Do I have to report my parent's UK account on my FBAR if none of the money is mine?

Yes, if you are a named joint holder. FinCEN treats an owner of record as having a financial interest regardless of whether the account is maintained for the benefit of another person, and the IRS says each joint owner must report the entire account value. Your parent's ownership of the funds affects your income tax position, not your FBAR obligation. A parent who is not a US person has no FBAR of their own to file.

Can my parent and I file one combined FBAR for our joint account?

No. FinCEN's only joint filing exception covers accounts owned jointly by spouses, and it requires a timely, electronically signed FBAR and a signed Form 114a kept with the filers' records. It does not extend to a parent and child. As a US person you file your own FBAR, report the entire balance in Part III, and identify your parent as the principal joint owner, entering their taxpayer number only if known.

Will HMRC tax me on half the interest because my name is on my mother's account?

Not if the money is genuinely hers. GOV.UK says HMRC will split joint account interest equally between holders, and banks report it that way, but HMRC's own guidance treats that split as administrative and accepts evidence of actual beneficial ownership. For a parent and adult child, who are not spouses, the interest is taxable to whoever owns the funds. Keep records showing who funded the account and why you were added.

Does a parent's joint account count towards my Form 8938 threshold?

It can. Form 8938 applies to assets in which you have an interest, meaning income from them is or would be reflected on your return. Where you do have an interest in an account jointly owned with someone other than a spouse, the instructions require you to count and report the maximum value of the entire account. A US citizen living in the UK filing single reports above $200,000 at year end or $300,000 at any time.

How many years of Missed FBARs do I need to correct?

Six is the working window. The IRS can assess civil FBAR penalties within six years from the FBAR due date, and the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures require delinquent FBARs for the most recent six years, together with three years of returns. If only the FBARs are wrong, file late or amended reports through BSA E-Filing with a reason. The IRS no longer publishes its Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures page.

Is a UK lasting power of attorney treated the same as being a joint holder?

No. Under a lasting power of attorney the account stays in your parent's sole name and you act on their behalf, which for FBAR purposes generally looks like signature or other authority rather than ownership. A joint holder is an owner of record with a financial interest and must report the entire balance. Because Form 8938 turns on having an interest, authority alone does not by itself bring the account onto that form.

Missed FBAR: A UK Joint Account Held With a Parent

A Missed FBAR on a UK account you hold jointly with a parent is one of the most common gaps we find when a dual national files with us for the first time, and the answer is blunt: if your name is on the account, you generally have a financial interest in it and must report the entire balance, not your share. That holds even if every penny is your parent's and you were added only to help with the bank. The fix is usually straightforward, but it must be done year by year.

This guide is for the US citizen, often a dual national in London, added as a joint holder on an elderly parent's UK current or savings account for convenience. It covers the FinCEN and IRS joint-account rules, Form 8938, HMRC's treatment of the interest and how to correct missed years. What happens to the account when a parent dies is outside its scope.

What counts as a Missed FBAR when you are a joint holder?

The FBAR is FinCEN Form 114, the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts. A US person must file it for any calendar year in which they have a financial interest in, or signature or other authority over, foreign financial accounts whose aggregate value exceeds $10,000 at any time during the year. The IRS summarises the rule at https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/details-on-reporting-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts and the form is filed through FinCEN's BSA E-Filing System at https://bsaefiling.fincen.treas.gov which needs no registration for individuals.

A Missed FBAR, in the joint-account context, is any year in which you had to report the parent's account and did not. Either you filed no FBAR because your own accounts seemed too small, or you filed one listing your own accounts and left the joint account off. Both are reporting failures; the second is corrected with an amended report rather than a first report.

The point that catches people out is the definition of financial interest. FinCEN's line-item filing instructions state that a US person has a financial interest in a foreign account for which they are the owner of record or holder of legal title, regardless of whether the account is maintained for their own benefit or for the benefit of another person. Being named as a joint holder makes you an owner of record. Whose money it is, and who funded it, does not change that.

Does each joint owner really report the entire account value?

Yes. The IRS says that if two people jointly own a foreign financial account, or if several people each own a partial interest in an account, each person has a financial interest in that account and each person must report the entire value of the account on an FBAR. FinCEN's Part III instructions repeat it, and the Internal Revenue Manual at https://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/irm_04-026-016 confirms the interest exists even where the account is kept for the benefit of non-US persons.

