I think there is a problem with the new Foreign Bank Accounts (FBAR) report

Chris_QPW

I might not understand this correctly because I have never had the requirement to file such on my taxes, but a quick read says that need the maximum value of the account in a given year.

Well here is a line from one of my Vanguard IRA accounts:


I can certainly guarantee that the value of my account is much larger then zero!
What is zero, and is true for the whole year is the "cash value".  The securities value isn't being taken into account.

Scooterlam

Is there a new staged release beyond R30.10 that includes this new report?

I'm not seeing this report in R30.10.

Nonetheless, its been 6-7 years since I filed FBAR (FinCEN 114) and form 8938.  They have different requirements but both report on foreign accounts.    There is a pretty good summary of both in the link below.  I believe the FBAR reports on foreign accounts that have currency values greater that 10K at any time during the year (that may explain your result).   Form 8938 looks at a different account value threshold both during and end of year balances that include both currency and other investments.

I hope Quicken hasn't forgotten to include both in this new report.  Seems like an pretty narrow user base that would use this kind of report.

More details here:
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/comparison-of-form-8938-and-fbar-requirements

Rocket J Squirrel

Scooterlam said:

Is there a new staged release beyond R30.10 that includes this new report?

Yes.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20134815/#Comment_20134815

miklk

The FBAR report shows highest CASH value. (That is why most IRA accounts will show as zero)
They indicated working as expected ONLY reporting CASH when I 1st told them.

I am waiting for verification back from them shortly if supposed to show Security values too which it is not for me.

Scooterlam

I believe that FBAR is cash (currency) only and Form 8938 is total account assets, as stated above.

Perhaps if the report included EoY total assets column for the reported account, that would help out with completing Form 8938.  Image.

q_lurker

Would seem to me that this report grew out of this "Idea": 
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7638839/report-to-show-highest-balance-amount-in-account
That idea also cites FBAR as a motivation.

Somewhere I thought Student loan applications might have been requesting similar values, but I have not been down that line.  May well be a memory fault of mine. 

Seems like an pretty narrow user base that would use this kind of report.  

I agree.  Maybe the report development was pushed by Eric Dunn for reasons of his own .  

Chris_QPW

Sorry folks I realized quickly that I had left off the version number, but I got pulled away before I could edit my message.  This is one R30.14.

And thanks for the clarification on what a FBAR report is suppose to cover (cash).  When I was reading it was far from clear in the articles I read.  I knew that it really didn't apply to retirement accounts, but I saw in the article the mention of "mutual funds..." and I notice that the report showed a max value in my wife's 401K (cash) and as such I could tell that Quicken isn't treating retirement accounts special and "zeroing" them.

Francois

According to the following information from the government site, FBAR require reporting various types of foreign financial accounts. So it's more than just cash.

"Every year, under the law known as the Bank Secrecy Act, you must report certain foreign financial accounts, such as bank accounts, brokerage accounts and mutual funds, to the Treasury Department and keep certain records of those accounts. You report the accounts by filing a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) on FinCEN Form 114."

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/report-of-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts-fbar

Bob_L

Francois said:

According to the following information from the government site, FBAR require reporting various types of foreign financial accounts. So it's more than just cash.

"Every year, under the law known as the Bank Secrecy Act, you must report certain foreign financial accounts, such as bank accounts, brokerage accounts and mutual funds, to the Treasury Department and keep certain records of those accounts. You report the accounts by filing a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) on FinCEN Form 114."

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/report-of-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts-fbar

OK. but I do not have any foreign bank accounts.  So apparently the concept is that Quicken is assuming all accounts are foreign and the user then customizes the report accordingly. 

How many users really have this issue, and wouldn't time be better spent on cleaning up other problems, e.g. online billing has been messed up for way too long!  

Saratogan

> @miklk said:
> The FBAR report shows highest CASH value. (That is why most IRA accounts will show as zero)
> They indicated working as expected ONLY reporting CASH when I 1st told them.
>
> I am waiting for verification back from them shortly if supposed to show Security values too which it is not for me.

I have been reporting FBAR for years and have always reported the total account value including cash and securities. When I looked at this new report I was concerned.

miklk

They never got back to me to verify so still not sure if this report is broken by not showing securities or working as intended with only cash?

miklk

I DID get the official verification that at this point, the FBAR reports CASH ONLY

"Right now FBAR only reports on Cash value of Investment accounts. I will get confirmation regarding intent and let you know if anything changes."

 

NotACPA

miklk said:

I DID get the official verification that at this point, the FBAR reports CASH ONLY

"Right now FBAR only reports on Cash value of Investment accounts. I will get confirmation regarding intent and let you know if anything changes."

 

BUT, regarding MFs, does it include the cash held by the fund  (including  a MMF) or does it only include actual cash held in the account?

Also,  back in September, I did a significant rebalancing of my Rollover IRA.  Sold all or part of 6 funds and made purchases with the cash.  That $175,000 was displayed on the FBAR report.

