Ashford International Law P.C.

Ashford International Law P.C. advises on the U.S. reporting and withholding rules that apply when money, assets, people or beneficiaries cross a border. The firm prepares the returns and information reports itself, brings taxpayers who have fallen behind back into compliance, and acts as co-counsel to accountants, financial advisors, fiduciaries and attorneys whose client files have developed a foreign element.

The material below is divided into two parts. Part I is written for individuals and families. Part II is written for professional advisors and assumes familiarity with the Internal Revenue Code. All figures are stated as of September 2026 and many of them change annually.

Part I. For Individuals and Families

Reporting foreign accounts and foreign financial assets

Two separate reporting systems apply to foreign accounts, and they are not alternatives. A taxpayer can be required to file under both, under one, or under neither, and the same account is routinely reported twice.

The first is the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FinCEN Form 114, commonly called the FBAR). It is required of any U.S. person whose foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 in the aggregate at any point during the calendar year. Three features of that test cause most of the failures. The threshold is aggregate across all accounts rather than per account. It is measured at the highest balance reached during the year rather than at year end. And it captures accounts over which the person has only signature authority, with no beneficial interest at all, which is why employees who can sign on a foreign employer’s account and children added to an elderly parent’s foreign account are frequently non-compliant without knowing it. The FBAR is filed electronically with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, not with the Internal Revenue Service, and not with the income tax return. It is due on April 15 with an automatic extension to October 15 that requires no request.

The second is the Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets (IRS Form 8938), which is filed with the income tax return under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Internal Revenue Code section 6038D). Its thresholds are considerably higher and depend on filing status and on whether the taxpayer lives in the U.S. or abroad. The taxpayer must file if either column is exceeded.

Form 8938 reaches more than bank accounts. It covers foreign brokerage and securities accounts, shares and securities issued by a non-U.S. person and held outside an account, interests in foreign entities, foreign partnership interests, interests in foreign pension and deferred compensation plans, and foreign life insurance and annuity contracts with a cash surrender value.

Several things that clients expect to be reportable are not. Directly held foreign real estate is not a specified foreign financial asset, so an apartment in Munich or a house in Provence held in the owner’s own name is outside Form 8938. If the same property is held through a foreign company or a foreign partnership, however, the interest in that entity is reportable, and the entity itself may trigger further filings. Directly held foreign currency is not reportable, although a foreign currency account at a foreign bank is. Directly held art, antiques, jewelry, cars, collectibles and precious metals are not reportable. Nor are rights to a foreign social insurance or state pension benefit.

Filing one of these forms does not excuse the other. The Internal Revenue Service states the point directly: filing Form 8938 does not relieve the separate requirement to file the FBAR, and the reverse is equally true.

What non-compliance costs

The penalties attached to these forms are not calculated on unpaid tax. They are fixed amounts, or percentages of the asset, and they apply in full to a taxpayer who owed no additional tax at all. This is the single point that most surprises clients who have simply been unaware of a filing obligation.

A reasonable cause exception is available for each of these penalties. It is not a formality. The taxpayer must establish, in a written statement made under penalties of perjury, that ordinary business care and prudence was exercised and the obligation was nevertheless missed. A foreign country’s bank secrecy law is expressly not reasonable cause. The first-time abatement procedure that applies to ordinary late filing and late payment penalties does not apply to international information return penalties at all, so reasonable cause is the only administrative route.

An unfiled information return also keeps the tax year open. Where a required report under section 6038D and a number of neighboring provisions is not furnished, the period for assessing tax does not begin to run until the information is actually supplied, and then runs for three further years (section 6501(c)(8)). A return that would otherwise have closed after three years can therefore remain open indefinitely because of a single missing form.

Foreign income

U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents are taxed on worldwide income regardless of where they live, where the income arises, or whether it has already been taxed abroad. Foreign rent, foreign employment income, foreign dividends and interest, gains on the sale of foreign property and distributions from foreign pensions all belong on the U.S. return.

