Who this is for: Americans in France, accidental Americans included, and green-card holders with French financial lives, trying to work out whether they file the FBAR, Form 8938, or both. Short answer: they overlap without replacing each other, and French products are where the differences bite.
The two forms exist because two arms of the US government want to know about your foreign money for two different reasons. The FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) is a bank-secrecy report, filed to FinCEN, about accounts. Form 8938 is a tax form, filed to the IRS with your return, about specified foreign financial assets, a wider net with higher thresholds. Filing one does not satisfy the other; plenty of people in France must file both, every year, listing largely the same things twice.
Table of Contents
FBAR vs Form 8938: the side-by-side
Question | FBAR (FinCEN 114) | Form 8938 (FATCA) |
Filed with | FinCEN, electronically, separate from your tax return | The IRS, attached to your 1040 |
Threshold | $10,000, aggregate of all foreign accounts, at any moment of the year | Living abroad: $200,000 year-end / $300,000 anytime (single); $400,000 / $600,000 (married joint). US-resident thresholds are far lower |
What it covers | Financial accounts you own or control, including mere signature authority | Accounts AND other financial assets: foreign stock held directly, foreign partnership interests, certain insurance contracts |
Who must file | US persons, including entities | Specified individuals (and certain entities) who must file a return |
Deadline | April 15, automatic extension to October 15 | Your tax return deadline, extensions included |
Non-willful penalty | Up to $16,536 per report (2026, inflation-adjusted), per-report not per-account since the Bittner decision | $10,000, plus continuation penalties up to $50,000 after IRS notice |
Willful penalty | Greater of $165,353 or 50% of the balance, per year | Accuracy penalties and, in extremes, criminal exposure alongside |
Two traps hide in that table. The FBAR’s $10,000 trigger is the total across accounts, at the highest moment: a salary hitting one account while savings sit in another crosses it fast, and a single day above the line counts. And the 8938 thresholds test both year-end and peak values, so an asset sold in November still counts toward the anytime test.
The French asset map
Generic comparisons stop at ‘foreign bank account’. French financial life is more specific, and this mapping is where most mistakes happen:
French asset | FBAR? | Form 8938? | Note |
Compte courant, Livret A, LDDS, LEP | Yes | Yes (as accounts) | Interest on the Livret A is tax-free in France, fully taxable in the US, a separate surprise |
Assurance-vie | Yes, as an account with cash value | Yes, as a specified asset | The US does not respect the French tax wrapper; PFIC issues often ride along, see our PFIC and assurance-vie guide |
PEA, compte-titres | Yes | Yes | The PEA’s French tax advantages do not exist in US law; holdings inside often raise PFIC questions |
PER, company savings plans (PEE) | Generally yes | Generally yes | Employer plans are frequently forgotten because the employee never opened them personally |
Crypto on a French platform | FinCEN guidance has not made standalone crypto accounts reportable to date | Possibly, depending on how held | An evolving area; document your position |
Direct French real estate | No | No | Real estate held directly is outside both forms; through an SCI, the SCI interest itself can be reportable |
SCI or company shares | Not as such (unless an account) | Yes, foreign entity interests are specified assets | The 8938 net is wider than the FBAR here, the clearest divergence of all |
Read the last two rows again: they are the cleanest illustration of the two philosophies. FinCEN wants accounts; the IRS wants assets. An apartment owned through an SCI generates no FBAR line but a real 8938 one.
Who ends up filing what: four common profiles
Profile | FBAR | 8938 |
Salaried expat, checking account plus Livret A, modest savings | Almost certainly yes, the $10,000 trips easily | Often no, the expat thresholds are high |
Established family: assurance-vie, PEA, home through an SCI | Yes | Frequently yes, the wrapper products add up fast |
Accidental American with an inherited assurance-vie | Yes, and often years of catch-up | Depends on value; the Streamlined Procedure usually handles both at once |
Green-card holder returned to France, accounts left open | Yes, green-card holders remain US persons | Yes if thresholds met; the residency rules for the higher expat thresholds have their own tests |
Behind on one or both: the repair paths
The overlap has one merciful consequence: the fix-it procedures treat the two forms together. Missed FBARs with no unreported income can go through delinquent FBAR submission, a filing with an explanation and, where the income side was clean, no penalty. Missed forms with unreported income, the assurance-vie interest nobody declared, the Livret A the software skipped, point toward the Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures: three years of amended returns, six years of FBARs, a non-willfulness certification, and for genuine expats no penalty. What does not work is quiet disclosure, slipping old forms into new envelopes and hoping: both agencies cross-match, and FATCA means your French bank is already reporting you to the IRS either way.
