Do I have to file an FBAR if I have never used the power of attorney?

Yes, if the power gives you signature authority over a foreign financial account and the threshold is met. The IRS addresses this directly in Publication 5569 with an example of an individual holding power of attorney over her elderly parents' foreign accounts who has never exercised it, and states that whether or not she ever exercised the authority is irrelevant to the FBAR filing requirement. The test is whether you can control the disposition of assets in the account by direct communication to the institution, not whether you have done so.

My mother is British and has never been a US person. Do I still report her UK accounts?

Yes. Your obligation is your own and does not depend on hers. She has no FBAR obligation, is not the filer and does not sign anything. You file FinCEN Form 114 in your own name, report her accounts in Part IV as accounts over which you have signature authority but no financial interest, and identify her at Items 34 to 42 as the account owner. Item 35a lets you record the type of identifying number entered where she has never held a US taxpayer identification number, and a foreign address may be given where she has no US mailing address.

Does a registered but unused lasting power of attorney start the clock?

Usually yes for a property and financial affairs LPA. GOV.UK states that this type of LPA can be used as soon as it is registered, with the donor's permission, in contrast to a health and welfare LPA which can only be used when the donor is unable to make their own decisions. So unless the instrument itself contains a restriction deferring use until capacity is lost, the relevant date is normally registration with the Office of the Public Guardian, combined with the point at which the bank accepted the document and added you to the mandate. That combination, not the first time money moves, determines the earliest reportable year.

Is a Scottish continuing power of attorney treated differently?

The FBAR analysis is identical but the UK mechanics differ. A continuing power of attorney under section 15 of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 covers financial and property affairs, must be in writing and signed by the granter, must contain a statement clearly expressing the intention that the power be a continuing power, and must carry a certificate of interview by a solicitor or other prescribed person. It is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian in Scotland. Guidance on mygov.scot states that it can be used as soon as it is registered, or can be drafted to start only if the granter becomes unable to make decisions, which is the drafting point to check before fixing the start date.

What do I report if the bank will not give me statements for the earlier years?

You still file, and you use the best evidence available. FinCEN asks for a reasonable approximation of the greatest value in the account during the calendar year and allows periodic account statements to be relied on where they fairly reflect that maximum. Annual interest certificates, tax vouchers and platform valuation statements are often obtainable when statement histories are not, and they bracket the figure closely enough. Where the value genuinely cannot be determined, Item 15a is an amount unknown box that exists for that situation, and the instructions expressly contemplate a filer with fewer than 25 accounts completing the relevant part for each account and checking it. Keep a record of every request made and every refusal received.

Missed FBAR: Signature Authority, UK Power of Attorney

Q: Will I be penalised if I file the missed years voluntarily?

Not automatically. The IRS states in Publication 5569 that where the foreign financial account is properly reported on a late-filed FBAR and the IRS determines that the violation was due to reasonable cause, no penalty will be imposed. Late reports are filed electronically through the BSA E-Filing System, and where the report is filed after October 15 of the year following the reporting year the system requires a reason for late filing to be selected, with an other option giving up to 750 characters of free text. In a power of attorney case that explanation should set out the instrument, the date it became exercisable, the absence of any beneficial interest or income, and how and when the obligation came to light.

A missed FBAR is the ordinary outcome when a US person is appointed attorney over a British relative's bank accounts, because signature authority on its own triggers FinCEN Form 114 even where the attorney owns none of the money and has never moved a penny of it. FinCEN defines signature authority as the authority of an individual, alone or in conjunction with another individual, to control the disposition of assets held in a foreign financial account by direct communication, whether in writing or otherwise, to the bank or other financial institution that maintains the financial account. Ownership forms no part of that test. If a UK power of attorney puts you in a position to instruct a UK bank to move the donor's money, those accounts belong on your own FBAR for every calendar year in which the aggregate value of the foreign accounts you owned or controlled exceeded 10,000 US dollars at any time.

This obligation is missed more consistently than almost any other FBAR trigger, and the reason is structural. Nothing in the UK process signals that anything has happened for US purposes. The Office of the Public Guardian registers the instrument. The bank adds a name to the mandate. Neither document mentions the United States, neither asks about citizenship, and no HMRC filing follows. The attorney is thinking about a parent's health rather than Title 31 of the United States Code, and the US accountant is never told, because from the client's side there is nothing to tell.

What is the difference between a financial interest and signature authority on an FBAR?

Financial interest is an ownership test. Signature authority is a control test. FinCEN Form 114 reports either one, in different parts of the same form, which is why a filing that looks complete can still be wrong. The financial interest categories that matter in a cross-border context are these:

The US person is the owner of record or holder of legal title, whether or not the account is maintained for their benefit.
The owner of record or holder of legal title is an agent, nominee, attorney or other person acting on behalf of the US person with respect to the account.
The owner of record is a corporation, partnership or other entity in which the US person owns, directly or indirectly, more than 50 percent of the share value, voting power, profits, capital or assets.

