The FBAR captures far more of an American's ordinary French savings than most filers realize, and the accounts everyone forgets are precisely the ones examiners look for.
Ask an American living in France whether they have foreign bank accounts, and the answer is usually a confident inventory: one current account, perhaps a savings account. Ask the same person whether they hold an assurance-vie, a PEA, a livret opened by a parent decades ago, a joint account with a French spouse, or signature authority over an employer's account, and the inventory doubles or triples. Every one of those items can be a foreign financial account for American purposes, and the FBAR that omits them is not late: it is inaccurate, which is a different and more dangerous condition.
The FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) is not a tax form. It is a Bank Secrecy Act report, filed with the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, owing no tax but carrying its own penalty regime, its own deadline and its own case law, reshaped in 2023 by the Supreme Court's Bittner decision. Its threshold is disarmingly low: an aggregate of 10,000 dollars across all foreign accounts, at any moment of the year, triggers the duty to report every account, including the ones worth fifty euros.
This article maps the obligation for Americans whose financial life is French. Part I sets out the mechanics: who files, what counts, when. Part II inventories the French products that filers systematically forget. Part III explains the penalty architecture and the willful line after Bittner. Part IV covers repair, and the French mirror that must be checked before any American clean-up.
I. The mechanics: who files, what counts, when
A. One threshold, all accounts
A US person, citizen, green card holder or resident, entity or trust, must file an FBAR when two conditions meet: a financial interest in, or signature or other authority over, at least one financial account located outside the United States, and an aggregate value of all such accounts exceeding 10,000 dollars at any time during the calendar year (IRS, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts). The test is cumulative and instantaneous: a salary payment that briefly pushes the combined balances above the threshold in March triggers the reporting of every foreign account for the whole year, including dormant ones. Whether the accounts produced any taxable income is irrelevant, and the duty exists even when not a dollar of US tax is owed.
B. Interest, signature, authority
The regulation reaches beyond ownership. A financial interest includes accounts held through entities the US person controls; signature or other authority captures the treasurer of an association, the employee who can move funds on a company account, the adult child added to an elderly parent's account for convenience, and the agent under a power of attorney. Each of these persons can have an FBAR duty over an account that is not theirs, a point that regularly stuns executives of French companies (31 CFR 1010.350(e) and (f)). Limited exceptions exist, notably for participants in certain US retirement plans and for beneficiaries of trusts whose US trustee already reports the accounts (31 CFR 1010.350(g)).
C. Calendar and channel
The FBAR is annual, due April 15 following the reported year, with an automatic extension to October 15 that requires no request. It is filed electronically through FinCEN's BSA E-Filing System, never with the tax return, and the supporting records, account names, numbers, institutions and maximum values, must be kept five years (IRS, FBAR page). The FBAR coexists with Form 8938, the FATCA statement attached to the income tax return: two reports, two agencies, two thresholds, and compliance with one has never excused the other.
II. The French accounts everyone forgets
A. The assurance-vie, first among the forgotten
The French regulation of the FBAR's scope is explicit: a reportable account includes an insurance or annuity policy with a cash value (31 CFR 1010.350(c)(3)(ii)). The assurance-vie, whose defining feature is precisely its valeur de rachat, is therefore a foreign financial account for FBAR purposes, whatever its French tax privileges and however firmly the French adviser calls it insurance. The value to report is the cash surrender value at its annual maximum, not the premiums paid. And the FBAR is only the first layer: the funds held inside the contract typically raise the separate PFIC question we have examined elsewhere, which the FBAR neither creates nor cures.
B. The rest of the French savings toolkit
The PEA is, structurally, a securities account with a cash pocket: both compartments are reportable. The regulated livrets (livret A, LDDS, LEP) are bank accounts, reportable despite their French tax exemption, and so are the PEL and CEL. The joint account with a French spouse is reportable in full by the American spouse, at 100% of its maximum value, not half. The compte-titres, the business account of the sole proprietor, the account of the SCI the American co-owns, and the crypto platform account, in the state of the guidance, deserve case-by-case analysis but are never safely ignored. In our files, the average American in France who believed they had two foreign accounts discovers between six and twelve.
C. The professional and family periphery
The last stratum is the one no software questionnaire surfaces. Signature authority over the employer's account for the finance director. The association account for the volunteer treasurer. The elderly parent's account to which the American child was added after a hospitalization. The children's livrets opened at birth, which belong on the parents' FBAR analysis as custodians. None of these accounts enriches the filer, all of them count toward completeness, and an FBAR that omits them is inaccurate even if the filer's own money is perfectly reported. The inventory, in short, is a legal exercise, not a memory exercise.
III. Penalties and the willful line after Bittner
A. The non-willful regime: one penalty per report since Bittner
The statutory penalty for a non-willful FBAR violation is a civil fine of up to 10,000 dollars, adjusted annually for inflation. Its basis of calculation was the object of a decade of litigation that ended on February 28, 2023: in Bittner v. United States, 598 U.S. 85 (2023), the Supreme Court held that the non-willful penalty accrues per report, not per account. The taxpayer in that case, whose five late FBARs covered more than 270 accounts, faced 2.72 million dollars under the government's per-account theory and 50,000 dollars under the per-report reading the Court adopted. For Americans in France, whose forgotten accounts are typically numerous and small, Bittner transformed the arithmetic of coming forward: the exposure of an honest latecomer is now measured in years of missed reports, not in numbers of livrets.
