Who uses Form 14654 rather than the non-resident certification?
Filers who live in the United States. The domestic streamlined programme is for US-resident filers with unreported foreign accounts or income who qualify as non-willful, and this is the certification that goes with it. Residence is what separates it from the version used by filers living abroad, and the split is not administrative tidiness — the two programmes are built differently and one carries a penalty the other does not. So the first question in a catch-up of this kind is where the filer was resident across the years a submission would cover, established from their own history rather than assumed from where they live today.
I moved back to the US before catching up — which certification applies?
That is the analysis to do before anything is drafted, and it is done against the period the submission covers rather than against today's address. Moving back matters because the domestic programme carries a miscellaneous offshore penalty that the foreign one does not, computed on the highest aggregate value of the unreported assets. In other words the decision changes the cost, not just the paperwork. Where a move falls inside the years concerned, the residence history has to be evidenced and the conclusion recorded, because the certification is signed on the footing that the right programme was chosen.
What is the miscellaneous offshore penalty actually calculated on?
On asset value, not on tax. The charge in the domestic programme is computed by reference to the highest aggregate value of the unreported assets, which is a different quantity from the income those assets produced and a different quantity again from the tax on that income. The practical consequence catches people out: a quiet account that earned very little can still drive a substantial figure, because what counts is what it was worth at its peak rather than what it paid out. That is why the first serious piece of work in a domestic submission is usually a value-by-year reconstruction of every account.
Is the domestic streamlined programme more expensive than the foreign one?
In the sense that matters, yes: it carries a penalty the foreign programme does not. That is the substantive difference between the two routes, and it is why the residence question deserves real analysis instead of a quick assumption. It also changes how a submission should be prepared. Where the charge is driven by the highest aggregate value of the unreported assets, the valuation work is not a side task to the returns — it is the thing that determines the cost, and it needs the same evidence and the same care as the income figures do.
Can I be non-willful if I knew the foreign account existed?
Knowing you had an account and knowing you had to report it are different things, and the certification is about the second. What has to be set out is why the reporting did not happen, in terms that sit consistently beside the returns and reports being filed. Plenty of people knew perfectly well where their money was and had no idea that a US filing attached to it. The work is to establish that history from documents and to say it plainly. What defeats a certification is not candour about the account, it is a narrative the rest of the package contradicts.
Which of my foreign assets count towards the penalty base?
The unreported ones, taken at their highest aggregate value, which means the base is assembled account by account and year by year rather than read off a single statement. Two things follow. First, scoping is substantive work: whether a particular holding was unreported for a given year is a question to be answered and recorded, not assumed. Second, the answer is sensitive to timing, because a balance that peaked briefly still counts at that peak. Expect to produce statements for every account across the whole period, and expect that reconstruction to take longer than the returns.
How is tax residency decided?
By facts, not by citizenship or the address on your post. Canada weighs your ties — a home available to you, spouse, dependants, then secondary ties like accounts and licences. The US adds a mechanical day-count test alongside its green-card test. India counts days present under its own thresholds. Where two countries both conclude you are resident, the treaty tie-breaker decides one residence: permanent home, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality. See tax residency.
What is the US exit tax?
A charge that applies when a US citizen renounces or a long-term permanent resident gives up their status and meets one of the covered-expatriate tests — an income test, a net-worth test, or a failure to certify five years of compliance. A covered expatriate is treated as having sold worldwide assets on the day before expatriation, and Form 8854 is what reports the position. The tests turn on figures that are indexed, so they are read for the year of expatriation. See Form 8854.
