What Just Changed at the IRS
An FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, filed as FinCEN Form 114) is the annual disclosure the US requires from citizens and green-card holders whose combined foreign account balances hit $10,000 at any point in the year — a threshold that can affect many Americans in Switzerland, potentially as soon as they open a standard bank or pillar account. For years, the IRS ran something called the Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures: a public webpage telling non-willful late filers that if they filed electronically, explained the delay, and had already reported the related income on their tax return, the IRS would not impose a penalty. Sometime between June 30 and July 1, 2026, that page disappeared. There was no formal announcement — it simply stopped resolving, and IRS.gov now carries a shorter, more cautious statement instead.
Why the Old Page Mattered
The removed page did something specific: it converted a vague legal standard ("reasonable cause") into a near-guarantee. If you met the stated conditions, the IRS told you in writing that a penalty would not be asserted. That kind of certainty is rare in international tax compliance, which is exactly why so many late filers — and the advisors helping them — relied on it as the default, low-drama route back into compliance.
- The webpage was still live and archived as recently as June 23, 2026
- It was gone by July 1, 2026, with no replacement program announced
- IRS.gov now states plainly that late or missing FBARs are "a violation and may subject you to penalties"
- The site still tells non-contacted taxpayers to file late FBARs "as soon as possible to keep potential penalties to a minimum"
What Still Applies: The Underlying Rule Didn't Disappear
Here's the part that gets lost in the headlines: the Internal Revenue Manual section that IRS examiners actually use — IRM 4.26.16.3.11, "Delinquent FBAR Filing Procedures" — is still in effect. It still instructs taxpayers to file delinquent FBARs electronically through the FinCEN system, still has a dropdown asking for the reason the filing is late, and still tells examiners that a penalty should generally not be asserted if the failure was non-willful, was due to reasonable cause, and the related income was properly reported. If you're catching up on more than one year, our overview of FBAR filing for Americans in Switzerland covers deadlines and the mechanics of filing correctly going forward.
The IRM is still in force—but carries less weight than the removed webpage
IRM 4.26.16.3.11 survived the IRS's August 26, 2025 Internal Revenue Manual retransmittal verbatim. It tells examiners not to assert a penalty when the three conditions are met. Two limits matter: the IRM does not carry the force of law and confers no rights on taxpayers (Fargo v. Commissioner, 447 F.3d 706 (9th Cir. 2006))—you cannot compel the IRS to follow it. What it does is tell examiners they are responsible for adhering to it, which is a practical protection during an audit, not a published guarantee. And because it is internal guidance, it can be revised or withdrawn as quietly as the webpage was (Kaufman Rossin, August 27, 2026).
Reasonable Cause, in Plain English
"Reasonable cause" is a legal standard, not a feeling. Courts have applied the Title 26 tax-penalty standard to FBAR cases: a person has reasonable cause when they committed the violation despite exercising ordinary business care and prudence (Moore v. United States, W.D. Wash. 2015; Jarnagin v. United States, 134 Fed. Cl. 368, 376 (2017)). In practice it means you can show a specific, credible reason the FBAR wasn't filed — for example, genuinely not knowing the requirement applied to accounts held abroad, or relying on a preparer who knew the accounts existed and never advised you an FBAR was required — combined with the fact that the income from those accounts was reported on your tax return. What's changed is that this now sits with an IRS examiner's discretion rather than a published, near-automatic promise. The standard is the same; the certainty attached to it is lower.
Your Options If You Have an Unfiled FBAR
None of this means the door has closed — it means the path now needs to be chosen more deliberately. There are generally three routes, depending on your facts.
- File directly, with a written reasonable-cause explanation — appropriate when the missed FBAR was an isolated, non-willful oversight and the related income was already reported
- Use the Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures — a formal IRS program designed for non-willful taxpayers who also have unreported foreign income to correct, not just missing FBARs
- Consider the Voluntary Disclosure Practice — reserved for situations involving willful conduct, which is a different and more serious category than most late filers fall into
For most Americans in Switzerland, the missed FBAR is genuinely a paperwork gap, not a hidden-income situation — a pillar 2 account, a joint Swiss bank account, or an old employer savings plan that nobody flagged as reportable. But since Swiss financial institutions have been reporting US-linked account data to the IRS for years under FATCA, gaps tend to surface on their own timeline, not yours; our piece on how the IRS uses AI to cross-reference FATCA and FBAR data walks through why that matters.
This is fixable — the sequence just matters more now
Filing late is common among Americans abroad and is very rarely the crisis it feels like. What changed in July 2026 is that the automatic no-penalty language is gone, so the quality of your reasonable-cause explanation — and choosing the right track before you file — now carries more weight than it did a month earlier.
Why This Lands Differently for Americans in Switzerland
Swiss banks have spent the past several years tightening how they identify and report US accountholders, and that reporting flows directly to the IRS. If you've ever wondered how much of your Swiss financial life the IRS already sees, our explainer on Swiss banks releasing US accountholder information to the IRS lays out the mechanics. The practical implication: a missed FBAR for a Swiss account isn't invisible to the IRS by default — it's a matter of when a mismatch between reported income and known account data gets noticed, not whether one exists.
Why Enforcement Is Tightening Now
The July 2026 removal of the Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures page fits a broader pattern. Only weeks later, in late July, the Senate Finance Committee scaled back much of the relief Americans abroad had been expecting from the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act—dropping the proposal to allow FBAR filing with your tax return and removing the wider foreign tax credit threshold. What survived were two government studies on simplifying reporting and slightly more time to contest certain IRS math-error penalties. The message is consistent: enforcement is getting more assertive and more automated, while the structural relief that might simplify your actual filing obligations remains stuck in the study phase. Our piece on the Senate Finance Committee's FBAR reform bill lays out the full timeline and what didn't survive the markup.
$10,000
Aggregate balance across foreign financial accounts that triggers the FBAR filing requirement, if reached at any point during the year
What To Do Next
- Confirm which years, if any, you crossed the $10,000 aggregate threshold and didn't file
- Gather account statements and any evidence of why the filing was missed
- Check whether the income from those accounts was already reported on your US tax return — this determines which track fits your facts
- Decide between direct filing with a reasonable-cause statement, the Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures, or specialist guidance before submitting anything
- Avoid filing multiple years' worth of FBARs without a plan — a scattershot approach can undercut an otherwise solid reasonable-cause case
This is exactly the kind of gray-area decision where a quick, informed conversation beats guessing — at US Expat Wealth, we work specifically at the intersection of US filing obligations and Swiss financial life, and getting the sequencing right on something like this depends entirely on your specific history, so it's worth walking through your situation before you file anything.