts held directly with a fund manager, and cash-value insurance or annuity contracts issued in Canada.
Accounts of a Canadian company or employer over which you still hold signature authority, even with no ownership.

Accounts closed during the year still count for that year. If you emptied and closed a Vancouver savings account in March, it is reported on that year's FBAR at its highest balance before closure, and drops off the following year.

Are an RRSP and a TFSA foreign financial accounts for FBAR purposes?

In the returns we prepare, yes: both are reported. It is worth being precise about the source of that position. The IRS FBAR page lists exceptions, including accounts held in an individual retirement arrangement you own and accounts held in a retirement plan in which you are a participant or beneficiary. Readers sometimes take that wording to cover a Canadian registered plan. The regulation shows why it does not. The exception in 31 CFR 1010.350(g)(4) is written by reference to plans described in sections 401(a), 403(a) or 403(b) of the US Internal Revenue Code and to individual retirement accounts under sections 408 and 408A. Those are US-qualified arrangements. An RRSP is established under Canadian law and is not one of them.

We did not find, on the official pages reviewed for this article, a sentence naming the RRSP or TFSA as an FBAR account in so many words. What we did find is the IRS's own statement, in the 2014 announcement discussed below, that the simplified treatment of Canadian retirement plans does not change reporting under the Bank Secrecy Act, which is the FBAR, or under section 6038D, which is Form 8938. Taken with the regulation's definitions, our preparation position is that an RRSP, a RRIF and a TFSA are each a foreign financial account that must be listed and counted in the aggregate test.

How do you value Canadian accounts and convert from Canadian dollars?

Each account is reported at its maximum value during the calendar year, which is the figure the IRS FBAR page lists among the records you must keep. In practice that means the highest month-end or statement balance you can reasonably identify from periodic statements, not the balance on 31 December. For a brokerage account, RRSP or TFSA, the periodic statement value of the whole account is used, so the individual holdings inside it do not need to be listed separately.

The maximum is first determined in the currency of the account, then converted to US dollars. The IRS comparison page at https://www.irs.gov/businesses/comparison-of-form-8938-and-fbar-requirements states that the FBAR maximum value is taken in the currency of the account and converted using the end-of-calendar-year exchange rate, and the IRS FBAR page links to the Treasury Department's published current and historical rates for that purpose. So a balance that peaked in June is still converted at the year-end Canadian dollar rate, not the June rate. One practical point for dual-currency Canadian accounts: a US dollar account held at a Canadian branch is still a foreign account. Its location, not its currency, is what makes it reportable, and it simply needs no conversion.

Does Form 8938 apply as well as the FBAR?

Often, for this audience, yes. Form 8938, the Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets, is a separate report filed with the income tax return. The IRS comparison page gives the thresholds for taxpayers living abroad: for a single filer or a married person filing separately, the total value of specified foreign financial assets must be more than 200,000 US dollars on the last day of the tax year or more than 300,000 US dollars at any time during it; for a married couple filing jointly, the figures are 400,000 and 600,000 US dollars. A senior professional with a Canadian RRSP, a Canadian brokerage account and UK investments will frequently exceed those levels.

The same page is explicit that the Form 8938 requirement does not replace or otherwise affect the obligation to file the FBAR. The two overlap but are not identical: an account at a foreign institution is reportable on both, signature authority alone is generally an FBAR item only, and foreign shares held outside any account go on Form 8938 only. The page describes a Form 8938 penalty of up to 10,000 US dollars for failure to disclose, rising after IRS notice to a potential maximum of 60,000 US dollars.

What did Revenue Procedure 2014-55 change for RRSPs and Form 8891?

This is the single most misunderstood point in Canadian files. For years, a US person with an RRSP or RRIF had to make an election on Form 8891 each year to defer US tax on income accruing inside the plan, and people who never made it were left with an awkward exposure. The IRS changed that in October 2014. Its announcement, published at https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-simplifies-procedures-for-favorable-tax-treatment-on-canadian-retirement-plans-and-annual-reporting-requirements and now marked as historical content, explains that under Revenue Procedure 2014-55 eligible US citizens and resident aliens automatically qualify for deferral of US tax on income accruing in an RRSP or RRIF until it is distributed, and that Form 8891 was eliminated, with taxpayers no longer required to file it for any year, past or present.

