How to file the FBAR online for Indian bank accounts, step by step

Is this you? You're a US citizen, green card holder or US tax resident, such as an H-1B worker, whose Indian accounts together went over the FBAR threshold at some point in 2025, and you're filing the FBAR yourself. Not sure you need to? Check which Indian accounts count first.

This assumes you're a US person for the year: a citizen, a green card holder, or resident under the substantial presence test. Moving back this year? Check your residency status first, because the answer can change.

Before you start: what you need

The Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts is filed on FinCEN’s BSA E-Filing System at bsaefiling.fincen.gov. Individuals filing their own report don’t register or create an account: you choose to file the FBAR, pick the online (HTML) form, and start typing.

The catch is that FinCEN’s guide to the online form says it can’t be saved partway through. If your connection drops before you submit, everything you entered is lost and you start again. So gather all of this first, in one document you can copy from:

FinCEN’s instructions ask for “the complete mailing address of the financial institution where the account is held” without saying whether that’s the branch or the head office. Using the branch address printed on your statement, or the bank’s registered office if it shows none, is a sensible reading, not a stated rule; pick one and note it.

Getting your highest balance from Indian banks

The FBAR doesn’t ask for your 31 December balance. It asks for each account’s maximum value: FinCEN’s instructions describe it as “a reasonable approximation of the greatest value of currency or nonmonetary assets in the account during the calendar year.” You can rely on periodic statements, “provided that the statements fairly reflect the maximum account value during the calendar year.” The IRS’s manual adds that it’s the largest amount on any statement for the year, not only a closing balance. So download statements for 1 January to 31 December 2025 and find the largest balance on any line:

Two grey areas for fixed deposits. FinCEN doesn’t say whether a deposit’s value is the principal alone or principal plus accrued interest, and many Indian banks show only the principal on a cumulative deposit until it matures. The safer approach is the highest value your bank shows, including interest where shown; keep what you used. Nor is it settled whether several deposits under one customer ID are one account or many. The instructions value each account separately, and treating each deposit with its own number as its own account follows from that, but FinCEN hasn’t addressed it.

An account held in a foreign currency other than rupees, such as an FCNR deposit in dollars, works the same way in that currency. If it’s held in US dollars, the instructions say the maximum is simply the largest dollar value in the year, with no conversion.

Converting rupees to dollars

Every amount on the FBAR is in US dollars. FinCEN’s instructions set out the order: find the highest balance in rupees first, then convert that one figure using the Treasury’s rate for the last day of the calendar year, not the rate on the day the balance peaked. For the 2025 report that’s 89.854 rupees per dollar, the Treasury Reporting Rate of Exchange for India as of 31 December 2025, published by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service on its rates of exchange table. The rate is quoted as rupees per dollar, so you divide.

1. Take each account’s highest rupee balanceOne figure per account, from the statements above. Don’t add accounts together first.
2. Divide by the year-end rateRupees ÷ 89.854 gives dollars. Use the same rate for every rupee account on the report.
3. Round up to the next whole dollarThe instructions say amounts are “rounded up to the next whole dollar”, so any fraction, however small, goes up.
4. Enter zero if the result is negativeAn overdrawn account with a minus balance all year is reported at zero, not left off.

Later quarterly rates are already out, but the 2025 report uses the 31 December 2025 rate even though you’re filing in October 2026. Your bank’s rate, the Reserve Bank’s reference rate and a yearly average are all wrong for the FBAR.

The form has an “amount unknown” box for an account’s maximum value. FinCEN limits it to filers with fewer than 25 accounts who can’t work out whether their combined maximums passed the reporting threshold. It isn’t a shortcut for a balance you could get from a statement.

Filing step by step

These steps follow FinCEN’s guide to the online form and its line-item instructions, so they use the form’s Parts and the instructions’ item names; the labels on screen may be worded a little differently.

