If you are a US person and you can instruct your parent's UK bank to move or pay out money, you have signature authority over those accounts for the FBAR, even though none of the money is yours. FinCEN's guidance on reporting foreign accounts (opens the official FinCEN page in a new tab) requires a report from anyone with a financial interest in or signature authority over foreign accounts whose combined value exceeds $10,000 at any time in the year. A lasting power of attorney that the bank has accepted, or a third party mandate on the account, is the usual way this arises.
This post is for US citizens and green card holders, in Britain or back in the US, who help an elderly mother or father with their banking. It extends our guide to FBAR and FATCA for UK residents on one question: what holding that authority means for your own report. It covers when the authority starts, how the accounts are listed, how they combine with your own, and why Form 8938 does not follow. Employees who can sign on a company account have a separate post on signature authority for UK employees.
Is a lasting power of attorney signature authority for the FBAR
It usually is, once it can be used. The FBAR instructions define signature authority as an individual's authority, alone or with someone else, to control what happens to assets in a foreign account by communicating directly with the bank. An attorney whose instructions the bank will follow meets that test.
The definition looks at what the bank will do, not at who owns the money. The Internal Revenue Manual on the FBAR (opens the official IRS page in a new tab) uses the same wording, and the IRS comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR requirements (opens the official IRS page in a new tab) puts it as the power to control the disposition of assets by direct communication with the financial institution. A property and financial affairs lasting power of attorney exists to let the attorney manage the donor's money, and banks act on an attorney's instructions once they have the power on their records.
FinCEN has not published a statement that names lasting powers of attorney, and we have not found one in the IRS manual. The conclusion rests on the general definition, which is wide. The manual says that someone who can only buy or sell investments inside an account, without being able to take assets out, does not have signature authority, so the scope of what the power lets you do with each account matters.
Does it matter if the power is registered or never used
Registration matters; use does not. GOV.UK says an attorney cannot start acting until the lasting power of attorney is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, so before registration there is no authority the bank would honour. After registration, the test is whether you have the authority, not whether you exercise it.
Many families register a power early and leave it unused while the parent still manages their own affairs. GOV.UK says a property and financial affairs power can be used as soon as it is registered, with the donor's permission. In that period the attorney may never have spoken to the bank. The FBAR definition does not ask how often authority was used, and our FBAR guide takes the same position: authority that you hold and could use is enough.
The harder case is a registered power that has never been shown to the bank. The bank would not yet act on your instruction, but it would as soon as you presented the document. FinCEN has not addressed that gap. Our practice is to take the cautious reading and report the accounts from the year the power was registered and usable, because an extra entry on an information report costs little and a missing one is harder to explain later.
- Power signed but not registered: no authority yet, nothing to report
- Power registered and lodged with the bank: signature authority over the accounts it covers
- Power registered but not yet shown to the bank: we report, on the cautious reading
- Third party mandate signed by your parent with the bank: signature authority while it is in force
- Power or mandate cancelled during the year: still reported for that year
How do you list a parent's accounts on the FBAR
In the part of FinCEN Form 114 for accounts where the filer has signature authority but no financial interest, which is Part IV. For each account you give the bank's details and the account's maximum value, then the owner's name, address and identifying number, and your title, such as attorney.
The FBAR line item instructions say that Part IV records accounts over which the filer has signature authority but no financial interest. The account information follows the same rules as your own accounts: the institution's name and address, the account number and type, and the maximum value during the calendar year, converted at the Treasury rate for the last day of the year. Our post on the FBAR maximum value and exchange rate explains the arithmetic, and the FinCEN Form 114 page describes the report.
The owner is your parent. The instructions ask for the owner's US mailing address and allow a foreign address where the owner has none, so a parent who has always lived in Britain is given at their UK address. A British parent will usually have no US taxpayer identification number to enter. Item 43 asks for the filer's title in the position that gives the authority, and for an attorney that title is simply attorney. If you hold signature authority over 25 or more accounts, the instructions let you give the number of accounts and the owner's details only, provided you keep full records.