The second category is the mirror image of the situation dealt with here, and it catches people in both directions. If someone else holds a UK account as your attorney or nominee, you have a financial interest in it. If you hold authority over someone else's UK account, you have no financial interest but you do have signature authority, which is separately and independently reportable.

Does a UK power of attorney give you FBAR signature authority?

In the usual case, yes. The IRS puts it beyond argument in its own FBAR reference guide, Publication 5569, with a worked example: an individual who holds power of attorney over her elderly parents' foreign accounts but has never exercised it must file an FBAR if the power of attorney gives her signature authority over those accounts, and whether or not she ever exercised the authority is irrelevant to the FBAR filing requirement. The trigger is the existence of the power, not the use of it.

The accounts are plainly foreign financial accounts. A financial account for FBAR purposes includes savings, deposit, checking, brokerage and securities accounts, an insurance or annuity policy with a cash value, and shares in a mutual fund or similar pooled fund, so a UK current account, a building society account and a UK investment platform all sit inside the definition.

The published exceptions do not help a family attorney. Every exception FinCEN grants for signature authority without financial interest is employment based, covering officers and employees of federally examined banks, of SEC or CFTC registered institutions, of listed entities and their consolidated US subsidiaries, and of similar regulated employers. There is no exception for an attorney under a personal power of attorney, and no relief for authority never used.

Missed FBAR risk differs by instrument: LPA, general power and Scottish continuing power

This is where generic US guidance stops being useful, because the phrase power of attorney covers three UK instruments that become exercisable at three different moments. The date authority becomes exercisable is the date the FBAR clock starts, so identifying the instrument correctly is most of the exercise.

A lasting power of attorney for property and financial affairs in England and Wales must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian before it can be used. GOV.UK states that registration takes 8 to 10 weeks if there are no mistakes in the application, and that a property and financial affairs LPA can be used as soon as it is registered, with the donor's permission. That is the crucial sentence. Unlike a health and welfare LPA, which GOV.UK says can only be used when the donor is unable to make their own decisions, the financial LPA is live from registration unless the donor wrote a restriction into the instrument deferring its use until capacity is lost. Whether that restriction exists usually decides which years are in scope.

An ordinary or general power of attorney is a different animal. It operates only while the donor retains mental capacity and ceases to be effective if capacity is lost. It is registered nowhere, so there is no public record and no registration date to anchor the analysis. It is granted for a defined purpose or period, such as a property transaction, a hospital stay or a long posting abroad, and its FBAR footprint is defined by the window in which the bank actually held it on the mandate.

Scotland runs a separate statutory scheme. Section 15 of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 requires a continuing power of attorney to be in writing, signed by the granter, to contain a statement clearly expressing the granter's intention that the power be a continuing power, and to carry a certificate from a solicitor or other prescribed person who has interviewed the granter. It covers financial and property affairs and is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian in Scotland. Guidance on mygov.scot states that it can be used as soon as it is registered, or can be drafted to start only if the granter becomes unable to make decisions.

Property and financial affairs LPA, England and Wales: normally exercisable from OPG registration, unless the instrument restricts use until the donor loses capacity.
Health and welfare LPA: not a financial instrument and not an FBAR trigger in its own right.
Ordinary or general power of attorney: exercisable only while the donor has capacity, unregistered, evidenced only by the bank's mandate records.
Continuing power of attorney, Scotland: exercisable from registration with the Office of the Public Guardian in Scotland, unless drafted to begin on incapacity.
Enduring power of attorney executed before October 2007: no longer capable of being created, still valid for property and financial affairs, and registered as capacity is lost, so the trigger date is usually later.

Why registered but not yet used is the classic missed FBAR fact pattern

Families do this sensibly and early. The instrument is put in place while the donor is in good health, registered because registration takes weeks, added to the bank mandate so the arrangement works when it is needed, and then left untouched for years. No money moves. In the family's mind the document is dormant. Under the FBAR rules it is not dormant at all, because the test is whether the attorney can control the disposition of assets by direct communication to the bank, and from the moment the institution records the attorney on the mandate the answer is yes.

So the missed years are the quiet ones. When the donor's health changes and the attorney starts operating the accounts, that is when someone finally asks a US question, by which point the reportable period runs back several years. Two records fix the start date. The first is the registered instrument itself, which an LPA carries as an OPG validation stamp, together with any restriction deferring its use. The second is the institution's record of when it accepted the document and added the attorney to the mandate, now often evidenced through the Office of the Public Guardian service that lets a donor or attorney give a bank online access to a registered LPA. Where the instrument was registered but the bank never accepted it, the earlier years look materially different, and that is worth documenting at the time rather than arguing later.