1. Open the BSA E-Filing site and choose to file the FBARAt bsaefiling.fincen.gov, choose to file the FBAR and pick the online (HTML) form rather than the PDF. No user ID, password or PIN is needed. Use a desktop or laptop: FinCEN’s PDF-route guide says the system doesn’t support mobile devices, and a full-size screen is safer for the online form too.
2. Home tab: name the reportGive it a filing name, such as your surname, “FBAR” and the year; it’s how the report is tracked. Leave the late-filing reason blank if you file by October 15, 2026. After that, choose a reason from the list, or “Other” with a short written explanation.
3. Filer Information tab: Part I, about youCalendar year 2025, type of filer, taxpayer number, date of birth, name and US address (below). Leave Amended unticked for a first 2025 filing.
4. Account Information tab: one block per account in the right PartPart II, III or IV (below). The plus (+) sign adds another account; fields with an asterisk are required.
5. Signature/Third Party Preparer Information tabFiling your own report, leave the third-party preparer box unticked.
6. Submit tab: your contact details, then FinalizeEnter your email address (FinCEN uses it only for messages about your submission’s status), name and phone number, then choose Finalize. Finalizing signs the form and fills in the date. If you go back to another tab to change something, the form is no longer finalized, so finalize again when you come back.
7. Pass the captcha and choose Submit FBARA confirmation page follows. Use its Download Transcript button to save a copy of your report, and save the page too.

Part I: you, the filer

• Type of filer. Individuals tick the individual box, “including those reporting only signature authority.”
• Taxpayer number. Your SSN or ITIN, with no hyphens. The foreign identification item is only for filers with no US taxpayer number, so an H-1B worker with an SSN skips it.
• Address. Living in the US, enter “the street address of the individual’s United States residence not a post office box”, not your Indian address. Living abroad, give a US mailing address, or a foreign home address if you have none.
• Formatting. Two-letter state abbreviation, ZIP code without a hyphen, city names in full. Filler such as “NONE”, “NOT APPLICABLE”, “SAME AS ABOVE” or “UNKNOWN” is banned in text fields.

Part I also asks two account-count questions. With a financial interest in 25 or more foreign accounts, you answer yes, enter the number and skip Parts II and III, but must keep each account’s details for FinCEN or the IRS on request. A matching question covers accounts you can only operate, and sends you to the owner details in Part IV. Most filers answer no to both; with a long ladder of fixed deposits, the count turns on the grey area above.

Parts II to V: one block per account

Whether a joint account with your parents, or a power of attorney, belongs in Part III or Part IV is a judgement call our guide to the FBAR deadline for H-1B workers works through. Mechanically, leave blank any joint owner’s details you don’t have; an owner with no US mailing address can be given a foreign one.

The type of account is a drop-down with three choices: Bank, Securities or Other (Other needs a short description). FinCEN’s regulation defines a bank account as a savings, demand, checking or other account with a bank, and the IRS manual adds time deposits. Beyond that, FinCEN hasn’t named the Indian products, so the right-hand column below is our reading of its definitions, not FinCEN’s word:

Whether EPF and NPS belong on the report at all, and why the US doesn’t treat them like an IRA, is covered in our FBAR and FATCA reporting guide.

Mutual fund folios also bring separate US tax rules, set out in our guide to Indian mutual funds as PFICs.

Signing

The date fills itself in when you finalize. Leave the filer title blank when reporting your own accounts; it’s for someone signing in a role, such as a parent filing for a child. Spouses filing jointly don’t complete the third-party preparer section.

Worked example: five accounts on one FBAR

After you submit

FinCEN’s guide to the online form describes what happens next:

• Straight away: a confirmation page. Download the transcript of your FBAR from it (the Download Transcript button), and save the page itself.
• Shortly after: an email saying whether your submission was accepted or rejected. Keep it. If it was rejected, you correct the problem and submit again.
• In about two business days: a second, final email saying FinCEN has acknowledged the report and given it a unique BSA ID, a 14-digit number. FinCEN’s guide calls the filing complete at this point.

No emails? The site’s help says to use the individual Submission Status Lookup: enter the email address you used and a date range of up to 60 days, and the system emails you a list of the FBARs it holds for that address.

