FBAR for H-1B Holders: NRE and NRO Accounts, the $10,000 Rule, and What to Do After Missing October 15

The deadline just passed — four days ago

October 15, 2026 was the final FBAR deadline for the 2025 calendar year. FBAR stands for Foreign Bank Account Report, filed as FinCEN Form 114 with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — not the IRS, which is the first thing that confuses people. The filing gets an automatic six-month extension from April 15 to October 15 each year, and no extension request is needed. October 15 is where it ends.

As of October 19, 2026, that deadline is four days gone. If you filed by October 15, you are done. If you have accounts in India — or anywhere else — that required reporting and you did not file, you are now in late-filing territory. This article covers who needed to file, what the rule actually includes, what penalties look like after the 2023 Bittner Supreme Court decision, and what the removal of a key relief program in July 2026 means for anyone trying to catch up.

Who has to file, and where H-1B fits

The FBAR requirement applies to US persons. That means citizens, green card holders, and anyone who qualifies as a US tax resident under the Substantial Presence Test. For H-1B workers, this third category is the relevant one — your visa status doesn't define you as a US person; your days in the country do.

The SPT adds up days you were physically in the United States: 100% of the days in the current year, one-third of the days from the prior year, and one-sixth of the days from two years earlier. If the total exceeds 183, you were a US tax resident for that year. An H-1B worker who spent all of 2025 in the US passes this test by early May without trying. Almost every H-1B holder present for the full calendar year qualifies.

There is a tax treaty exception. Some tax treaties let you elect to be treated as a non-resident even if you pass the SPT, but you have to make that election actively. If you filed a Form 1040 for 2025 — the standard US resident tax return — you treated yourself as a US resident, and FBAR applies to you. The FBAR requirement runs parallel to the US tax system, not to your immigration status. Your H-1B visa is irrelevant to FinCEN. What matters is how you filed your taxes.

The $10,000 threshold is aggregate, not per-account

The threshold that triggers fbar filing for h1b visa holders is $10,000. The part people consistently misread is that the $10,000 applies to all foreign financial accounts combined, not to each account individually. If you have an NRE savings account, an NRO savings account, and a fixed deposit with SBI, you add the balances together.

If that combined total exceeded $10,000 at any single point during 2025, FBAR applies for the year. One day is enough. A payroll deposit on January 15 that pushed the combined total above $10,001 before you moved money out counts. The obligation doesn't require the balance to stay above $10,000 for the full year.

This is the misunderstanding that catches the most people. Someone who maintained three modest accounts — each individually under $10,000 — and never thought about FBAR may have been over the combined threshold for months. The accounts don't need to be large. They just need to add up.

Which accounts FBAR wants to know about

For H-1B holders with connections to India, the most common fbar h1b nre nro accounts are Non-Resident External (NRE) savings accounts, Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) savings accounts, and fixed or recurring deposits at Indian banks. All of them are reportable. The NRE/NRO label is an Indian banking category. For FinCEN's purposes, they are foreign bank accounts at foreign financial institutions — both are in scope.

The forum myth worth clearing up: "My NRE account doesn't count because the interest is tax-exempt." That is a tax argument, not an FBAR argument. NRE account interest is exempt from Indian income tax under Indian law. FBAR is a US disclosure requirement about the existence and value of foreign accounts. Whether the account is tax-advantaged somewhere else has no effect on whether it needs to be disclosed to FinCEN.

Joint accounts are reportable too. A joint account you share with a parent or sibling who lives in India and has no US tax status is reported by you at its full value, not half. You report the full amount of any account you have signature authority over or a financial interest in.

What the penalties look like after Bittner

For non-willful violations — missing the FBAR without intentional disregard of the rules — the Supreme Court's 2023 Bittner decision settled a long-running dispute. The Court held that the $10,000 penalty cap applies per annual report, not per unreported account. Before Bittner, the IRS assessed penalties per account, which multiplied quickly for someone with four or five accounts in India. Post-Bittner, a single missed year with multiple accounts is capped at one non-willful penalty.

For willful violations — where a court or the IRS determines you knew about the requirement and chose not to comply — the penalty is the greater of $165,353 or 50% of the highest balance across all unreported accounts for the year. That figure is inflation-adjusted and can change. Willful FBAR violations can also trigger criminal referral for substantial amounts, though prosecution is relatively rare.

The line between willful and non-willful is fact-specific. Courts have found willfulness where someone signed a tax return asking about foreign accounts, answered "no," even when the return was prepared by a CPA who asked the question. The "I didn't know" defense weakens if you were asked directly and said no.

The delinquent procedures that disappeared in July

For years, the IRS maintained a formal procedure called the Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures. It let people who had missed FBAR filings submit delinquent reports with a statement of reasonable cause — such as being unaware of the requirement — and typically avoid penalties. It was not a guarantee of zero penalties, but it was the acknowledged path for first-time filers who genuinely did not know the rule applied to them.

On July 1, 2026, the IRS removed the Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures page from its website. Ernst & Young and other major accounting firms flagged the removal within days. The IRS gave no formal explanation and published no replacement guidance. The procedure was simply gone.

The practical effect: there is no IRS-published playbook for catching up on missed FBARs with predictable penalty exposure. The Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures still exist for people who also have unreported foreign income, but that program requires a 5% offshore penalty on foreign assets and amended tax returns — a different and more involved process than the simple delinquent FBAR path. If your only issue is unfiled FBARs with no unreported income, the zero-penalty catch-up route no longer has a published home.

If you missed October 15

The first step is the same regardless of circumstances: file the delinquent FBAR. BSA E-Filing at bsaefiling.fincen.gov accepts late reports. The form is FinCEN 114, and filing electronically is free. Filing sooner rather than later limits the argument that a late filing reflects willful noncompliance, and it gets ahead of any IRS inquiry.

Whether penalties apply — and how to minimize exposure — is a question for a CPA or tax attorney who handles international tax compliance. The calculation depends on your specific accounts, whether you had unreported income, your filing history on prior-year returns, and the IRS's current enforcement posture toward fbar late filing, all of which shifted when the delinquent procedures were removed.

If you have both unfiled FBARs and unreported interest income from NRO accounts, the situation is more involved. NRO account interest is generally taxable in the US and should appear on your Form 1040. NRE account interest is also taxable in the US even though it is exempt in India — this is the trap for people who read that NRE accounts are "tax-free" without catching that the US doesn't care about India's tax exemption. If both problems apply, the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures may be the right path. The right first call is a tax professional, not a self-filed amended return. This article is informational only and does not constitute legal or tax advice.