My husband and I discovered we were negligent in not reporting bank accounts outside of the United States. Our duty was to the IRS and it is called FBAR.
The only way to handle FBAR non-compliance is to hire an attorney who specializes in this type of situation. Generally one must be prepared to pay thousands of dollars, both for the legal representation and for the penalty imposed by the IRS.
We hired Abajian Law and the following demonstrates that we unfortunately hired an attorney who did not do what he was paid him to do in a timely manner, and who also ignored our pleadings.
The below is simply what happened and not an opinion of Mr. Abajian's personality, character or otherwise.
The Events - Abajian Law
1) We met with Mr. Abajian in a security building in Glendale. The only way to get in is to sign in with a security guard and be met by someone at the bottom floor. Mr. Abajian is the one who met us.
2) We were escorted into a conference room where Mr. Abajian assured us he could help us and that he understood our situation completely.
2a All needed documents were provided and paperwork filled out. In fact my husband flew to his home country to get any missing pieces.
2b We paid $15,000 to Mr. Abajian
3) In the following 6 months as important dates were coming due - the filing of our taxes and the filing deadline of June 2015 FBAR - we called Mr. Abajian in an attempt to make sure all was being addressed and handled. We emailed and called and called and called some more. One day I called 8 times. The response was either not answering what we wanted to know, or simply no response.
4) After all of this perceived indifference we realized nothing was going to happen with our case. We knew nothing FBAR related had been presented to the IRS or even started. I requested our money back. Mr Abajian gave us our money back but only after making several attempts not to. He even offered us a discount of $1500 if we would allow him to keep the case. We declined. He paid us back. (In fact he has emailed and contacted us numerous numerous times since the request to get our money back. I have spent many moments wondering why he didn't just give us this much attention in the first place and just do the job.)
5) We hired another attorney to represent us and do the FBAR/Streamline process for us. This attorney had the whole thing done in under 2 weeks. He also charged us $15,000. We paid the IRS a penalty of $10,000+. Our new attorney informed us that because we missed the FBAR deadline in June of 2016 we paid much more in penalty than if we had not missed the deadline.
6)When I discovered that we had to pay more due to attorney negligence I contacted Mr. Abajian and asked him to pay my husband back for what he had to pay extra due to Mr. Abajian not filing everything in a timely manner and thereby avoiding even more penalty. This was met with opposition type questions, and endless emails. I gave it up and moved on and advised Mr. Abajian that I was moving on. I wished him a good life and that was it.
I am relating these facts as they happened to us. That is all.
FBAR Deadline
IR-2015-86, June 10, 2015
WASHINGTON--The Internal Revenue Service today reminded all taxpayers with an FBAR filing requirement to report their foreign assets by the June 30 deadline. FBAR filings have risen dramatically in recent years as FATCA phases in and other international compliance efforts have raised awareness among taxpayers with offshore assets.
The above is what Mr. Abajian should have handled for us and/or advised us of, since we were his clients when this date came and went.
For more info on FBAR, copy and paste - http://bit.ly/2drIwwT read more