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The Internal Revenue Service has dramatically raised the bar with regards to the 94% of U.S. citizens who are living abroad and not filing U.S. tax returns.
American citizens are required to file U.S. returns on an annual basis. Typically there may be no U.S. tax owing, however there are often other tax compliance requirements that are often ignored and are now being targeted by the IRS.
The IRS is now aggressively aiming at both these non-filers and interestingly, Canadian financial institutions.
In January 1st, 2013 all Canadian financial institutions will be reporting directly to the IRS, identifying their customers who are U.S. citizens and disclosing their account information. We have been informed that the financial institutions will be implementing dramatic changes in their protocol to identify U.S. citizens.
You may be one of those U.S. citizens that are compliant in filing tax returns but ignore other reporting compliance requirements or are filing deficient tax returns.
Did you know that there are annual U.S. filing disclosures required for various accounts such as RRSP, RESP, TFSA as well as ownership interest in Canadian corporations, dollar amounts in brokerage accounts, etc.? The penalties for non-filers are severe.
At G & G Partnership, we have been providing clients with assistance in their U.S. filing requirements for over 15 years. Several members of our firm are both Chartered Accountants and Certified Public Accountants. As well, we are Certifying Acceptance Agents for the IRS. This allows us to apply for an IRS Individual Taxpayer Number for clients required to file returns in the United States or to claim benefits based on the Canada-U.S. Tax Treaty.
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