What do I put in Form 8938 Part VI for a structured note?

Part VI asks for a description of the asset and an identifying number, for which the ISIN plus the plan name, underlying index and maturity date works well; the date acquired and the date disposed of, which captures an autocall event; whether it is jointly owned with a spouse; the maximum value during the tax year; the currency, exchange rate and source of that rate; and the name, address and type of the issuer or counterparty. Name the issuing bank, not the plan manager or the platform. A separate continuation statement is attached for each additional other foreign asset.

How do I value an illiquid autocall that has no daily market price?

Use fair market value. The IRS states in its published questions and answers on Form 8938 that you may rely on periodic account statements or on information publicly available from reliable financial information sources, and that no third-party appraisal is required. A custody statement or the issuer's indicative valuation is therefore acceptable if applied consistently. Remember that Part VI asks for the maximum value during the year, not the year-end value, and that the Instructions for Form 8938 require the last-day-of-year exchange rate even for an asset disposed of earlier in the year.

Is a UK structured product a PFIC requiring Form 8621?

There is no blanket answer, and anyone giving one is guessing. PFIC status under section 1297 attaches to stock in a foreign corporation, tested on a 75 per cent passive income test or a 50 per cent passive asset test. A plain senior unsecured note issued by an operating bank is a debt obligation rather than stock, which points away from the PFIC regime. Where the instrument is instead a share, unit, certificate or participation issued by a special purpose issuing vehicle or a non-US collective vehicle, the tests must genuinely be run. The conclusion turns on the issuer's structure and the product documentation.

Can I still use the Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures to fix missed years?

No. The IRS removed its published Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures page from IRS.gov on or about 1 July 2026, and it should not be treated as a live standalone route. For a US person resident in Britain, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, which remain published on IRS.gov, are the route to examine first: three years of returns, six years of FBARs, and Form 14653 certifying non-willful conduct. Where there is no unreported income and no tax due, the separate Delinquent International Information Return Submission Procedures remain available for late information returns, with the caveat that the IRS says penalty relief is not automatic.

Does an unfiled Form 8938 keep my whole tax return open to IRS review?

Yes, and that is the most serious consequence of the omission. The Instructions for Form 8938 state that where a required Form 8938 is not filed, the period of limitations for assessing tax does not begin to run, so the year stays open indefinitely rather than closing after the usual period. A separate six-year assessment period applies where more than 5,000 US dollars of income attributable to specified foreign financial assets is omitted. Filing the missing form is what starts the clock, which is a strong practical reason to complete the disclosure even where no additional tax is due.

Missed US Tax Returns: UK Structured Product Report

Q: Is a UK structured product an FBAR account or a Form 8938 asset?

It depends on custody, not on the product. If the note is held inside a platform, nominee or custody account at a UK institution, that account is the FBAR item and the note is one of its holdings. If you hold the note directly with no account in between, there is no FBAR entry for it and the note is reported on its own in Form 8938 Part VI. The IRS Comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR requirements confirms that foreign securities held directly, not in a financial account, are Form 8938 items and not FBAR items.

Missed US tax returns that should have disclosed a UK structured product almost always fail on one question: was the product an account, or an asset? If the note sits inside a custody or platform account at a UK institution, the account is what goes on the FBAR and the note is simply one of its contents. If you hold the note directly, outside any account, there is nothing to put on an FBAR at all, and the note appears instead in Part VI of Form 8938 as an other foreign asset. Getting that fork wrong is how a wealthy investor ends up with years of filings that look complete and are not.

This article covers the information reporting and the catch-up only. It is written for a US citizen or green card holder in Britain who bought a structured note, an autocall or a kick-out plan through a wealth manager or a private bank, and has since found that years of US filings are missing or incomplete. It shows which form carries the product, what that form demands line by line, how to value something with no daily market price, how to frame the passive foreign investment company question honestly, and how the position folds into a Streamlined Foreign Offshore submission.

What is a UK structured product in US reporting terms?

A structured product is a pre-packaged investment whose return is set by a formula linked to an underlying reference, most often the FTSE 100 or a basket of indices, with a fixed term, defined observation dates and a stated barrier. In the UK private client market it is usually sold as an autocall, a kick-out plan or a defined return plan, and the legal form is normally a senior unsecured note issued by a bank, sometimes distributed through a plan manager. For US reporting the marketing label is irrelevant. Only two things matter: who issued the instrument, and whether you hold it through a financial account.

The definition you are working against sits in the Instructions for Form 8938. A specified foreign financial asset includes any financial instrument or contract held for investment that has an issuer or counterparty that is not a US person. A note issued by a UK or European bank is exactly that. The same instructions confirm the scope is deliberately wide, reaching instruments such as equity swaps and equity index swaps with a foreign counterparty. A FTSE-linked autocall falls inside that language on any reading.