- Part II: accounts you own alone
- Part III: accounts you own jointly, including a joint account with your parent
- Part IV: your parent's accounts you can operate but do not own
- Item 43: your title, such as attorney or authorised signatory
Do a parent's accounts count towards your own threshold
Yes. The FBAR test adds together the maximum values of every foreign account in which you have a financial interest or over which you have signature authority. Your parent's savings are added to your own current account and ISA, and if the total exceeds $10,000, every account in both groups is listed.
The FinCEN instructions put the filing test in one sentence: a US person with a financial interest in or signature authority over foreign accounts files if their aggregate value exceeds the threshold at any time in the calendar year. There is no separate threshold for accounts you only sign on, and the IRS FBAR page (opens the official IRS page in a new tab) confirms that the report goes to FinCEN rather than with the tax return.
Take a US citizen employed as a teacher in Manchester. Her widowed mother in Kent registered a lasting power of attorney naming her, and the daughter lodged it with her mother's bank and building society last spring. The daughter has a current account and a cash ISA of her own. For the year, she adds the highest value of her two accounts to the highest values of her mother's two accounts. If the total exceeds the threshold, she files one FBAR: her own accounts in Part II and her mother's in Part IV, with her mother named as owner and attorney as her title.
Does Form 8938 or Schedule B pick up these accounts
Form 8938 does not, Schedule B does. The IRS comparison table says a foreign account over which you have only signature authority is not reported on Form 8938 unless you otherwise have an interest in it. The Schedule B question on foreign accounts asks about signature authority as well as financial interest, so you answer Yes.
Form 8938 is built around assets in which you have an interest, and a parent's savings do not become yours because you can operate them. The Form 8938 page on irs.gov (opens the official IRS page in a new tab) links to the instructions, and our page on Form 8938 covers the thresholds. Your own UK accounts still go on Form 8938 if your own specified foreign financial assets exceed the level that applies to you, which for a US person abroad not filing jointly is $200,000 at year end or $300,000 at any time for tax year 2025.
Schedule B of Form 1040 asks whether at any time in the year you had a financial interest in or signature authority over an account in a foreign country. The IRS instructions say to answer Yes even if no FinCEN Form 114 is required, and not to apply the FBAR's signature authority exceptions when answering. An attorney who has no foreign accounts of their own, perhaps an American living in the US, still answers Yes because of the parent's accounts.
- FBAR: parent's accounts listed in Part IV
- Form 8938: not listed, unless you also have an interest
- Schedule B: Yes to the foreign account question
- Your parent's income: not on your return, because it is not yours
How this differs from employer accounts and inherited accounts
The test is the same as for an employee who can approve payments, but the special rules are not. The officer and employee exceptions apply to certain regulated or US-listed employers, not to family arrangements. When the parent dies, the power of attorney ends and a different analysis takes over.
An employee's FBAR position is covered in our post on signature authority for UK employees, including the exceptions the FinCEN instructions list for officers and employees of certain banks and listed companies. None of them fits an attorney acting for a parent. The relief from personal record keeping that the instructions give an officer or employee reporting an employer's account does not extend to attorneys either, so keep the year's statements for each of your parent's accounts for five years from the due date of the report.
A lasting power of attorney stops on the donor's death. From then on, the question is whether you control the accounts as executor, hold them jointly, or have received the money, which our post on the FBAR after a parent dies works through. The report for the year of death still lists the accounts you could operate under the power while your parent was alive. The FBAR is due on 15 April, extended automatically to 15 October.
If you have held a power for some years without listing your parent's accounts, the reports can be corrected, and the right route depends on whether your own returns were complete. We prepare the FBAR with the return through our foreign income and FBAR reporting service and individual tax return preparation, and our estate and trust planning service covers the period after a death. The wider rules are in our guide to FBAR and FATCA for UK residents.
General information, not advice. The right answer depends on your circumstances and the tax year concerned.