The announcement describes who qualifies: US citizens and resident aliens who have filed and continue to file US returns for any year in which they held an interest in an RRSP or RRIF, and who include distributions as income. It also records that relief was given retroactively to eligible taxpayers who had not properly chosen the treaty benefit in earlier years. That wording matters. Someone who filed US returns every year but never mentioned the RRSP is in a very different position from someone who filed none while living in Canada, and the second profile needs the conditions checked in preparation.

Two limits follow from the announcement. First, it states that the revenue procedure does not affect other US reporting requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act and section 6038D, naming FinCEN Form 114 and Form 8938, so the end of Form 8891 is not the end of FBAR reporting for an RRSP. Second, it gives the FBAR due date as it stood in 2014; the current date is 15 April with the automatic extension to 15 October.

Why is a TFSA treated differently on the US return?

The 2014 relief names two plan types, the RRSP and the RRIF. It does not name the Tax-Free Savings Account, and we are not aware of an equivalent published deferral for it. Our preparation position is therefore that interest, dividends and realised gains arising inside a TFSA are reported on the US return for the year in which they arise, regardless of the account being tax-free in Canada. For a US person who kept contributing to a TFSA for years after leaving Canada, or who simply let it compound, that means every open year has some unreported income, however modest.

Beyond the income itself, a TFSA raises two information-reporting questions that have to be worked through in preparation. The first is how the account is classified for US purposes, which depends on its legal form and terms and can determine whether a further annual information return is due; practitioners do not all reach the same answer, and we document the analysis in the file. The second is what the account holds, because Canadian mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are non-US funds and can bring fund-level reporting of their own.

What are the penalties for a Missed FBAR?

The civil penalty framework distinguishes non-wilful from wilful failures. The IRS comparison page states the amounts that applied to penalties assessed before 1 August 2016: up to 10,000 US dollars for a non-wilful failure, and for a wilful failure up to the greater of 100,000 US dollars or 50 percent of the account balance. It adds that civil penalty maximums are now adjusted annually for inflation, so the current figures are higher than those, and that criminal penalties may also apply. We do not quote a current-year figure here because the adjusted amounts change each year and should be checked against the official notice for the year of assessment.

The IRS FBAR page says that filing an FBAR late or not at all is a violation, that the assertion of penalties depends on facts and circumstances, and that if the IRS has not contacted you and you are not under investigation you should file late FBARs as soon as possible. What drives the outcome is conduct. An executive who did not realise a dormant Calgary account counted is in non-wilful territory; someone who answered no to the foreign account question on the return for years while holding a large Canadian portfolio has a harder story to tell.

How do you file late FBARs from the UK?

There are two live routes, and the choice turns on whether your US income tax returns were also wrong.

Where the returns were complete and correct, for example because the only omitted account paid no interest or the RRSP income was properly deferred, the late FBARs are filed directly through the BSA E-Filing System, which asks for a reason for late filing. The IRS previously published a named procedure for this situation; that page has been withdrawn and should not be relied on as a current programme. What remains is the plain rule: file as soon as possible, and penalties depend on the facts.

Where income was omitted, which is the usual position once a Canadian brokerage account or TFSA is involved, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures are the route we prepare most often for UK-resident clients. The IRS sets out the terms at https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-taxpayers-residing-outside-the-united-states. The submission consists of:

Delinquent or amended US income tax returns, with all required information returns, for the most recent three years for which the due date has passed.
FBARs for the most recent six years for which the FBAR due date has passed, filed electronically through BSA E-Filing, selecting 'Other' as the reason for late filing and entering 'Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures' as the explanation.
A signed Form 14653 certifying that you meet the non-residency requirement, that all required FBARs have now been filed, and that the failures resulted from non-wilful conduct, with a narrative of the facts.
Payment of the full tax shown on the returns together with statutory interest.
Each return marked 'Streamlined Foreign Offshore' in red at the top of the first page, and the package submitted on paper to the address the IRS specifies.