Is a UK structured product an FBAR account or a Form 8938 asset?

It can be both, one, or neither, and custody decides it rather than the product. The FBAR, FinCEN Form 114, reports foreign financial accounts. IRS FBAR guidance describes reportable accounts as including bank accounts, securities accounts, and securities derivatives or other financial instruments accounts at a foreign financial institution, with the obligation triggered where the aggregate value of all such accounts exceeded 10,000 US dollars at any time in the calendar year. Form 8938 reports specified foreign financial assets, which covers those same accounts plus a second category of assets held for investment that sit inside no account at all.

The IRS Comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR requirements sets out the asymmetry that catches structured product holders. Foreign stock or securities held directly, and not in a financial account, are reportable on Form 8938 and not on the FBAR. The mirror image exists too: an indirect interest in foreign financial assets through an entity you control is an FBAR matter rather than a Form 8938 matter. Two regimes, two tests, and one product that can land on either side depending on paperwork you may never have read.

Held inside a UK platform, nominee or custody account: the account is the FBAR item, reported at its maximum value during the year, and the same account is also a Form 8938 Part V entry. The note is a holding within it, not a separate account.
Held directly in your own name with the issuer or its registrar, with no custody account in between: nothing goes on the FBAR for that note, and it is reported on its own in Form 8938 Part VI.
Held through a plan manager or counterparty structure that is not a financial institution: you may have an account to report and a separate instrument to describe, and the two must reconcile so you neither omit nor double count.
Redeemed or autocalled during the year: the account that received the proceeds is still an FBAR item for that year, and the note is still a Form 8938 item for the period you held it.

The custody question your wealth manager can answer in one email

Most UK structured products bought by private clients are held through a platform or a discretionary custody arrangement, which means there is a reportable account. HMRC's International Exchange of Information Manual, at IEIM400650 on GOV.UK, defines a Custodial Institution as an entity that holds, as a substantial portion of its business, financial assets for the account of others, applying a 20 per cent gross income test. If the platform behind your wealth manager meets that description, you hold through a financial account and should expect a client reference number, periodic custody statements and a designated nominee. That is the FBAR fact pattern.

The direct holding is rarer but not exotic, and it is where reconstruction of missed years goes wrong most often. Some plans issued through a plan manager, and some private bank placements taken up at issue, leave the investor holding the note itself rather than a unit of an account. There is then no FBAR entry, no custody statement and no annual paperwork to prompt a filing, which is precisely why people conclude nothing was reportable. Put one question to your wealth manager in writing: is the note held in a client nominee or custody account, and if so, in which legal entity and under what account number? The written answer supports both the form you chose and any reasonable cause position later.

Form 8938 thresholds for a US person living in Britain

The thresholds are not the same as the FBAR's, and they are materially higher for taxpayers abroad. The IRS Comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR requirements and the Instructions for Form 8938 give the figures, and they are per taxpayer, measured against the aggregate value of all specified foreign financial assets, not against the structured product alone.

Living abroad, single or married filing separately: Form 8938 is required if total specified foreign financial assets exceed 200,000 US dollars on the last day of the tax year, or exceed 300,000 US dollars at any time during the year.
Living abroad, married filing jointly: the figures are more than 400,000 US dollars on the last day of the year, or more than 600,000 US dollars at any time during the year.
Living in the United States, single: more than 50,000 US dollars on the last day, or more than 75,000 US dollars at any time.
Living in the United States, married filing jointly: more than 100,000 US dollars on the last day, or more than 150,000 US dollars at any time.
The FBAR threshold is unchanged by residence: an aggregate of more than 10,000 US dollars across all foreign financial accounts at any point in the calendar year.

The higher thresholds only apply if you meet the presence abroad test. The Instructions for Form 8938 define it as being a US citizen who has been a bona fide resident of a foreign country for an uninterrupted period that includes an entire tax year, or being present in a foreign country or countries for at least 330 full days during any period of 12 consecutive months ending in the tax year. In a multi-year catch-up, test each year separately. A partial year in London after a mid-year move can leave you on the domestic thresholds for that year and the foreign thresholds for the next, which changes whether Form 8938 was due at all.

What Form 8938 Part VI actually asks for

Part VI of Form 8938 is titled Detailed Information for Each Other Foreign Asset, and it is where a directly held structured note belongs. It is more demanding than the account section, because there is no account number to lean on. Where more than one other foreign asset must be reported, a separate continuation statement is attached for each additional asset, so a portfolio of five maturing autocalls is five sets of entries, not one.