Double taxation is relieved, where it is relieved, by the foreign tax credit, by the foreign earned income exclusion, or by an income tax treaty. In the firm’s matters the treaty is usually the governing instrument rather than the exception, since the firm’s clients are concentrated in countries that have a comprehensive income tax treaty with the U.S. A treaty can reallocate the right to tax a category of income, reduce a withholding rate, break a residence tie between two countries, or protect a foreign pension from current U.S. taxation.

Two structural points about treaties are worth stating. Nearly every U.S. treaty contains a saving clause under which the U.S. retains the right to tax its own citizens and residents as though the treaty did not exist, so a treaty benefit is available to a U.S. person only where the relevant article is carved out of that clause. And a treaty article relieves income tax only. It does not displace the FBAR, Form 8938, or foreign trust reporting.

Where a treaty position reduces U.S. tax, it generally has to be disclosed on Form 8833 (section 6114). That form is widely overlooked, and the penalty for omitting it is $1,000 for each undisclosed position. A number of common positions are exempt from disclosure, including most claims on pensions, annuities, social security, dependent personal services and the income of students, teachers and trainees. A claim to be treated as a resident of the other country under a treaty tie-breaker is not exempt and must be disclosed.

Inheritances and gifts from abroad

A gift or inheritance received from outside the U.S. is generally not taxable income to the recipient. It is nonetheless reportable, and the penalty for not reporting it is measured against the gift rather than against any tax.

Two different thresholds apply, and the difference between them is where most errors arise.

The second threshold is roughly one fifth of the first and is easily crossed. A distribution from a family holding company abroad, a payment made on a parent’s instruction by a company the parent controls, or a transfer from a foreign partnership can all fall into it.

Reporting is made on Form 3520, which is filed separately from the income tax return and mailed to the Service in Ogden, Utah, generally by the due date of the income tax return including extensions. In October 2024 the Service announced that it had stopped automatically assessing penalties on late-filed foreign gift reports at the moment of filing, and that reasonable cause statements attached to late Forms 3520 would be read before a penalty is assessed. That announcement was a statement of administrative practice rather than published guidance, and it has never been reduced to a regulation, a revenue procedure or a published change to the Internal Revenue Manual. It does not change the statute, and a penalty can still be assessed on examination. Late reports should not be filed on the assumption that the exposure has gone away.

Foreign pensions and retirement accounts

A foreign retirement arrangement can be several things at once for U.S. purposes, and the classification drives everything that follows. Where the arrangement is organized with a trustee holding assets for members, which is common for United Kingdom occupational schemes and self-invested personal pensions, Australian superannuation funds, Swiss pillar 3a arrangements and a number of Canadian products, it may be a foreign trust. That brings it within Forms 3520 and 3520-A, with penalties calculated as a percentage of contributions, distributions or trust assets. Other arrangements are contractual or insurance-based and are not trusts. The answer turns on the governing documents of the particular plan, not on what the plan is called.

Revenue Procedure 2020-17 exempts a defined class of tax-favored foreign retirement arrangements from that trust reporting. To qualify, the arrangement must be tax-favored under local law, must be the subject of annual information reporting to the local tax authority, must accept contributions only in respect of income from personal services, must restrict withdrawal to retirement age, disability or death subject to limited hardship exceptions, and must limit contributions either to a percentage of earned income, or to $50,000 a year, or to $1,000,000 over the life of the arrangement. A parallel exemption for tax-favored medical, disability and education savings arrangements applies where contributions are limited to $10,000 a year or $200,000 in total. The relief is conditional on the individual being otherwise compliant, including having reported contributions, earnings and distributions as income where U.S. law requires it.

Two limits on that relief are often missed. It removes the foreign trust reporting only. Form 8938 and the FBAR still apply to the arrangement. And it is not an income tax provision, so whether the growth inside a foreign plan is taxable year by year remains a question of domestic law and of the treaty pension article.