The mechanics of maximum value, because that is where files go wrong
Both forms want values, and the FBAR wants the year’s maximum per account, which is not a number your December statement shows. The routine that produces defensible figures:
- Pull the highest balance shown on any periodic statement for each account during the year; a reasonable approximation from statements is acceptable, guessing is not.
- Convert at the US Treasury year-end exchange rate, one official rate for everything, not the rate on the day of each peak.
- Count transfers as they are: moving €50,000 between your own accounts mid-year makes it appear in two maximums. That double-counting is expected and correct; the FBAR measures accounts, not wealth.
- Keep the schedule. The same asset list, values and rate feed Form 8938, and matching numbers across the two filings is what clean looks like to a reviewer.
That third point surprises everyone once: yes, the same money can be reported twice within one FBAR. The form is not computing your net worth; it is mapping where money sat.
How the IRS already knows: the bank side of FATCA
The comparison has a third participant: your French bank. Under FATCA, French financial institutions identify their US-person clients, the passport question at account opening, the W-9 they asked you to sign, and report balances yearly to the French administration, which forwards them to the IRS. Three practical consequences:
- The IRS often holds your account data before you file; the forms reconcile you to what is already reported, which is why silence is a strategy with a short shelf life.
- Some French banks limit or refuse US-person clients rather than carry the compliance, and an unexplained account closure request is often FATCA wearing a polite mask.
- Mismatches surface: an account the bank reported that your FBAR omits is the exact discrepancy the matching program exists to find. The fix is completeness on your side, not hope about theirs.
Your first year in the system: a calendar
When | What |
January-February | French institutions issue annual statements; build the asset schedule once, for both forms |
April 15 | Nominal deadline for both; expats get the automatic two-month return extension to June 15 |
June 15 | Typical expat filing date, 8938 attached to the 1040 |
October 15 | FBAR automatic extension ends, no request needed; extended returns due too |
Any time | Discovering missed prior years: assess delinquent-FBAR vs Streamlined before filing anything new |
The quiet takeaway from that calendar: one asset schedule, built once in February, feeds every line of both forms. Households that treat the FBAR and 8938 as two separate spring emergencies do double work and create the mismatches; households that treat them as one schedule with two output formats file in an afternoon.
Married couples: one filing or two?
The forms diverge here too, and the divergence is a planning lever. For Form 8938, a married-filing-jointly return carries one form with doubled thresholds, $400,000 and $600,000 abroad, often keeping dual-income households under the line. The FBAR has no joint version: each spouse files their own, with one narrow exception, a spouse whose only accounts are fully joint with the filing spouse can be covered via a signed Form 114a authorization. Households where one spouse holds a separate account, a pre-marriage Livret A counts, lose the exception entirely. And a French spouse who is not a US person files nothing personally, while the accounts shared with them appear, at full value in the general case, on the American spouse’s forms. Awkward at the dinner table, unambiguous on paper.
The fear, calibrated
FBAR penalties make headlines because the willful numbers really are enormous. The calibration that matters for an ordinary household in France:
- Willfulness is conduct, not size. Hiding accounts from your preparer, moving money after learning of the rules, false answers on Schedule B: that is the willful pattern. Not knowing a Livret A was reportable, while filing everything else in good faith, is the classic non-willful fact set.
- The non-willful ceiling is per report since Bittner, one amount per late year, not per account, which turned worst-case arithmetic from ruinous to survivable for multi-account families.
- Reasonable cause exists and is argued successfully, particularly with clean income reporting and prompt correction once informed.
- The procedures are the point. Delinquent submission for clean-income cases, Streamlined for the rest: the system offers a door marked exit, and using it before any IRS contact is the entire game.
The practical translation: the family that discovers the FBAR in year four and fixes it deliberately faces paperwork, not catastrophe. The one that discovers it and waits converts a paperwork problem into a conduct problem, which is the one category the penalties were actually built for.
One household, both forms: a worked example
Make it concrete. An American couple in Lyon, married filing jointly: a joint compte courant peaking at $28,000, her Livret A at $24,000, his old PEL at $19,000, a joint assurance-vie whose cash value peaks at $310,000, and 30% of an SCI holding the apartment, worth $150,000. The FBAR arithmetic: the account aggregate, roughly $381,000 at the respective peaks, is far past $10,000, so FBARs are due, and because he holds the PEL separately, the joint-filing exception fails: two FBARs, each listing the accounts its filer owns or co-owns, the joint ones appearing on both at full value. The SCI stake appears on neither, it is not an account. Form 8938 runs the other logic: specified assets, accounts plus the SCI interest, near $531,000 at peak against a $600,000 anytime threshold and roughly $460,000 at year-end against $400,000. The year-end test trips: one Form 8938 on the joint return, SCI included. Same household, three filings, two logics, and every number traced to one February schedule.