For a US citizen or green-card holder, the non-residency requirement is met if, in at least one of the three most recent years for which the return due date has passed, you had no US abode and were physically outside the United States for at least 330 full days. The IRS page states that a filer who complies with the foreign procedures is not subject to failure-to-file, failure-to-pay, accuracy-related, information return or FBAR penalties. There is no percentage charge on the account balances under the foreign procedures; the 5 percent offshore penalty belongs to the separate domestic version for US residents. The protection is not unconditional: the page also says penalties can still follow if an examination finds the original non-compliance was fraudulent or the FBAR violation wilful.

One line on the same IRS page is directly relevant to Canadian plans. It notes that retroactive relief is available within the streamlined procedures for a failure to make a timely election to defer income from certain retirement or savings plans where the relevant treaty permits deferral. Where an RRSP holder does not sit neatly within the automatic treatment described in 2014, that is the provision we look to, and the request is built into the submission.

A worked scenario: an energy executive with five Canadian accounts

The following is an illustration only. The person, the balances and the exchange rate are invented for the example, and the rate is an assumption, not the Treasury year-end rate for any actual year.

A US citizen worked in Calgary for seven years before moving to London, where she is now UK resident and files US returns each year reporting her UK salary and UK accounts. She left behind a chequing account with a maximum balance of 9,000 Canadian dollars, a savings account at 48,000, a self-directed brokerage account at 310,000, an RRSP at 420,000 and a TFSA at 88,000. The combined maximum is 875,000 Canadian dollars. At an assumed year-end rate of 1.40 Canadian dollars to one US dollar, that is 625,000 US dollars.

On those figures the FBAR test is exceeded many times over, and all five accounts belong on each year's FinCEN Form 114 alongside her UK accounts, each at its own maximum. As a single filer living abroad, her Canadian accounts alone exceed the 200,000 US dollar year-end threshold, so Form 8938 was also due with each return. On the income side, the RRSP growth is deferred under the 2014 treatment because she filed US returns throughout, but the savings interest, the brokerage dividends and gains, and the income inside the TFSA were all omitted. Because income is missing, filing six FBARs on their own would leave the returns wrong. The preparation route is the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures: three amended returns reporting the Canadian income with Form 8938 attached, six FBARs, Form 14653 explaining why accounts she regarded as dormant were overlooked, and payment of the additional tax and interest. If she qualifies and the conduct was non-wilful, no penalty is charged.

How do you trace old Canadian accounts from the UK?

A catch-up filing is only as good as the account list. We ask clients to rebuild it from Canadian tax slips, old Canadian returns and notices of assessment, RRSP and TFSA contribution records, and post sent to a former Canadian address. Each institution can then be asked for peak balances for the six FBAR years.

For accounts that have gone quiet altogether, the Bank of Canada is the place to look. Its unclaimed balances page at bankofcanada.ca/unclaimed-balances directs the public to its Unclaimed Properties Office, where you can search for unclaimed bank balances, make a claim and check the status of a claim. A balance that has been passed to the Bank of Canada is worth identifying for two reasons: it is your money, and you need to establish in which years the underlying account was still open and reportable. We record the result of that search in the file whether or not anything is found, because it supports the statement on Form 14653 that the account list is complete.

What does HMRC expect from a UK resident with Canadian accounts?

The UK side is a separate obligation and is often missed for the same reason as the US one. GOV.UK explains at https://www.gov.uk/tax-foreign-income that foreign income is anything from outside England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, that it includes investment income such as dividends and savings interest and overseas pension income, that a UK resident normally pays tax on foreign income, and that it is usually reported in a Self Assessment tax return. Interest on a Canadian savings account and dividends in a Canadian brokerage account are therefore UK-reportable for a UK resident in the ordinary way.

The same guidance notes that people who qualify for Foreign Income and Gains relief may not have to pay, and that relief may be available where income is taxed in more than one country. The treatment of growth inside a Canadian registered plan, and of withdrawals from it, is more involved than ordinary interest and depends on the nature of the plan and the UK-Canada agreement. A TFSA has no special UK status simply because Canada exempts it. We prepare the UK and US returns together so the same Canadian income is reported consistently in both, bearing in mind that the UK tax year and the US calendar year do not match.

If you have Canadian accounts that have never appeared on an FBAR, the practical first step is an account inventory by calendar year, with maximum balances in Canadian dollars. From that, the filing route, the number of years and the forms required follow quickly.