MPF & PFIC (vs. FBAR/FACTA) form - which one for US taxes

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  1. #1

    Join Date
    Oct 2015
    Posts
    2

    MPF & PFIC (vs. FBAR/FACTA) form - which one for US taxes

    To any person whom has declared MPF on one of your US tax form - help !

    1) Which form did you use to identify MPF contribution (assumes no distribution)?. PFIC (8621 form) or FBAR/FACTA or a combination.

    2) Any insights as to why the form(s) was chosen, or the default - the Accountant just did it .

    3) Is it that complicated to fill in the PFIC form, if the total MPF contribution (You/employer) is under HKD $10k and there has been no distributions. It is a single $ dollar amount + info on you and the fund,

    4) If the PFIC form is require, any est., on the cost charged by the account whom did it ?. the Facta form is around $US 350 - $500 for a account to fill out

    Background

    I moved to HK recently. I only a few months of MPF contributions in 2015

    Looking at a thread in this tax forum and web search (limited insight found), it suggest you must record contributions as income on 1040 (no problem). If it is the PFIC (8621) form, it may be actually very difficult to get the details and impossible to be confident they are correct from the owner of the fund (HSBC).

    Thanks

    Expatkd

    Last edited by expatkd; 27-01-2016 at 07:34 PM. Reason: Wrong tax form nbr

  2. #2

    I also encountered this issue recently. After spending quite some time reading online, I tend to think that MPF can be treated as Employee Trust instead of PFIC. In this case we need to include the MPF contributions (employer+employee) as regular income but can defer the investment return until withdrawn from the MPF account after the retirement. No IRS forms 8621 or 3250(A) required at this stage. This is also how US expats treat the Australian Superannuation. Comments are welcome.


  3. #3

    Join Date
    Oct 2015
    Posts
    2

    keeping ques alive

    Thanks for your sentiments. They also where/have been mine. I though am responding to your comment to keep this quest/thread alive.
    This is due to still not finding in a blog/article, anything that further qualifies this question. e.g. a response from a accountant, or something from the IRS tax site, etc. Until such time I am only able to make an assumption.
    Thxs