Non-U.S. investment funds

A client who moves to the U.S. holding a European or Asian investment fund usually holds a passive foreign investment company without knowing it, and the consequences are severe enough that this issue alone justifies a review before a move.

A foreign corporation is a passive foreign investment company if 75 percent or more of its gross income is passive, or if at least 50 percent of its assets produce or are held to produce passive income (section 1297). A fund that holds shares and bonds meets both tests. It cannot escape by resembling a U.S. mutual fund, because a regulated investment company is defined as a domestic corporation (section 851), so a Luxembourg SICAV, a United Kingdom OEIC or unit trust, an Irish-domiciled exchange traded fund and a German or Swiss fund can never qualify. There is no minimum holding: a single share is enough.

In the absence of an election, distributions above a defined level and all gain on sale are treated as an excess distribution, spread ratably across the entire holding period, taxed in each prior year at the highest ordinary rate then in force rather than at the taxpayer’s own rate or at capital gains rates, and increased by an interest charge running from each of those years. Losses are not recognized and the basis step-up at death is denied. A long-held fund can generate an effective rate well above the headline rate on a modest economic gain.

Two elections improve the position. A qualified electing fund election taxes the shareholder currently on a share of the fund’s ordinary earnings and net capital gain, but it depends on the fund producing an annual information statement in a U.S. format, which most non-U.S. funds will not do. A mark-to-market election is available only for stock that is regularly traded on a qualified exchange and converts the result to ordinary income. Both must be made properly and maintained.

An annual Form 8621 is required for each fund, subject to a narrow exception where the aggregate value of all such holdings is $25,000 or less at year end, or $50,000 or less on a joint return, no excess distribution was received and no qualified electing fund election is in place. That exception removes the filing only. The underlying tax regime continues to apply.

Interests in foreign businesses

A U.S. person who holds shares in a company abroad reports that interest every year, whether or not the company distributes anything and whether or not any U.S. tax is due. The obligation arises from ownership, not from income, and it applies equally to a founder who kept a company after moving to the United States, to a spouse added to a family holding for succession reasons, and to an heir who receives shares in a business she has never been involved in.

Classification comes first, because it decides everything that follows. A small number of foreign corporate forms are treated as corporations by regulation and cannot elect otherwise. The rest are eligible entities, which may elect their treatment on Form 8832 and otherwise fall into a default.

Defaults are set by Treas. Reg. 301.7701-3(b)(2). An election is effective no earlier than 75 days before it is filed and no later than 12 months after, and once made it cannot be changed for 60 months (Treas. Reg. 301.7701-3(c)(1)). Relief for a late election is available within 3 years and 75 days of the intended effective date under Revenue Procedure 2009-41. The default for the limited liability forms most families use is corporate treatment, which is the expensive outcome and the one that goes unnoticed, because nothing has to be filed to produce it.

Where the entity is a corporation, the question is whether it is a controlled foreign corporation. A U.S. person who owns 10 percent or more of the vote or value is a U.S. shareholder (section 951(b)), and the company is a controlled foreign corporation if U.S. shareholders together hold more than 50 percent of vote or value (section 957(a)). U.S. shareholders of such a company include their share of subpart F income and of net CFC tested income annually, again without any distribution. That regime changed for tax years beginning after December 31, 2025 under Public Law 119-21: global intangible low-taxed income was renamed net CFC tested income, the exclusion for a routine return on tangible assets was repealed, the section 250 deduction fell from 50 percent to 40 percent, and the deemed-paid credit under section 960 rose from 80 percent to 90 percent of the taxes attributed. An individual may elect under section 962 to be taxed on the inclusion at corporate rates with access to that credit, at the cost of a second inclusion when the earnings are actually distributed.

