Question for US persons living in Taiwan:
As a US person, do I need to report my Taiwan bank account if my balance never reaches US$10,000 during the year? (My total deposits may go over $10,000 but my balance never reaches $10,000.)
I can’t seem to find the answer online in plain simple English.
I was told balance on here before when I inquired why my back never asked me to sign any related papers. But I am not certain. Best to make sure.
100%. Only if balance ever hits 10k. Keep in mind this is not per account, but cumulative of all overseas accounts.
Thanks! I don’t know why so much emphasis is always put on the “cumulative accounts” part (as if they had tons of foreign bank accounts), but nobody ever explains whether it’s cumulative deposits or total balance.
its cumulative because people can.open many accounts, each one below the threshold, and avoid declaring.
If it makes you feel any better, my accounts have gone over 10K USD before. Nothing happened to me. As long as you’re not making above 106K USD/yr (or whatever the number was this year), it doesn’t really mean anything other than the US government is the most greedy and least generous of all democratic governments (demanding taxes from anyone with a US passport but never sharing the wealth with anyone but the rich and corporations).
I do make over that amount, but that’s good to know.
I get paid in the US so all the money in my Taiwan account comes from my US account anyway. Kind of redundant to make me report my income twice. This is all just unnecessary paperwork for me so I’m going to try to keep my balance here below $10,000.
Exactly my strategy. Good excuse for a new phone/laptop. 
I doubt there will be any real problems but just to be sure…
It takes like 5 minutes. If you’re close I’d just do it. They can be dicks about it.
It took me 5 minutes just to find the correct website. And that doesn’t even include the time spent reading the instructions and figuring out where to click to actually open the form. In fact, I already gave up 