Hi I'm required to file form 8939 this year and have few questions:
1. I hold a deposit bank account in China, where on its app I could purchase bonds and mutual funds. The app looks pretty like "robinhood" , it would show how much is cash deposit and how much is invested in financial products (bonds, mutual funds). When bonds matures or if I sold mutual funds, the principal and interest would automatically go back to this deposit account. If there is dividend from the mutual funds, it would automatically go to my bank deposit account. From my perspective, I only interact with this deposit account and its app, and all transactions are reported on my bank statement (in Chinese).
So this bank account serves as an agency to sell different financial products and mutual funds. But when we buy financial products, I noticed the bank would open an "investment account id" on the backend with asset management companies that provides these financial products.
1. In my case, for FBAR/FACAT reporting, should I only report this bank deposit account (as this is the only one I interact with), or should I report all "investment account id" that this bank opened with different asset management companies?
2. If I only need to report this bank account, should its type be "deposit" or "securities/custodial"? it sounds like both. Or should I report it twice, one as deposit, and one as custodial?
3. If I need report all of them, for FORM 8939, what if I cannot figure out the maximum value for each "investment account id". I think for FBAR, we could select "unknown", but for FACAT, it looks we need to put an exact number.
The reason I couldn't figure out is, if we purchase bonds, on our bank statement, it just record the amount of money moved from deposit to buy certain bonds, but it doesn't show which "investment account id" hold these funds. They only gave me a list of investment account ids they opened on the backend with asset management companies.
Thank you!
To clarify, does the same bank manage both the deposit and backend accounts?
@DaveF1006 , yes. It is like Charles Swatch account, where on its main page, you could see how much cash is in deposit account and how much were in bonds. From user perspective, I only interact with the bank.
Based on what you just told me, it is one deposit account and one custodial account, all with the same bank and same account number. It doesn't matter if there many investment id's are within both accounts just as long as the bank manages both your deposit/custodial accounts.
The 8938 instructions state that on lines 5-8 should be reported in this matter.
Hope this helps but reach back to us if you have additional questions.