B. The willful regime: where the real danger lives
Willful violations answer to a different statute and a different order of magnitude: the greater of 100,000 dollars, as adjusted for inflation, or 50% of the account balance, per violation, with criminal exposure in aggravated cases. Willfulness includes reckless disregard and willful blindness, and courts have found it in facts as ordinary as answering no to the foreign-account question on Schedule B while holding foreign accounts. The line between the two regimes is therefore not a line between fraudsters and everyone else; it is a line drawn through evidence, and it is the single most important variable in any FBAR repair strategy. Our rule from the streamlined context applies with full force here: the willfulness assessment comes first, with counsel, before anything is filed.
IV. Repairing late FBARs, and the French mirror
A. Three repair channels, one choice
The taxpayer with missing FBARs and no unreported income has the simplest path: the delinquent FBAR submission procedures, late filing through the BSA system with a statement of explanation, which the IRS has framed as penalty-free where the related income was reported and tax paid. The taxpayer with unreported income, the usual case once an assurance-vie or a PEA enters the picture, belongs in the streamlined procedures, whose foreign variant files six years of FBARs and three years of returns with no penalty, as we detailed in our dedicated analysis. And the taxpayer with willfulness indicators belongs in neither: the voluntary disclosure practice, with counsel and privilege, is the only defensible route. Choosing the channel is the strategic decision; everything after is execution.
B. The French mirror, once again
An American in France repairing FBARs is usually also a French tax resident with American accounts, and the mirror obligation is French: Article 1649 A of the CGI requires residents to declare their foreign accounts with the annual return, on pain of a fine per undeclared account (CGI, art. 1736, IV) and of the presumption that undeclared transfers are taxable income. The brokerage account in New York, the old checking account in the college town, the retirement accounts left behind: each belongs on the French declaration exactly as the French accounts belong on the FBAR. The two inventories are the same list read from opposite shores, and our practice is to build that list once, verify it against both regimes, and file both sides in coherence. A repair that cleans one country while contradicting the other has merely relocated the problem.
C. Our position
The FBAR is the least sophisticated instrument in the Franco-American compliance toolkit and the one that produces the most damage, because its threshold is low, its scope counterintuitive and its penalties disconnected from any tax owed. The discipline it demands is clerical, not intellectual: a complete inventory, refreshed annually, valued at annual maxima, filed by October 15 without exception. Since Bittner, the economics of coming forward have never been better for the non-willful; they remain ruinous for those who wait for the administration. The instruction is accordingly simple: inventory now, choose the repair channel with counsel, and never let a French adviser's assurance that a product is not an account substitute for the American definition.
Conclusion
For an American whose financial life is French, the FBAR question is never whether something must be filed but how much of the French savings landscape falls within it: the assurance-vie with its cash value, the PEA's two compartments, the exempt livrets, the joint accounts at full value, the accounts of others held under signature authority. The 10,000 dollar threshold aggregates everything, and accuracy, not timeliness, is the real standard, because an incomplete FBAR is a violation even when filed on the deadline.
The penalty architecture rewards the organized and the prompt: one capped penalty per report for the non-willful since Bittner, a repair path at zero penalty through the delinquent procedures or the streamlined route, and, symmetrically, a French declaration of American accounts under Article 1649 A that must tell the same story. Build the inventory once, file it on both sides, and the most feared acronym of American expatriation becomes what it should always have been: an annual formality.
Frequently asked questions
Is my French assurance-vie really reportable on the FBAR even though it is insurance?
Yes. The US regulation expressly includes insurance and annuity policies with a cash value among reportable foreign financial accounts, and the assurance-vie is defined by its surrender value. You report its maximum cash value for the year, not the premiums paid. The French tax treatment of the contract has no bearing on the American reporting duty, and the funds inside the contract may separately raise PFIC issues on your tax return.
My accounts are small and none reaches $10,000. Do I still file?
Add them together: the threshold is aggregate, across all foreign accounts, at any moment of the year. A livret at 6,000 euros and a current account that briefly held 5,000 euros put you over the line, and then every account must be reported, whatever its individual size. Joint accounts count at full value, and accounts you merely have signature authority over enter the analysis as well.
I have never filed an FBAR in fifteen years in France. How bad is it?
Less catastrophic than the folklore suggests, if your conduct was non-willful. Since the Supreme Court's Bittner decision, the non-willful penalty accrues per unfiled report, not per account, and the repair channels can reduce even that to zero: the delinquent FBAR procedures if all your income was reported, the streamlined procedures if it was not. The genuinely dangerous cases are the willful ones, which is why the willfulness assessment, with counsel, is the first step of any repair.
Do my American accounts create a similar obligation in France?
Yes, the mirror image. As a French tax resident you must declare your foreign accounts, American ones included, with your annual French return under Article 1649 A of the CGI, on pain of a fine per undeclared account and a presumption that undeclared transfers are taxable income. The correct method is one inventory serving both declarations, filed coherently on both sides.