Beyond accounts: the rest of the 8938 checklist
The SCI is the familiar example of an 8938-only asset, but the category is wider, and scanning it once per year is cheap insurance:
- Shares in any foreign company held directly, in certificate or register form rather than in a brokerage account.
- Interests in foreign partnerships and funds, carried interest and LP commitments included.
- Foreign-issued life insurance or annuity contracts with cash value, the assurance-vie again, but also older contracts inherited or forgotten.
- Loans you made to foreign persons or companies, including the founder loan to your own French SARL.
- Vested rights in some foreign deferred-compensation arrangements, a specialist corner worth flagging to your preparer rather than solving alone.
None of these appears on an FBAR unless wrapped in an account. All belong on the 8938 schedule when thresholds are met, which is why the annual asset review starts from your balance sheet, not from your bank statements.
How Expand CPA fits in
This pairing, French products read through US rules, is our home ground as a Franco-American firm. We prepare both forms, map the awkward assets, assurance-vie first among them, and run the catch-up procedures when history needs cleaning, from our FBAR practice through Streamlined. If you are unsure which side of a threshold you sit on, that is a one-conversation question. Talk to us.
Frequently Asked Questions
If I file Form 8938, can I skip the FBAR, since the IRS already knows?
No. They are separate legal obligations to separate agencies, and each is penalized independently. The overlap in content buys you no exemption from either; it only means the two filings should be prepared from the same asset schedule so they match.
Do joint accounts with my French spouse count?
Yes, for both forms, generally at full account value for the FBAR and under specific rules for 8938. A French spouse with no US status does not file either form personally, but the accounts you share appear on yours.
What about accounts I only have signature authority over, like an employer account?
FBAR yes, that is one of its distinctive extensions: authority without ownership is reportable. Form 8938 concerns your assets, so pure signature authority generally stays off it. This is the classic case of one form applying and not the other.
Does my French SCI or SARL itself have to file an FBAR?
Possibly, and it is the overlooked corner of the rules: a foreign entity is not an FBAR filer, but a US person who owns more than 50% of it must report the entity’s foreign accounts on their own FBAR, and a US-owned entity that qualifies as a US person files for itself. The SARL’s business account, which felt like the company’s affair, can therefore appear on your personal FBAR through the ownership chain. Form 8938 approaches the same structure differently, capturing your interest in the entity rather than its accounts. One structure, two forms, two different lines: the exact pattern this whole comparison keeps producing, and the reason the annual review should walk the ownership chart, not just the bank statements.
Which form does my tax software handle, and which gets forgotten?
Consumer tax software generally prepares Form 8938 competently, because it lives inside the return the software is already building. The FBAR is the one that slips: it is filed on a separate government system, outside the return, and no reminder fires when you hit submit on the 1040. The pattern we see every autumn is a household whose 8938 has been filed for years while the FBAR never once was, the exact inverse of the risk profile, since the FBAR’s threshold is forty times lower. If you remember one operational fact from this article, make it that one: the smaller, easier form is the one your software will not file for you. Put a standing reminder next to the tax deadline, file the two forms from the same February schedule, and the whole subject shrinks back to what it should be: an hour of paperwork a year.
Do the forms change anything about what tax I pay?
Neither form computes a single dollar of tax; both are pure information reports. The tax lives elsewhere, on the interest, dividends and gains those French accounts produce, which belong on the 1040 regardless of any threshold. That separation cuts both ways: staying under every reporting threshold does not make the Livret A’s interest tax-free, and crossing a threshold does not itself cost anything beyond the disclosure. The expensive scenario is the combination, income missing from the return AND accounts missing from the forms, the pattern the Streamlined Procedure was designed to unwind.
Related Expand CPA guides
- FBAR: the complete guide for US persons in France
- The Streamlined Procedure: catching up penalty-free
- PFIC rules and the assurance-vie
- FEIE vs Foreign Tax Credit
Disclaimer: Thresholds and penalty figures verified August 2026 against IRS and FinCEN sources; FBAR penalties adjust annually for inflation. Classification of specific French products can depend on contract terms. General information, not tax advice.
