Wide IRS Foreign Account Penalty Power Defended at Supreme Court

The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to endorse the IRS’s power to impose penalties for each foreign account that US residents and citizens non-willfully fail to report.

The Friday filing advances the IRS’s position as the government readies for oral arguments at the high court Nov. 2. Officials are defending the agency’s ability to impose the penalties each year on a per-account basis for non-willful failures to report foreign bank and financial accounts through annual forms known as FBARs.

In the filing, the IRS argued that the Bank Secrecy Act imposes a penalty of up to ...