The FinCEN Files are leaked documents from the US Financial\nCrimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), that have been globally earlier published\nthis week. FinCEN is an agency US Treasury that collects and analyses forms to\ncombat money laundering, terrorism financing, evasion of economic sanctions and\nother financial crimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FinCEN Files impacts mainly large banks, the FinCEN leak\nreminds us that FinCEN actively and regularly collects and reviews Form FinCEN\n114 (also known as the FBAR), Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR), and Suspicious\nTransaction Reports (STR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) are reports that are\nrequired to be filed with FINCEN by\nvarious businesses when they observe suspicious activities. The purpose of the\nSAR is to identify illegal activity including tax fraud, money laundering,\nterrorist financing and other financial fraud. Banks are not the only\nbusinesses required to file Suspicious Activity Reports. Any financial firm\nthat handles sizable cash transactions is required to report. Such firms\ninclude check cashing stores, money order operations, brokerage houses, law\nfirms, currency exchange houses, casinos and issuers of traveler’s checks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FinCEN offers very broad guidance as to the types of\nfinancial activities that can trigger a Suspicious Activity Report. Their\nguidance essentially states that any activity that arouses suspicion should be\nreported as suspicious activity if it involves funds above the threshold\namounts. Some activities involve obviously illegal behavior, such as using fake\nidentification. Other activities might be suspicious even if not obviously\nillegal, such as repeated deposits of small amounts of cash to avoid a single\nlarge transaction of more than $10,000, which would be reportable to the\ngovernment, whether suspicious or not. Numerous types of cash withdrawal\ntransactions have been reported as suspicious activities. Structured\nwithdrawals are repeated withdrawals of small amounts of cash in an attempt to\navoid the $10,000 cash transaction trigger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some clients with offshore bank accounts want to know if\nthey can repatriate their funds to the U.S. without taking any affirmative\nsteps such as a voluntary disclosure on the theory that if they do not file some\nform of voluntary disclosure, the IRS is unlikely to know about them. However, a\nlarge inbound transfer from an offshore bank is likely to generate an SAR. In a\nrecent IRS internal memo dated March 15, 2012, the IRS pointed out to its\nagents in the Small Business Self-Employed Division (SBSE) that SARs could be\nhelpful in tax fraud examinations, as well as in locating taxpayer assets.\nAccording to the memo, no SAR information including the existence of the SAR\ncan be disclosed to the subject of the SAR. \nAll of this suggests that it will be risky for a taxpayer who has not\nfailed to file FBARs or who has failed to report income from offshore\nactivities to simply wire transfer the proceeds in foreign accounts to a U.S.\nbank account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The FinCEN Files are leaked documents from the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), that have been globally earlier published this week. FinCEN is an agency US Treasury that collects and analyses forms to combat money laundering, terrorism financing, evasion of economic sanctions and other financial crimes. The FinCEN Files impacts mainly large banks, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-planning-for-tax-minimization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3712,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711\/revisions\/3712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patellawoffices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}