A company that is not a controlled foreign corporation is not for that reason outside the annual regimes. A foreign holding company whose assets are cash, securities or rented property is likely to be a passive foreign investment company, with the consequences described in the preceding section, and a single share is enough.

The annual filings are Form 5471 for a foreign corporation, Form 8865 for a foreign partnership and Form 8858 for a foreign disregarded entity or branch. Each carries a penalty of $10,000 per entity per year, a further $10,000 for each 30-day period after notice up to $50,000, and a reduction of the foreign tax credit (sections 6038(b) and (c)). The more serious consequence is procedural: until the form is filed, the limitations period on the entire income tax return for that year does not begin to run (section 6501(c)(8)), so one unfiled Form 5471 leaves every item on the return open. Contributions into the company are separately reportable on Form 926 where the transferor holds at least 10 percent immediately after the transfer, or where cash transferred in the preceding 12 months exceeds $100,000 (Treas. Reg. 1.6038B-1(b)(3)), with a penalty of 10 percent of the value transferred, capped at $100,000 unless the failure was in intentional disregard (section 6038B(c)).

Two further filings are missed regularly. An interest in a foreign entity held for investment is a specified foreign financial asset reportable on Form 8938, while an interest used in the person’s own trade or business is not (Treas. Reg. 1.6038D-3(b)). And signing authority over the company’s bank accounts is itself an FBAR obligation for the individual who holds it, with no ownership required.

The applicable income tax treaty governs which country may tax the business profits and how double taxation is relieved, but the saving clause preserves the U.S. right to tax its own citizens and residents on worldwide income, so the treaty ordinarily allocates the credit rather than removing the U.S. inclusion.

The pattern that produces the largest bills is inheritance. An heir who receives shares in a family company abroad acquires all of these obligations at the date of death, usually without control of the company and without access to its accounts in the form U.S. filings require. The value received is separately reportable on Form 3520 where it exceeds the thresholds set out above. Where a U.S. beneficiary is foreseeable, the structure is far cheaper to address before death than afterwards.

Non-U.S. persons who own U.S. assets

The compliance burden runs in both directions. A person who is not a U.S. taxpayer but who holds a U.S. brokerage account, receives U.S. source income, or owns U.S. real estate has obligations of a different kind.

U.S. source dividends, interest, rents and royalties paid to a foreign person are subject to withholding at 30 percent at source unless a treaty reduces the rate. The rate is claimed by giving the payer a valid Form W-8BEN for an individual or Form W-8BEN-E for an entity before the payment is made. These forms expire: a Form W-8 is generally valid only until the last day of the third calendar year after it is signed, and a change of circumstances, such as a new address in the U.S., must be notified within 30 days. An expired or missing form results in withholding at 30 percent, or at the 24 percent backup withholding rate, and recovering the excess requires filing a U.S. return. A treaty claim generally requires a U.S. taxpayer identification number on the form, so an individual without one is withheld upon at the statutory rate even where the treaty would have reduced it to nil.

The withheld amounts are reported to the recipient on Form 1042-S. Where too much has been withheld, the excess is recovered by filing Form 1040-NR and claiming the withholding as a credit, which requires an individual taxpayer identification number obtained on Form W-7. A nonresident who is engaged in a U.S. trade or business must file Form 1040-NR even where there is no income, no U.S. source income, or the income is exempt under a treaty. The deadline is April 15 where wages subject to withholding were received and June 15 otherwise.

The sale of U.S. real estate by a foreign owner is governed by the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (section 1445). The buyer, not the seller, is the withholding agent, and the buyer is personally liable for any amount not withheld, together with interest and penalties.