A description of the asset and an identifying number or other designation. For a structured note the ISIN is the natural identifier, together with the plan name, the underlying index and the maturity date.
The date the asset was acquired and, where relevant, the date it was disposed of during the tax year, which is the line that captures an autocall event.
Whether the asset is jointly owned with a spouse, which matters where a joint account at the wealth manager holds the note.
The maximum value of the asset during the tax year, selected by value range and then stated.
The foreign currency in which the asset is denominated, the exchange rate used, and the source of that rate if it is not the US Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service rate.
The name, address and type of the issuer or counterparty, which for a structured note means the issuing bank rather than the plan manager or the platform.
Where the asset is instead reported on another information return such as Form 8621, Form 5471 or Form 8865, the duplicative reporting exception applies and Part IV is used to state how many of those forms were filed.

The duplicative reporting exception is a relief, not a loophole. You still file the other form, and you still count the asset when testing whether you cross the Form 8938 threshold. You are excused only from describing it twice. Form 8621 carries a matching duplicative reporting checkbox for the same reason.

How do you value an autocall with no daily market price?

Structured products are illiquid by design. Between observation dates there may be no executable market, only an indicative bid published by the issuer, and in stressed conditions that bid can move sharply while nothing actually trades. The Instructions for Form 8938 resolve this more gently than practitioners expect. The measure is fair market value, and the IRS states in its published questions and answers on Form 8938 that you may rely on periodic account statements or on information publicly available from reliable financial information sources, with no third-party appraisal required.

So the custody statement or the issuer's published indicative valuation is an acceptable source, provided you use it consistently. Two mechanical points trip people up. First, Part VI asks for the maximum value during the tax year, not the year-end value, so a note that spiked before a barrier observation and fell back is reported at its high, and if your statements are quarterly you take the highest of them and say so. Second, the currency rule is counter-intuitive: the Instructions for Form 8938 direct you to use the exchange rate on the last day of the tax year even if you disposed of the asset earlier. A note that autocalled in March is still converted at the 31 December rate, and applying that consistently across every year is what makes a catch-up package coherent.

Does the wrapper raise a PFIC and Form 8621 question?

Here honest reporting means refusing to give a single answer. A passive foreign investment company is defined in section 1297, and the Instructions for Form 8621 state the two tests: a foreign corporation is a PFIC if 75 per cent or more of its gross income for the year is passive income, or if at least 50 per cent of the average percentage of assets held during the year produce passive income or are held for its production. Critically, PFIC status attaches to stock in a foreign corporation. That is the hinge on which a structured product turns.

A plain senior unsecured note issued by a large UK or European bank is, in legal form, a debt obligation of that bank rather than stock in it, and a bank's own income profile is not that of a passive vehicle. On those facts the PFIC machinery is not the natural fit. But UK structured products are not all built that way. Where what you own is a share, unit, certificate or participation issued by a special purpose issuing vehicle, or the plan is delivered through a collective investment vehicle domiciled outside the United States, you may hold stock in a foreign corporation and the tests must genuinely be run. The answer is product-specific and turns on the issuer's structure and the product documentation, not on what the plan is called.

Identify the legal issuer named in the final terms or the plan brochure, and whether it is an operating bank or a dedicated issuing vehicle.
Establish whether what you hold is debt of that issuer or an equity-like interest in it.
If the analysis points to PFIC stock, the Instructions for Form 8621 set out the regimes: default section 1291 excess distribution treatment, a qualified electing fund election, or a section 1296 mark-to-market election for marketable stock.
The same instructions describe a reporting exception where aggregate PFIC stock is worth 25,000 US dollars or less, or 50,000 US dollars or less on a joint return, with no excess distribution and no recognised gain.
If Form 8621 is filed, use the Form 8938 duplicative reporting exception rather than describing the same asset twice.

The one place taxation touches this

Form 8938 is a disclosure form, not an income calculation, and it does not change what you owe. It does ask where the income sits: the form requires you to point to the schedule, form and line on which any income, gain, loss, deduction or credit from the asset is reported, or to indicate that no such item was reported. That pointer is the entire link between the return and the disclosure, which is why the two are prepared together rather than sequentially. How a structured product's return is characterised is a separate subject with its own answers; here, all that matters is that whatever the return concludes is what Part VI points to. If the two disagree, the form invites the question.

How Missed US tax returns with a structured product enter a Streamlined catch-up

Start with a current fact. The IRS removed its published Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures page from IRS.gov on or about 1 July 2026. That route should not be presented or relied on as a live standalone programme, and anyone still describing it as the answer is working from a stale page. For a US person resident in Britain with unfiled or incomplete years, the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, which remain published on IRS.gov, are the route to examine first.

