Officially known as Form 5471, Information Return of US Persons with Respect to Certain Foreign Corporations, this form is required along with your expat taxes for US citizens and resident aliens who are considered to be officers, directors or shareholders in certain foreign corporations.

Do I have to file a 5471?

Any U.S. citizen, corporation, partnership, trust, or estate who has at least 10% ownership in a foreign corporation, needs to file Form 5471. If you aren’t sure if you qualify, you can see detailed qualifications of who is liable on pages 1-3 of the instructions for Form 5471.

When do I need to file Form 5471?

Interestingly the Form 5471 instructions exempt him (the US person) from the filing requirements under Category 4 or 5 if he does not own a direct or indirect interest in the foreign corporation, and is required to file Form 5471 solely because of constructive ownership from a nonresident alien.

Is the Form 5471 code the same as form 1118?

Form 5471 filers generally use the same category of filer codes used on Form 1118. However, in the case of Schedule J (Form 5471) filers, if a foreign corporation has more than one of those categories of income, the filer must also complete and file a separate Schedule J using code “TOTAL” that aggregates all amounts

Why was Category 5 deleted from Form 5471?

Also, the checkbox for category 5 has been deleted and replaced with checkboxes for new categories 5a, 5b, and 5c. These changes are being made because section 8 of Rev. Proc. 2019-40 provides relief for certain types of category 5 filers.

How to file Form 5471 for dormant foreign corporation?

Proc. 92-70, 1992-2 C.B. 435, provides a summary filing procedure for filing Form 5471 for a dormant foreign corporation (defined in section 3 of Rev. Proc. 92-70). This summary filing procedure will satisfy the reporting requirements of sections 6038 and 6046.