United States v. Kahn, No. 19-3920 (2d Cir. 2021)
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The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment in favor of the government against defendants as co-executors of the estate of Harold Kahn, in the principal penalty amount of $4,264,728, plus statutory additions and interest, for Kahn's undisputedly willful failure, in violation of 31 U.S.C. 5314, to file in 2009 a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts ("FBAR") for his two foreign bank accounts whose balances, at the time of his failure to file, totaled $8,529,456. The Estate contends that the district court erred in refusing to limit the per-willful-violation maximum penalty for failure to file an FBAR to the $100,000-per-account maximum set by the 1987 Treasury Department Regulation, 31 C.F.R. 1010.820(g)(2).
The court concluded that the district court correctly ruled that the penalty limitation provided in the 1987 regulation, which had tracked the penalty provision enacted in a prior version of the statute, was superseded by the 2004 statutory amendment to 31 U.S.C. 5321 increasing the penalty maximum.
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