Ana Rivera signs an engagement for TY 2026, and the organizer comes back with four foreign accounts and one foreign stock certificate. Before we prepare anything, the immediate risk is filing the return while missing an information report that is filed somewhere else and triggers separate penalties, even if every dollar of income was already reported. The first scoping decision is whether Ana might need an FBAR, Form 8938, both, or neither, and which missing facts keep us from deciding.
Ana is a U.S. citizen, married filing jointly, living in Texas for TY 2026. The accounts and peak balances for the year are Banco de Madrid checking max €6,200, Zurich brokerage max CHF 7,500, joint Toronto savings max CAD 4,100, and an employer account in France max €14,000 where Ana has signature authority only. Separately, Ana directly holds a German company stock certificate with fair market value of $18,000 at 12/31/2026. Based only on those facts, which outcome is most plausible right now, FBAR only, Form 8938 only, both, or neither, and what one missing value or fact would you ask for first to confirm it:
What you likely noticed is that we can already see multiple reportable categories, but we cannot yet finish the threshold tests because FBAR uses an aggregate maximum value test for foreign financial accounts and Form 8938 uses different aggregation and thresholds for specified foreign financial assets. The scoping deliverable at this stage is a complete inventory of each potentially reportable item, its maximum value during TY 2026, and the taxpayer relationship to it, meaning ownership versus signature authority, because those drive whether each regime applies.
A common engagement miss is treating these as one disclosure. FBAR reporting comes from the Bank Secrecy Act rules in 31 U.S.C. §5314 and 31 C.F.R. §1010.350, and the deliverable is FinCEN Form 114 filed electronically with FinCEN rather than with the income tax return. Form 8938 reporting comes from FATCA in IRC §6038D, and the deliverable is Form 8938 attached to the federal return that is filed with the IRS, and filing one does not satisfy the other.
The scoping question for the preparer is which definition set applies to each item. FBAR focuses on foreign financial accounts at foreign financial institutions and can be triggered either by a financial interest or by signature authority, subject to its definitions and exceptions, while Form 8938 focuses on specified foreign financial assets and generally requires an interest in the account or asset rather than mere signature authority. Sorting the France employer account and the German stock certificate into the right buckets is what prevents the classic error of reporting the wrong things on the wrong form.
To make the differences concrete, decide which row belongs to which deliverable. Focus on where it is filed, what it reports, who files, and the key trigger, then compare your mapping to the correct pairing: