On June 21, 2022, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a dispute involving split decisions among the circuit courts on non-willful penalties. The Fifth Circuit parted ways with the taxpayer friendly decision of the Ninth Circuit that non-willful penalties are capped at $10,000 per FBAR filing instead of the $10,000 per unreported bank account argued by the government. District courts in New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Texas had all ruled in the taxpayer’s favor that non-willful penalties were capped at $10,000 per form as well. The case headed to the Supreme Court is United States v. Bittner, where a taxpayer friendly decision from the District Court reduced the $2.7 million penalty to $50,000 based on a $10,000 per form cap on non-willful FBAR penalties. The Fifth Circuit reversed the favorable district court decision and held that the “$10,000 penalty cap therefore applies on a per-account, not a per-form basis.”