Withholding is calculated on the gross price rather than on the gain, so it regularly exceeds the actual tax, and on an inherited property sold near its stepped-up value it can exceed the tax several times over. The remedy is to apply before closing on Form 8288-B for a withholding certificate reducing the amount to the seller’s maximum tax liability. The Service states that it will generally act on a complete application within 90 days, and an application is not complete without taxpayer identification numbers for both buyer and seller, which is why the identification number application should be started well before a closing date is set. Where no certificate is sought, the buyer must file Form 8288 and remit the tax within 20 days of the transfer, and the seller receives a stamped Form 8288-A to claim the credit on a U.S. return. No stamped copy is issued where the seller’s identification number is missing from the form.

Coming back into compliance

Most of the firm’s compliance work begins with a taxpayer who has already missed something, often for years. The route back depends on whether the conduct was non-willful, and the choice of route is itself a legal judgment that should be made before anything is filed. Filing a corrected return outside a procedure, sometimes called a quiet disclosure, is not one of the recognized routes and forfeits the protection the procedures give.

The Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures are available to a taxpayer who was physically outside the U.S. for at least 330 days and had no U.S. abode in one of the last three years, or who did not meet the substantial presence test in one of those years. Three years of returns and six years of FBARs are filed with tax and interest, together with a certification of non-willfulness on Form 14653. There is no penalty of any kind for a taxpayer who qualifies and certifies accurately.

The Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures apply to a taxpayer who cannot meet the non-residency test but who did file returns for each of the last three years. Amended returns and six years of FBARs are filed, with a certification on Form 14654 and a single miscellaneous offshore penalty of 5 percent. That penalty is charged on the highest single year-end aggregate value of the non-compliant foreign accounts and assets across the three-year return period and the six-year FBAR period. It is charged once, not annually.

Both streamlined tracks require an accurate certification that the failure was non-willful, meaning negligence, inadvertence, mistake or a good faith misunderstanding of the law. Neither is available once the Service has opened a civil examination or a criminal investigation. The procedures remain open as of September 2026, but they are administrative and the Service can withdraw them.

Taxpayers with late FBARs and no unreported income should be aware of a change that has had very little publicity. The Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures, which for years allowed such a taxpayer to file late reports with an explanation and effectively no penalty risk, were withdrawn on July 1, 2026. The Service removed the page from its website without an announcement, a notice or transition guidance. Late FBARs are still filed through the same electronic system with a stated reason for late filing, but the protection now rests on the reasonable cause standard applied by an examiner rather than on a published procedure. A late FBAR filed today therefore carries more risk than the same filing made in June 2026, and the reason for the delay should be documented before filing rather than after.

The Delinquent International Information Return Submission Procedures remain available for late Forms 5471, 8865, 8938 and similar returns, for taxpayers not already under examination or contact. They contain a trap of their own: since November 2020 a penalty may be assessed during processing without the attached reasonable cause statement being read first, leaving relief to be pursued afterwards. Forms 3520 and 3520-A are the exception, and a reasonable cause statement attached to those forms is considered before assessment.

Where the conduct was willful, the Criminal Investigation Voluntary Disclosure Practice is the route that protects against criminal referral. It runs in two stages on Form 14457, a preclearance request followed by the disclosure itself within 45 days. Under the framework in force it covers six years and carries a civil fraud penalty of 75 percent on the year of highest liability, together with the willful FBAR penalty. The Service published a proposed overhaul in December 2025 that would replace the 75 percent fraud penalty with a 20 percent accuracy-related penalty for each year. The comment period closed in March 2026 and the proposal has not been finalized, so disclosures made now are governed by the existing framework. Anyone considering this route should take advice before making contact of any kind with the Service.

Part II. For Advisors

The firm acts as co-counsel to certified public accountants, enrolled agents, financial advisors, trust officers and attorneys in the U.S. whose client files contain a foreign element. The engagement is usually narrow: the foreign reporting and treaty analysis, the remediation strategy, or an opinion on a single classification question, with the client relationship and the domestic return remaining where they are. What follows is intended for that audience.

Where domestic files most often go wrong

The recurring failures are not exotic. They cluster in a small number of places.

