foreign accounts

[mk1039]

i have been hearing about registering foreign accounts in US.

my question is , if we have a foreign joint account with parents (with perents not living in US) and we are not taking any income from it, do we need to register it here in US ?

[immihelp]

If you have more than $10,000 equivalent in foreign bank account (all accounts combined together), you have to declare it here.

[Jeff4cpa]

Fbar / tdf 90-22.1

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has offered some clarification of what they mean by foreign bank account. A foreign bank account is any of the following:
1. Regular bank account.
2. Cash value of life insurance.
3. Retirement accounts - such as an Indian Provident Fund.
4. Any account which is not in your name but that you can control. Example - you give some money to your father in India and ask him put it in the bank under his name.
5. Any account which is in your name but someone else can control. Example - you have a friend who wants to invest in an Indian bank. He gives you cash and you open an Indian bank account for him but under your name.
6. An account which holds publicly traded investments.
7. A foreign bank account that correctly reports interest income on a U.S. form 1099-interest is also considered a foreign bank account and should be counted for the 10K rule.

[immihelp]

The most prominent example of #7 would be Citibank NRI accounts.