There is no proration. If your mother's instant access account peaked at £200,000 during the year and you are a joint holder, you report the full £200,000 converted to dollars, not £100,000 and not zero. The same applies if there are three joint holders, for example you, your parent and a sibling: each US person on the account reports the whole balance.

Values are converted using the Treasury Reporting Rates of Exchange for the last day of the calendar year, which the Bureau of the Fiscal Service publishes at https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/treasury-reporting-rates-exchange/ and FinCEN's instructions tell filers to use the end-of-year conversion rate when entering the maximum account value.

How do you complete the joint owner section of Form 114 for a parent?

A jointly owned account goes in Part III of the FBAR. You enter the usual account details, then the joint owner fields.

Number of joint owners: FinCEN says to enter the number of joint owners and not to count yourself, so an account in your name and your father's name shows one joint owner.
Principal joint owner: you enter the parent's name and address. The instructions ask for the principal joint owner's taxpayer identification number only if known, allow a foreign number, and say to leave blank any items for which no information is available.
Maximum value: the entire account value, as determined for the maximum value item, not your share. FinCEN states that each joint owner must report the entire value of the account.
Your own accounts: these go in Part II as separately owned accounts, and any accounts where you have signature authority but no financial interest go in Part IV.

Why can the spouse-only joint filing option not cover a parent?

FinCEN allows one combined FBAR only for spouses. Under its exception, the spouse of a filer does not need to file a separate FBAR if all the accounts the non-filing spouse must report are jointly owned with the filing spouse, the filing spouse reports those accounts on a timely, electronically signed FBAR, and both spouses complete and sign Form 114a, the Record of Authorization to Electronically File FBARs, which they keep with their records rather than sending to FinCEN.

Nothing in that exception extends to a parent and an adult child. In any case the typical parent here is a UK national with no US filing obligation, so there is no parental FBAR to join. You file your own report, in your own name, with the full balance and the parent identified as the other holder. Note too that the spouse exception requires a timely FBAR, so it is lost even for married couples on late filings.

How does a parent's balance affect the $10,000 aggregate test?

The $10,000 threshold is an aggregate test across every foreign account you must report, measured using each account's maximum value during the year. Many dual nationals we work with were under it on their own accounts, and comfortably over it once a parent's savings were counted at full value.

The joint account can therefore create a filing requirement in years when you thought you had none, which means your own small accounts, any stocks and shares ISA and any account you can sign on must also be listed for those years.

Use the maximum value of each account during the calendar year, not the year-end balance.
Count the parent's account at its entire value, because you are a joint owner of record.
Add accounts where you only have signature authority, because those count towards the aggregate as well.

How far back does a Missed FBAR go?

Six years is the working window. The Internal Revenue Manual at https://www.irs.gov/irm/part8/irm_08-011-006 explains that the period for assessing civil FBAR penalties under 31 USC 5321(b)(1) is six years, which the IRS measures from the due date of the FBAR. The Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures require delinquent FBARs for each of the most recent six years, so the two windows line up.

The FBAR for a calendar year is due on 15 April of the following year, with an automatic extension to 15 October that does not need to be requested. FinCEN's instructions also require you to keep records for each reported account, including the account name and number, the bank's name and address, the type of account and the maximum value, for five years from the due date. For a parent's account, gathering six years of maximum balances is usually the slowest part of the exercise, because the statements go to the parent.

How does Form 8938 treat an account held jointly with a parent?

Form 8938 is filed with your income tax return and differs from the FBAR in one key respect: it is triggered not by legal title but by having an interest, which the instructions at https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8938 define as being in a position where any income, gains, losses, deductions, credits, gross proceeds or distributions from holding or disposing of the asset are or would be required to be reported, included or otherwise reflected on your income tax return.

Where you do have an interest in a jointly owned asset, the Form 8938 instructions are clear about value. For joint owners who are not spouses, each joint owner includes the entire value of the jointly owned asset when working out whether they meet the reporting threshold, and reports the maximum value of the entire jointly held account on the form, regardless of the value of their separate interest.

