Foreign Gifts Received By U.S. Citizens or Legal Residents Must Be Reported
;)
The U.S. gift tax filing and payment requirements only apply to giftors who are U.S. citizens or legal residents. If the giftor is not a citizen or legal resident of the U.S., they have no U.S. gift tax return or gift tax liability issues. The recipient of the gift, also has no U.S. gift tax liability issues. However, the recipient has a reporting requirement.
If you receive a gift from a foreign person, you are required on receipt of such funds to file Form 3520, Annual Return to Report Transactions With Foreign Trusts and Receipt of Certain Foreign Gifts, if the gift you receive during the year is in excess of $100,000. This is just an information return and no payment is due. You need to fill out the information portion at the beginning and then complete part IV. You should keep records or any other documents you have that show the source of the funds as a gift. The form is due to be filed by the due date for your income tax return for the calendar year in which you received the gift.
You can see the form instructions on where to file (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i3520.pdf).
1 thought on “Foreign Gifts Received By U.S. Citizens or Legal Residents Must Be Reported”
Comments are closed.
Nice little post. You would be surprised how much this question arises and how few people know about this requirement. Good job in getting this out there.