A foreign pension is treated as the local equivalent of a qualified plan and is left off both the trust reporting and Form 8938, when the arrangement is a foreign trust and Revenue Procedure 2020-17 does not in fact cover it, usually because the contribution limits or the earned income condition are not met.

Non-U.S. funds in a client’s foreign brokerage account are reported as ordinary securities. Each is a passive foreign investment company requiring its own Form 8621, and the section 1291 computation is nothing like the capital gain that was reported.

A foreign-owned single-member limited liability company is treated as disregarded and nothing is filed. Since the 2017 regulations such an entity must file a pro forma Form 1120 with Form 5472 attached, even with no income and no U.S. tax liability, and the definition of a reportable transaction is broad enough to capture contributions, distributions and even formation. The penalty is $25,000, with a further $25,000 for each 30-day period after notice and no statutory cap.

A client is treated as a nonresident under a treaty tie-breaker and no Form 8833 is attached, on the assumption that the pension and personal services exceptions cover it. They do not.

A gift is received from a family company abroad and measured against the $100,000 threshold rather than the indexed $20,573 threshold that applies to gifts from foreign corporations and partnerships for 2026.

A client with signature authority but no beneficial interest over an employer’s or parent’s foreign account is treated as having no FBAR obligation.

Statute of limitations exposure

Three provisions should be checked on any file with a foreign element, because they can keep years open that the client and the advisor both believe are closed.

Section 6501(c)(8) suspends the assessment period for a failure to furnish information required under sections 1295(b), 1298(f), 6038, 6038A, 6038B, 6038D, 6046, 6046A or 6048. The period does not begin until the information is furnished, and then runs three years. Where the failure was due to reasonable cause and not willful neglect the suspension is limited to items related to the missing information; otherwise the entire return stays open. An unfiled Form 8621 alone is enough, since both sections 1295(b) and 1298(f) are listed.

Section 6501(e)(1)(A)(ii) gives a six-year assessment period where more than $5,000 of gross income attributable to assets reportable under section 6038D is omitted, without regard to the usual 25 percent of gross income test.

Section 6662(j) imposes a 40 percent accuracy-related penalty on an underpayment attributable to an undisclosed foreign financial asset.

Foreign entity reporting

Clients who own or control non-U.S. businesses generate a reporting burden that is disproportionate to the tax at stake, and the penalties are assessed per entity and per year.

The controlled foreign corporation inclusion regime changed substantially with effect from tax years beginning after December 31, 2025. Global intangible low-taxed income was renamed net CFC tested income, the qualified business asset investment exclusion and the deemed tangible income return were repealed so that no routine return on tangible assets is exempted, the section 250 deduction was reduced from 50 percent to 40 percent, and the deemed-paid foreign tax credit under section 960 was raised from 80 percent to 90 percent of the taxes attributed. For individual shareholders the section 962 election continues to allow the inclusion to be taxed at corporate rates with access to the deemed-paid credit, at the cost of a second inclusion when the previously taxed earnings are actually distributed. Whether the section 250 deduction remains available to a section 962 elector after the restructuring is a question the firm treats as open and analyzes case by case rather than assuming.

Assessability of section 6038(b) penalties

The question of whether the Service may administratively assess penalties under section 6038(b), rather than having to sue to collect them, remains unsettled and the answer currently depends on where an appeal would lie.

The Tax Court held in Farhy v. Commissioner (2023) that the penalties are not assessable. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed in 2024. On reconsideration in Mukhi v. Commissioner (2024) the Tax Court reaffirmed its own position, since under the Golsen rule it was not bound by the District of Columbia Circuit in a case appealable to the Eighth Circuit. In February 2026 the Second Circuit decided Safdieh v. Commissioner in line with the District of Columbia Circuit, holding that the Service can assess section 6038(b) penalties.