Whose accounts are aggregated, and whose 10,000 dollar test is it?

It is the attorney's test, applied to the attorney's whole reportable population. A United States person with a financial interest in or signature authority over foreign financial accounts must file where the aggregate value of those accounts exceeded 10,000 US dollars at any time during the calendar year. Accounts you own and accounts you merely control go into the same aggregate. There is no separate threshold for controlled accounts and no netting.

Each account is reported at its full maximum value during the year, not at a share of it, and not at nil because the attorney owns nothing.
Where a US person is attorney for more than one donor, every donor's accounts feed the same single aggregate on the same single FBAR.
Where attorneys are appointed jointly or jointly and severally, each of them who is a US person files their own FBAR reporting the same accounts at the same values.
An attorney whose own foreign accounts are modest can be pushed over the threshold entirely by the donor's balances.

Which part of FinCEN Form 114 reports signature authority?

Part IV. The form separates accounts owned separately by the filer in Part II, accounts owned jointly in Part III, and accounts where the filer has signature authority but no financial interest in Part IV, with Part V reserved for consolidated entity reporting. Part IV takes the account details at Items 15 to 23 on the same basis as Part II, then adds an identification block for the person whose account it is.

Items 34, 36, 37 and 37a: the account owner's last name, first name, middle initial and suffix, or the organisation name where the owner is an entity.
Items 35 and 35a: the account owner's taxpayer identification number and the type of number entered.
Items 38 to 42: the account owner's address. Where an individual owner resides outside the United States their US mailing address is called for, and where they have none the filer may provide a foreign address.
Item 43: the filer's title for the position which gives signature authority over the owner's account.
Item 45: the filer's own title in the signature block, completed where the individual filing has signature authority over the reported accounts.

Item 14b is the one preparers forget. It asks whether the filer has signature authority over, but no financial interest in, 25 or more financial accounts. If so, the filer enters the number of accounts and completes only Items 34 to 43 for each person on whose behalf they hold authority. That is not an exemption from knowing the detail: anyone reporting 25 or more accounts must supply everything omitted from Parts II, III, IV or V if FinCEN or the IRS asks. Academic for a family attorney with three accounts, but not where a donor held deposits, cash ISAs and platform accounts across several institutions.

What if the donor is not a US person?

That is the normal case and it does not change the answer. A British parent who has never been a US citizen or resident has no FBAR obligation and is not the filer. The US attorney files in their own name in Part I and identifies the donor only as the account owner inside Part IV. The donor is not a party to the filing and does not sign it.

The practical friction is identification. A donor with no US connection has no Social Security Number and no US taxpayer identification number, and Item 35a exists precisely so the filer can record what type of identifying number has been entered rather than forcing a US-shaped number into the field. The address items behave the same way. Neither is a reason to leave Part IV incomplete, and neither is a reason to skip the filing, which is the conclusion families most often reach on their own.

How do you report a maximum account value for money you never owned?

This is the hardest part of the job and it gets almost no coverage anywhere. The standard is not a bank certification. FinCEN says the maximum value of an account is a reasonable approximation of the greatest value of currency or non-monetary assets in the account during the calendar year, and that periodic account statements may be relied on provided they fairly reflect that maximum. Sterling is converted at the Treasury rate for the last day of the calendar year, or another verifiable rate whose source is given if no Treasury rate is available. Amounts are rounded up to the next whole dollar, and a negative value is entered as zero.

The problem is that an attorney is not the customer. UK institutions will generally release statements to an attorney from the point they accepted the instrument, and frequently refuse historic statements covering periods before that, which is exactly the period a late FBAR needs. Where the attorney is acting because the donor no longer can, the donor cannot request the records either. The sequence that works, in order of how much it usually yields:

A written request in the attorney capacity, quoting the registered instrument and its OPG registration or access reference, asking for a full statement history rather than a rolling 12 months.
Where that is refused, a request for the narrower thing the FBAR needs: the highest balance in each calendar year, which some institutions will produce as a summary when they will not produce statements.
Annual interest certificates, tax vouchers and platform valuation statements, which are issued routinely, often survive in the donor's own papers, and bracket the balance closely enough to be a reasonable approximation.
Where the donor still has capacity, the donor requesting their own records directly, which is faster and broader than anything an attorney can obtain second hand.

Where the value genuinely cannot be established, the form has an answer. Item 15a is an amount unknown box, checked where the value of the account cannot be determined, and the instructions go further: a filer with fewer than 25 accounts who cannot determine whether the aggregate maximum values exceeded 10,000 US dollars completes the relevant part for each account and checks that box. It is an accepted answer on the face of the form, not a confession, and not a substitute for trying. We document every request and every refusal, because that file is both the reasonable approximation evidence and the spine of the late filing explanation.