Don’t leave it to the last hour of October 15, 2026. FinCEN doesn’t say whether an accepted report still waiting for its BSA ID counts as filed on the day you submitted, so the acceptance email is your best evidence that you filed on time.

Keep your records for 5 years. The regulation lists what they must show: the name on each account, its number, the institution’s name and address, the type of account and its maximum value. FinCEN’s instructions count from 15 April of the year after the year reported, or from the date you filed if later, so from the day you file the 2025 report now; the IRS’s page says from the due date, so keeping things a little longer covers both. Keep the downloaded copy, the confirmation page, both emails, the statements behind each maximum, and the exchange rate you used.

Filing for your spouse, or letting a CPA file

The online system takes only one electronic signature, so a married couple can’t both sign one FBAR. FinCEN’s instructions allow one spouse to report for both, but only when all three conditions hold:

“(1) all the financial accounts that the non-filing spouse is required to report are jointly owned with the filing spouse; 2) the filing spouse reports the jointly owned accounts on a timely filed FBAR electronically signed; and (3) the filers have completed and signed [the authorization record] … Otherwise, both spouses are required to file separate FBARs, and each spouse must report the entire value of the jointly owned accounts.”

That authorisation is FinCEN Form 114a. Both spouses complete and sign its first part, the filing spouse completes the rest, and you keep it with your records. You never upload or post it to FinCEN. The filing spouse lists the joint accounts in Part III, with the other spouse as the main joint owner. If the non-filing spouse has even one account of their own, such as a sole NRO account, the shortcut fails and you each file. Your tax filing status, joint or separate, makes no difference to this.

A CPA, Enrolled Agent or attorney who files for you can’t use the individual route. FinCEN’s FAQs say they must register with the BSA E-Filing System as an institution and file from there, and you complete FinCEN Form 114a to authorise them. Without it, you must sign and submit the report yourself. Either way, the report being on time and accurate stays your responsibility, not the preparer’s.

Fixing a mistake: amending a filed FBAR

Spotted a missed account or a wrong balance after submitting? You don’t edit the old report. You file an amended one:

1. Wait for the original’s BSA IDThe site’s help says you can amend only once the original is acknowledged and has its BSA ID, usually about two business days after it was accepted.
2. Start a fresh formThe transcript you downloaded can’t be reused for a resubmission. Fill in the whole report again with the corrected information, including the accounts that were already right.
3. Mark it as an amendmentOn the Filer Information tab, tick Amended next to the calendar year in Part I.
4. Give the prior report’s BSA IDEnter the 14-digit BSA ID from the acknowledgement email in the Prior Report BSA ID box. If you can’t find it, try the Submission Status Lookup; failing that, FinCEN’s instructions say to enter 14 zeros.
5. Finalize and submit as beforeThe same two emails follow, and the amended report gets its own BSA ID.

Problems and help

• Lost your work. The online form has no save, so a dropped connection means starting again. If you can’t finish in one sitting, FinCEN’s fillable PDF form can be saved before upload, though it needs Adobe Reader.
• Browser trouble. FinCEN’s published browser list dates from around 2014. Use an up-to-date desktop browser, and try another before you call.
• Technical problems. The BSA E-Filing Help Desk is on 1-866-346-9478 or by email at BSAEFilingHelp@fincen.gov, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern, and closed on federal holidays. Monday, October 12 is a federal holiday (Columbus Day), so expect it to be closed then. FinCEN asks you not to put account numbers or taxpayer numbers in a support ticket.
• Questions about what to report. FinCEN’s Regulatory Helpline answers questions on how to complete the form, on 1-800-949-2732, or 703-905-3975 if you call from outside the US.
• The site is down near the deadline. Keep trying, and keep a dated note or screenshot of what you saw. The online form’s list of late-filing reasons includes “Unable to access BSA E-filing system”.

If you end up filing after October 15, 2026, you file the same way, with a reason from the late-filing list or “Other” and a written explanation. What lateness can cost is covered in the deadline guide linked above.