For a US citizen living in the UK and filing as single, the thresholds in the Form 8938 instructions are more than $200,000 on the last day of the tax year or more than $300,000 at any time during the year. For a single filer living in the US they are more than $50,000 on the last day or more than $75,000 at any time. A large parental balance counted at full value can cross the overseas threshold on its own. Filing Form 8938 does not relieve you of the FBAR, and the FBAR does not excuse an asset from Form 8938.

Whether a convenience joint holder actually has an interest for Form 8938 purposes is a fact-specific question that turns on the same beneficial ownership analysis as the income tax question below. We document that analysis, and where the facts are mixed, for example where the child has paid in or drawn money for their own purposes, we treat the child as having an interest.

Is the interest on the joint account taxable to the US child?

Not automatically. The FBAR is a reporting form, not a tax form, and reporting an account on it does not make the interest your income. For US income tax, interest is generally taxed to the person who beneficially owns the underlying funds. There is no special US rule that splits interest on a joint foreign account by the number of names on it, and we would not apply one.

The answer depends on the facts. Who provided the money? Who withdraws it, and for whose benefit? Was the child added purely to help manage the account, or to share in the funds now? A convenience holder who never contributed or benefited is in a very different position from a child who treats the account as partly their own. If the funds are genuinely the parent's, the interest is the parent's income and does not belong on the child's Form 1040. If the child is a beneficial co-owner, their share of the interest belongs on their return, with UK tax paid on that share potentially available as a foreign tax credit.

How does HMRC tax interest on a parent and child joint account?

On the UK side the starting point is administrative rather than legal. GOV.UK's guidance on tax on savings interest at https://www.gov.uk/apply-tax-free-interest-on-savings says that if you have a joint account, HMRC will split the interest earned equally between the account holders. Banks and building societies also allocate interest equally across the named holders when they report it to HMRC.

That equal split is a default, not the final word. HMRC's internal manual guidance on joint bank accounts explains that jointly held funds are presumed to be owned jointly, that the presumption can be rebutted by evidence, and that the bank's equal allocation is an administrative necessity that is not necessarily indicative of actual beneficial ownership. A parent and adult child are not spouses or civil partners, so the married couple rules do not apply and the interest is taxable according to who actually owns the money. If the parent funded the account and the child is only on it for convenience, the interest is the parent's for UK income tax, and the child should be able to show why if HMRC queries it.

For the parent, the usual UK reliefs apply to their share of the interest. GOV.UK sets out the starting rate for savings of up to £5,000 of interest where other taxable income is below £17,570, reduced by £1 for every £1 of other income above the Personal Allowance, and the Personal Savings Allowance of £1,000 for basic rate taxpayers, £500 for higher rate taxpayers and nothing for additional rate taxpayers. Interest above those allowances is taxed at the parent's marginal rate, so it is worth checking the parent's own UK position at the same time.

If the child does have a beneficial share, that interest is taxable in the UK and reportable in the US. Either way, keep the analysis consistent: a file telling HMRC the interest is all the parent's and the IRS that the child owns half will not survive scrutiny.

Is being a joint holder the same as holding a lasting power of attorney?

No, and the difference matters for reporting. A UK lasting power of attorney for property and financial affairs lets an attorney act on the donor's behalf, but the account stays in the parent's sole name and the attorney is not an owner of record. For FBAR purposes that usually looks like signature or other authority rather than a financial interest, which is reported in a different part of the form, and because Form 8938 turns on having an interest, authority alone does not by itself bring the account onto that form. A joint holder, by contrast, is a legal owner from the day they are added. We cover the attorney scenario in our dedicated post on FBAR reporting under a UK power of attorney.

How do you fix a Missed FBAR on a joint account?

The route depends on whether anything other than the FBAR is wrong, so first establish, for each of the last six years, your accounts, their maximum values, your beneficial position and whether your returns were complete.

If your US income tax returns were filed, all of your own income was reported, and the only failure is the FBAR, the joint account can be reported by filing the missing or amended FBARs through the BSA E-Filing System. The system asks for a reason for filing late; give a short, factual explanation. For an FBAR that was filed but omitted the joint account, FinCEN's instructions say to complete a new FBAR in full and tick the amend box. The IRS states that it will not penalise those who properly report a foreign financial account on a late-filed FBAR where it finds reasonable cause for the late filing. The IRS withdrew its separate Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures page in mid-2026, so this is not a named programme and there is no formal acceptance letter; it is simply late filing with an explanation.