A worked example from the file

A dual US-UK national working as a managing director at a London investment bank is appointed sole attorney under his mother's property and financial affairs LPA. His mother is British and has never had any US connection. The instrument is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian in March 2019 with no restriction deferring its use, and her bank records him on the mandate the following month. She stays in good health until 2024 and manages her own money throughout, so he never touches the accounts: a current account, a savings account and an investment platform account, worth a little over 600,000 pounds combined at their 2019 peak.

He has filed his own FBAR every year without fail, reporting his London current account and his own investment account in Part II. Those filings were all incomplete from 2019 onwards, because Part IV was empty in each of them. The correction was therefore not a first-time filing but an amendment: a fresh, complete FBAR for each affected year with the amendment box checked at Item 1 and the prior report BSA identifier supplied, adding a Part IV for each of his mother's three accounts at full value. The bank released a statement history back to the date it accepted the LPA but not before, so for the earliest weeks of 2019 the platform's annual valuation statements were used as the reasonable approximation. No US tax was due, because he owned none of it and received none of the income. The exposure was purely a reporting exposure, which is what makes leaving it unfixed so hard to justify.

How do you fix a missed FBAR for signature authority?

The mechanics are straightforward and the IRS describes them plainly. When a US person learns they should have filed an FBAR for an earlier year, they should electronically file the late FBAR through the BSA E-Filing System, entering the calendar year reported, including past years. Where a report is filed after October 15 of the year following the reporting year, the system requires a reason for the late filing from a drop-down list, and if none of the options fits, the filer selects other and enters a written explanation, with up to 750 characters available to explain the late filing or to indicate whether it is made in conjunction with an IRS compliance option. Years with no FBAR at all are filed as original late reports; years where an FBAR was filed but omitted Part IV are corrected by amendment.

The reason given is not a formality. Publication 5569 states that where the foreign financial account is properly reported on a late-filed FBAR and the IRS determines that the violation was due to reasonable cause, no penalty will be imposed. In a power of attorney case the narrative writes itself once the facts are gathered: the nature and date of the instrument, the date the institution accepted it, that the attorney held no beneficial interest and received no income, whether the authority was ever exercised, how and when the obligation was discovered, and what was done to establish values. Where the attorney also has unfiled US returns of their own, the FBAR is one strand of a larger correction, and that free-text box is where the link to the IRS compliance option being used gets recorded.

Penalties and the records an attorney has to keep

The penalty regime does not scale down because the filer owned nothing. Civil penalties run under 31 USC 5321(a)(5)(B) for a non-willful violation and 31 USC 5321(a)(5)(C) for a willful one, with maximum amounts set by 31 CFR 1010.821 and adjusted annually for inflation. For a willful violation the civil penalty can be up to the greater of that adjusted amount or 50 percent of the amount in the account at the time of the violation. Criminal exposure sits under 31 USC 5322, civil penalties can exceed the balance in the account, and civil and criminal penalties may be imposed together. A penalty measured against a parent's savings account, borne by an attorney with no beneficial interest in a pound of it, is the mismatch that makes prompt filing the only sensible response.

Records are the other half of the obligation and are routinely overlooked. Anyone required to file must retain, for five years from April 15 of the year following the calendar year reported or the date filed if later, the name in which each account is maintained, the number or other designation of the account, the name and address of the institution, the type of account and the maximum account value during the period. FinCEN relieves an officer or employee who files to report signature authority over an employer's account from personally retaining records, and that relief does not reach an attorney under a personal power of attorney. Usefully the duty runs with UK law rather than against it: GOV.UK requires an attorney to keep the donor's money separate from their own and to keep records of their actions.

How we run a signature authority correction

Read the instrument first, including any restriction deferring its use, and fix the date authority became exercisable before touching a number.
Confirm with the institution when the document was accepted and the attorney added to the mandate, and keep that confirmation on file.
Map every donor and every account against every calendar year, then apply the aggregate test year by year alongside the attorney's own accounts.
Gather values in the order set out above, convert at the Treasury year-end rate, round up, and record the source of every figure used.
File original late reports for missed years and amended reports where Part IV was omitted, with a reason for late filing drafted from the documented facts, then close the file with the five year record set assembled.

A missed FBAR arising from a UK power of attorney is one of the cleanest problems in cross-border compliance to put right, precisely because there is usually no tax, no income and no ownership underneath it. What it needs is the correct start date, honest values and a complete Part IV. Left alone, it compounds silently for as long as the instrument sits on the bank's mandate.