American investors who own income-producing assets in foreign domains outside of the United States are required to report the existence and earnings of those assets for United States tax purposes.  In the past, there has been a good deal of failure to report bank deposits and other foreign assets.  Once discovered by the Internal Revenue Service, this failure to report can lead to significant penalties and tax collections.

There is a procedure for those investors who can prove that they have not “willfully” failed to report their foreign investments to “come clean” for a relatively small payment of unpaid taxes on the foreign assets.  

This procedure termed the Streamlined Procedure permits the taxpayer to bring their foreign bank deposits and other investments current for tax purposes.  There is a relatively small penalty for U.S. taxpayers in the U.S. and no penalty for U.S. taxpayers residing outside the U.S.