Chris_QPW

Well in a way it is nice to see that I wasn't the only one confused about all this!   

Here are a few observations I have on the comments above.

1. Since there isn't any setting in an account for it being "foreign" then I think it is perfectly reasonable for Quicken to report on all accounts, and the user needs to just customize the report for the ones they know are foreign.
2. There seems to be two questions here, what is the real law, and what was Quicken Inc's intent.  I would think that the intent would be to follow the law if possible.  So the "BIG" question is what is in fact the law.  I'm certainly not qualified to answer that, and I don't know who is.
3. On what it is doing to determine the "max value", looking at what it did for my wife's 401K account in comparison to my IRA accounts I think it breaks down this way.  It is what the cash value is on a given day after all the transactions of that day are taken into account.  In other words for my IRA accounts there aren't any deposits or such for the year and any dividends and such are reinvested so on any given day the cash balance ends up being zero.  But in the case of my wife's 401K what happens is that the cash is deposited on one day, but the "buys" don't happen until at least one more day at least by the downloaded transactions.  This results in the cash balance being non zero for some days, and as such that goes towards the "max".  So @NotACPA I'm guessing that the cash sit in the account for a day or so before the the other buy transactions came in.

Chris_QPW

P.S. Was just thinking that looking at the currency might be a way to determine "foreign", but that isn't true, other countries use the USD for their currency and a person could also just record the transactions in USD just to make this kind of report easier.

NotACPA

But to the extent that some of my MFs DO hold foreign securities, they probably also hold foreign cash at some point.

So, is the intent of this report (both in Q and at the IRS) to report CASH, or "Foreign Bank Accounts" (as the name would suggest).

ALL of my accounts (even the funds that hold a few foreign securities) are domiciled in the US.

Chris_QPW

NotACPA said:

But to the extent that some of my MFs DO hold foreign securities, they probably also hold foreign cash at some point.

So, is the intent of this report (both in Q and at the IRS) to report CASH, or "Foreign Bank Accounts" (as the name would suggest).

ALL of my accounts (even the funds that hold a few foreign securities) are domiciled in the US.

As everyone on here should know, investing, especially the tax ramifications, aren't my forte, but it is my understanding that this is talking about something different.

Your securities are in US accounts and will be reported in the 1099s properly so that the foreign part of them can be handled correctly on your taxes.

Whereas the report is talking about actually owning accounts in other countries and how to report that on your taxes.

Rocket J Squirrel

miklk said:

I DID get the official verification that at this point, the FBAR reports CASH ONLY

"Right now FBAR only reports on Cash value of Investment accounts. I will get confirmation regarding intent and let you know if anything changes."

I don't see it that way. It says "cash value", not "value of cash". A security has a cash value at a given point in time.

I went to the FBAR page at irs.gov and could find no way to interpret it to require reporting only the value of cash. Emphasis mine:

The maximum value of an account is a reasonable approximation of the greatest value of currency or nonmonetary assets in the account during the calendar year.

BK

I have been filing FBAR and 8938 for years.  It was a bit intimidating the very first time I did it and after that, it takes me 5 minutes to complete and file it along with my taxes (FYI TurboTax does 8938, I do FBAR online - or I can complete and file them separately online or on paper).  Further, many foreign institutions send you that info at the end of the year anyway as they prepare to report it to US (similar to the regular tax documents we receive).

If this new report reports CASH only, then it should not be called FBAR (FBAR is all assets, not just cash).  The FBAR name is very specific for a limited audience which opens a can of worms IMO.  Quicken can use their time in more productive ways.

Rocket J Squirrel

Another problem with the report is that it should exclude IRAs.

But, you don’t need to report foreign financial accounts that are:

• Held in an individual retirement account (IRA) you own or are beneficiary of,

BK

I think we are over analyzing this.  My suggestion is to rename this report differently such as "Max Acc Value" and let you customize it anyway you wish (to include or exclude any account, cash, investment, retirement, etc. etc.).  Doing so, one can create their own custom FBAR report if they wish.  My 2 cents.

q_lurker

So, is the intent of this report (both in Q and at the IRS) to report CASH, or "Foreign Bank Accounts" (as the name would suggest).

For years there has been a question on the Schedule B as to whether the taxpayer had foreign accounts.

From the 2019 return:

7a : At any time during 2019, did you have a financial interest in or signature authority over a financial account (such as a bank account, securities account, or brokerage account) located in a foreign country? See instructions

which then leads you, if applicable, to the FBAR and similar filing.  I believe it is all aimed at those 'hiding' assets in foreign countries (the Caymans, Switzerland, etc.).  Any financial account in a foreign country. 

Like @Chris_QPW, I'm not qualified on the legalities.  

Rocket J Squirrel

BK said:

I think we are over analyzing this.

It's what we do.

miklk

I don't see it any way at all.

