I am an expat living and working in Mexico since 1998, except for the years 2011-2015, when I lived and worked in Peru. I have a Vanguard self-managed portfolio, so I have filed a tax return every year with the IRS, using TurboTax, and have never owed the government any money.
I use a family member’s address for all my stateside finances and accounts. As I had more than 10K in my Peruvian bank account when I worked there, I filed fbars for these years. When I left Peru I closed this account and wired the balance to my stateside bank account. I have never had more than 5K in my Mexican bank account, so I never filed fbars for the years I have lived in Mexico.
But I found out only recently that I had 20K in a pension plan in Peru, which I was able to cash out, with a wire transfer to my American bank account. A little googling told me that this transaction generated a CRT. Which up to now, I had no idea about.
Here are the problems:
I thought that unless I earned more than 100K in foreign income, I did not have to report it to the IRS, so I have always checked the wrong box when prompted by the TurboTax application. I also recently found out that my Peruvian pension account counts as a foreign holding, so in theory I should have been flling fbars since 2015, when I returned to Mexico.
My question is: should I take some action or just “let sleeping dogs lie”? I am inclined to just keep filing as I always have since I do not and will not owe the IRS anything, and am not trying to hide anyhting from them.