Non-residency test: for US citizens and lawful permanent residents, in one or more of the three most recent years for which the return due date has passed, you did not have a US abode and were physically outside the United States for at least 330 full days.
Scope: three most recent years of delinquent or amended returns with all required information returns attached, and six years of delinquent FBARs.
Certification: Form 14653, certifying that the failure resulted from non-willful conduct, which the IRS defines as conduct due to negligence, inadvertence or mistake.
Mechanics: returns go on paper to the IRS Austin address with Streamlined Foreign Offshore written in red at the top of page one; FBARs are filed electronically through the FinCEN BSA E-Filing System, selecting Other as the reason for late filing and entering Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures.
Cost: tax due and applicable statutory interest are paid with the submission, and taxpayers meeting the foreign residency requirement are not charged the miscellaneous offshore penalty that applies to the domestic version.
Where there is no unreported income and no tax due, the separate Delinquent International Information Return Submission Procedures remain published on IRS.gov for late information returns, though the IRS is explicit that penalty relief is not automatic.

Worked scenario: an autocall that ran through four unfiled years

Marcus Aldridge is a US citizen, an investment banker resident in London since 2019, married and filing separately. In 2021 his private bank placed 420,000 pounds into a six-year FTSE-linked autocall held within the bank's UK nominee custody account, alongside a sterling current account and a general investment account. He filed US returns for 2021 and 2022 with no Form 8938 and no FBARs, on the untested understanding that a UK product was a UK matter. He filed nothing for 2023 or 2024. The note autocalled in September 2023 and the proceeds were reinvested in a second plan in the same account.

The reconstruction runs as follows. Because the notes sat inside a custody account at a UK institution, every year from 2021 produced an FBAR obligation on the account, comfortably over the 10,000 US dollar aggregate trigger, and each account is also a Form 8938 Part V entry. The notes are holdings inside that account rather than separate Part VI assets, which simplifies the disclosure without reducing it. Marcus's aggregate specified foreign financial assets exceeded the 200,000 US dollar year-end and 300,000 US dollar in-year thresholds for a married filing separately taxpayer abroad in every year, so Form 8938 was due each time. The 2023 autocall is a disposal reflected on the return and pointed to from the form. Under the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures he files 2022, 2023 and 2024 returns with Forms 8938, six years of FBARs, and a Form 14653 narrative covering the custody arrangement, the absence of any US-facing statement from the private bank, and the point of discovery. Had the note been held directly instead, there would have been no FBAR for it and four years of Part VI entries, naming the issuing bank as counterparty on each.

What the UK side has already reported about you

There is a second set of books on this, and it is not yours. Under the UK's International Tax Compliance regulations, a UK financial institution that is a Custodial Institution within the HMRC definition reports specified US persons holding reportable accounts to HMRC, with data for each reporting year due to HMRC by 31 May following that year, and HMRC passes it to the IRS under the intergovernmental agreement. Reported fields include name, address, US taxpayer identification number and account number. The practical consequence is uncomfortable but useful: if your structured product sat in a custody account at a UK institution that identified you as a US person, a record almost certainly reached the IRS in each year you filed nothing.

Penalties and the statute of limitations problem

The penalty exposure for a missed Form 8938 is set out in the Instructions for Form 8938 and is not proportionate to the size of the omission, which is why a single undisclosed note matters as much as a portfolio.

A 10,000 US dollar penalty for failing to file a complete and correct Form 8938 by the due date, including extensions.
A continuing penalty of a further 10,000 US dollars for each 30-day period, or part of a period, after a 90-day IRS notice, capped at 50,000 US dollars for each such failure.
A 40 per cent accuracy-related penalty on any underpayment attributable to an undisclosed specified foreign financial asset, and a 75 per cent penalty where the underpayment is due to fraud.
No penalty applies where the failure is due to reasonable cause and not to willful neglect, judged on all the facts.
The limitations period consequence is the one that lasts: where a required Form 8938 is not filed, the period for assessing tax does not begin to run, and a separate six-year period applies where more than 5,000 US dollars of income attributable to specified foreign financial assets is omitted.

For an investor with substantial UK holdings, that last bullet is the real argument for acting. An unfiled Form 8938 leaves the year open indefinitely, which means a decision taken quietly in 2020 is still reviewable today. Filing the form closes the door.

Preparing the submission so it holds together

A structured product catch-up succeeds or fails on internal consistency. Document the custody position in writing from the wealth manager before drafting any form, because it fixes whether the product is an account holding or a Part VI asset for every year in the package. Take valuations from one source, applied the same way across all years, with the year-end exchange rate rule followed even for disposals. Reduce any Form 8621 analysis to a short written note of what the issuer is and why the conclusion follows, so the position is explicable years later. And make the Form 14653 narrative match the forms rather than gloss them: same dates, same account, same sequence. A submission that reads as one document rather than five is what separates a clean filing from one that invites a letter.