If your returns also have gaps, such as unreported interest or a missing Form 8938, the Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures at https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/streamlined-filing-compliance-procedures are usually the cleaner route for non-wilful conduct. A US citizen living in the UK who meets the non-residency test generally qualifies for the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures described at https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-taxpayers-residing-outside-the-united-states which require the most recent three years of delinquent or amended returns with all required information returns, delinquent FBARs for the most recent six years, and a signed Form 14653 certifying non-wilful conduct. The foreign procedures carry no penalties, including FBAR penalties. When filing the FBARs under the streamlined procedures, the IRS tells filers to select Other as the reason for late filing and enter Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures in the explanation.

The Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures, for those who do not meet the non-residency test, carry a miscellaneous offshore penalty of 5 percent. The foreign version carries none.

On exposure, the Internal Revenue Manual, following the Supreme Court's decision in Bittner, treats a failure to file a compliant FBAR as a single non-wilful violation per report, not per account. That is not a reason to delay.

Worked scenario: a London banker on her mother's savings account

Illustration only. The figures below are assumed for the purpose of explanation and are not drawn from any real client. An exchange rate of £1 = $1.30 is assumed throughout for simplicity; in real filings each year is converted at that year's Treasury year-end rate.

Clare is 41, a dual US-UK citizen in investment banking in London who files US returns and FBARs for her own UK accounts each year. In 2019 her widowed mother added Clare as a joint holder on her savings and current accounts so Clare could deal with the bank if needed. Her mother funded both accounts entirely; Clare has never paid in or withdrawn anything for herself.

In each year from 2020 to 2025 the savings account peaked at around £250,000 and the current account at around £12,000. Clare's own accounts peaked at around £60,000 in total. She listed her own accounts on her FBARs but left both of her mother's accounts off, because she thought of them as her mother's money.

FBAR: Clare is an owner of record on both joint accounts, so each must be reported at its entire value. Her aggregate for each year is roughly £322,000, about $418,600 at the assumed rate. Each of her six FBARs is incomplete and needs to be amended, with her mother shown as the principal joint owner and one joint owner entered for each account.
Spouse exception: not available, because her mother is not her spouse, and her mother, a UK national, has no FBAR of her own.
US income tax: on these facts the funds are her mother's, so the interest does not belong on Clare's Form 1040. The evidence is documented.
Form 8938: because the income is not reportable on her return, the analysis supports no Form 8938 interest, and her own accounts are below the overseas thresholds. On mixed facts, the full joint balance would have counted.
UK: the bank reports interest equally against both names, but it is her mother's under beneficial ownership, and her mother's own position is checked.
Route: Clare's returns are complete, so she files six amended FBARs through BSA E-Filing with a factual explanation. Had her returns been incomplete, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures would apply, with no penalty.

Checklist: fixing a Missed FBAR on a parent's joint account

List every UK account you have been named on in the last six calendar years, including a parent's.
Obtain statements showing each account's maximum value per year, plus the bank's details and account number.
Apply the $10,000 aggregate test year by year, counting each joint account at its entire value.
Record who funded each joint account, who withdraws from it and for whose benefit, and why you were added.
Decide, on that evidence, whether you have a beneficial interest for US income tax and Form 8938, and whether the parent or you should be taxed on the interest in the UK.
Check whether your US returns for the last three years are complete, including any Form 8938 that should have been filed.
Choose the route: late or amended FBARs through BSA E-Filing with a reason statement, or the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures with Form 14653 if returns also need correcting.
Complete Part III of each FBAR with the parent as principal joint owner and the entire account value.
Keep the evidence and copies of every report for at least five years from the due date.
Put a recurring reminder in place: the joint account must go on every future FBAR for as long as your name remains on it.

Why getting the joint account right protects you on both sides

A convenience joint account is ordinary in the UK, but the FBAR attaches to legal title and the full balance must be reported every year. In the returns we prepare, the fix is rarely complicated: report the account in full, keep the income where it belongs, document why, and keep the UK and US analysis consistent.