I am just reporting that Quicken verified they designed the report at this time to report CASH only

miklk said:

I DID get the official verification that at this point, the FBAR reports CASH ONLY

"Right now FBAR only reports on Cash value of Investment accounts. I will get confirmation regarding intent and let you know if anything changes."

I don't see it that way. It says "cash value", not "value of cash". A security has a cash value at a given point in time.

Rocket J Squirrel

miklk said:

I don't see it any way at all.

I am just reporting that Quicken verified they designed the report at this time to report CASH only

miklk said:

I DID get the official verification that at this point, the FBAR reports CASH ONLY

Ah, OK. When you said "official," I thought you meant from the IRS.

greigterra

Development 101, perform a backup of the data before you kick off an update of the code. Thank goodness that I am in the practice of doing them, and was able to restore, yet again after another corruption due to an update. Yesterday I took R30.14 upgrade and it disassembled some of my split transactions, and it left transactions unsplit and it caused my accounts to be out of balance, with no means other than manual intervention to correct those issue... but thank goodness I’d just preformed a backup of my data and was able to do a restore, once I’d see the damage done by a faulty tested upgrade.

Your company’s upgrades have been a mess since you’ve taken on an agile form of development... and many of these issues can be overcame by a simple restore. But without a recent backup, restoring still requires manual intervention.

WHY don’t you kick off a backup of the data before doing an update... that’s basic development. And if your project leads don’t know this, then maybe you don’t have the correct infrastructor in place and should be hiring qualified development management.

Come on folks, get your act together. I’ve been using quicken since 1995, after MoneyCounts from Parsons Technology was sold to Intuit... and the last few years have had to jump thru hoop after your agile developmnet... maybe you should go back to a waterfall appoarch, if you can’t automate your testing to properly vet out the software changes.

Also take a copy of my data, change the names and descrition and so you have good test data to test with... again development 101. Have sound well rounded test data.

Get your act together folk!

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Claude

What is required here is for Quicken to get its act together.

1- Should not venture into projects it does not have the capablility to do properly.
2- Should establish quality control of its software releases such that features are subject of a development specification and then fully veted and tested as fit for purpose prior to being included at large in any release.

The FBAR debacle is a case in point. Users who have been required to submit the FBAR report to the U.S. Treasury will immediately recognize Quicken's implementation as dangerous at best. FBAR must a quantify the aggregate value in USD of ANY and ALL ASSETS contained AT ANYTIME during the fiscal year in each foreign account. A foreign account may be held in any currency.

Hope this helps. If you don't understand it you should not be involved.

Chris_QPW

Dr. Bob said:

Today I downloaded the latest "update" ... imagine my surprise when THIS popped up upon opening. Why was I surprised? Because I don't have anything like this in my file. Is anyone TESTING these fixes or does Quicken "fix" team just throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks?

Note that you should post this in a separate thread, and probably send it to them with Help -> Submit a problem, because this isn't what is being discussed in this thread.  This thread about what the new report should have in it.

What you are seeing that with the new installs they are putting up the "What's New in Quicken" dialog after the install/first run.  And it "should fit" on your screen, but depending on your Windows resolution, Windows scaling, and whether you use "Large Fonts" or not, it might not fit.  But on top of that I see that they have violated their own min specs with this dialog.  At 100% Windows scaling and not using Large Fonts the min spec is 1024x768 and this dialog is 1138x707.


The Window controls for the dialog in your case are outside of what your display is showing.  Here is how it looks when you have enough to see it.

I run on 1920x1200, 100% Windows scaling, normal fonts.

EDIT just to be clear.
Even though they have violated their own spec on this, clearly if all you see on your screen is what is in that screenshot you are way over scaled up past the min specs requires for the display.

For instance I have cut out this section which clearly shows that this an example, not a report in your file, and it is well within the required min display spec.

Soldino

> @Claude said:
> What is required here is for Quicken to get its act together.
>
> 1- Should not venture into projects it does not have the capablility to do properly.
> 2- Should establish quality control of its software releases such that features are subject of a development specification and then fully veted and tested as fit for purpose prior to being included at large in any release.
>
> The FBAR debacle is a case in point. Users who have been required to submit the FBAR report to the U.S. Treasury will immediately recognize Quicken's implementation as dangerous at best. FBAR must a quantify the aggregate value in USD of ANY and ALL ASSETS contained AT ANYTIME during the fiscal year in each foreign account. A foreign account may be held in any currency.
>
> Hope this helps. If you don't understand it you should not be involved.

Agree that it is potentially problematic in part due to the ad-hoc nature of the reporting requirement itself. Emphasis on: This is a reporting requirement (for FinCEN not the IRS) for assets held in FOREIGN ACCOUNTS in aggregate worth over $10,000 (calculated using the FED exchange rate on the last day of the calendar year).
No accounts held offshore? Ignore the report; save yourself the brain-space.