As matters stand, two circuits hold the penalties assessable, the Tax Court’s own precedent holds otherwise for cases appealable elsewhere, the Service continues to assess, and taxpayers outside those two circuits retain an argument that is live but weakening. The practical consequence for an advisor is that the collection posture should be identified early, because it affects whether a collection due process hearing or a refund suit is the right forum.

Withholding obligations on payments to non-U.S. clients

Advisors who administer accounts, distribute from trusts and estates, or close on real estate for foreign parties are themselves withholding agents, with personal liability for amounts not withheld.

Documentation is the practical control. Form W-8BEN is given by a foreign individual who is the beneficial owner, Form W-8BEN-E by a foreign entity, Form W-8ECI where the income is effectively connected with a U.S. trade or business, and Form W-8IMY by an intermediary or flow-through transmitting underlying documentation. A Form W-8 is generally valid only to the end of the third calendar year after signature, and a file of expired forms is a file that should have been withheld upon at 30 percent. Treaty relief at source requires a taxpayer identification number on the certificate, subject to narrow exceptions for actively traded securities and for certain foreign identification numbers issued by treaty partners. Annual reporting is on Forms 1042 and 1042-S, due March 15, and the FIRE system has been retired in favor of the Information Returns Intake System for tax year 2026 filings.

Two treaty developments should be checked before any rate reduction is applied. The treaty with Hungary terminated with effect from January 1, 2024, and treaty benefits for Russian residents have been suspended since August 16, 2024. In both cases the statutory 30 percent rate now applies.

On a real estate closing, the firm’s experience is that roughly half of foreign-seller transactions contain a feature that gives an escrow officer pause: a seller with no identification number, a deceased owner in the chain of title, a property held through a foreign entity or a trust, joint owners of different status, an installment sale, a like-kind exchange, or an amount realized that sits close to one of the statutory boundaries. Each of these has an answer, but the answer needs to be reached before closing, since the withholding certificate application must be filed on or before the date of transfer and the Service’s stated turnaround is 90 days from a complete application.

Treaty analysis

Because the firm’s matters are concentrated in countries with comprehensive treaties, the treaty is treated as the operative rule and domestic law as the residual. The questions that recur are residence under the tie-breaker and its disclosure consequences, the scope of the saving clause and which articles are carved out of it, the pension and social security articles and their interaction with foreign trust reporting, the allocation of taxing rights over immovable property and business profits, and, where the estate is in issue, the separate estate and gift tax conventions, which are far fewer in number than the income tax treaties and are frequently assumed to exist where they do not.

Working with the firm

Referring advisors most often engage the firm for a classification opinion on a foreign arrangement, for the preparation of the international information returns alongside a return the advisor continues to prepare, for the design and execution of a remediation strategy, for treaty analysis and Form 8833 positions, for FIRPTA withholding certificates and pre-closing structuring, and for pre-immigration and pre-expatriation planning where the work has to be done before a date that has already been set. The firm is also retained as outside counsel by Western European family-owned businesses for their U.S. subsidiaries, and handles that corporate work in house.

Referrals are not treated as an opportunity to take over the relationship. The scope is agreed in writing at the outset, and the firm reports to the referring advisor.

Speaking with the firm

Ashford International Law P.C. advises from offices in Washington, District of Columbia, in Los Angeles, and in Munich, Germany. The firm’s attorneys are admitted in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and California and in Germany, and advise in English, German and French. Initial consultations can be arranged by telephone on (202) 790-2500 or by email at info@internationalestatelaw.com.

The structuring behind these filings, and the elections that determine how foreign funds, companies, pensions and policies are taxed, is treated on Tax Planning with non-US Assets. The filings that continue after a death, where an estate holds foreign accounts, funds or trust interests, are treated on US Decedents with non-US Assets.

This page is general information about U.S. law as it stood in September 2026. Thresholds, penalty amounts and administrative procedures change, sometimes without announcement. Nothing here is legal or tax advice, and no attorney-client relationship arises from reading it. Advice on a particular situation requires a consultation.