File your foreign pension, trust and gift forms the easy way.
A guided interview that fills out Form 3520 and Form 3520-A for you, the forms consumer tax software like TurboTax doesn’t handle. A pension or retirement account abroad can bring these forms with it, even if you never touched the money. Answer plain-English questions, get a print-ready return.
✓ Pensions, trusts, gifts, distributions & trustees✓ Every figure traces to your entries✓ Print & mail - no e-file account needed
Workplace pension
Employer's contributions to date$62,400
Your contributions to date$48,900
You own part of the plan?Not yet
Part II + Form 3520-ANot needed yet
No Form 3520 on these figures
You passed your employer'sMarch 2024
Part you own at December 31$58,210
Income for Form 3520-A$4,312
Basis for later payouts$47,905
PDF and spreadsheet ready
Foreign gift received$185,000
From (foreign estate)✓
Threshold met ($100,000)Reportable
Line 54 - descriptionInheritance, cash
Ready to generate PDF
Distribution received$120,000
Accumulation distribution$80,000
Tax on Form 4970$19,840
Interest charge (§668)$6,205
Computed, with the work shown
Balance sheetBalanced
Income statement✓
Owner statement✓
Beneficiary statement✓
The trustee's own, or an owner's substitute
Superannuation funds, Part INo
Part II + Form 3520-ADepends
Part IIIDepends
Form 4970No
With the law behind each answer
Example figures
Pensions and retirement accounts abroad
Worked abroad? Your pension may count as a foreign trust.
U.S. citizens and green card holders report foreign trusts to the IRS, and a retirement plan abroad can be one, even if an employer chose it for you. It depends on the plan. Some need nothing, some need Forms 3520 and 3520-A every year, and for some the question isn’t settled. Our guides answer it plan by plan, with the law behind each answer.
Miss a Form 3520 and the penalties are steep. See how each one works. Consumer tax software like TurboTax doesn’t handle them. Your options have been a specialist or a blank IRS PDF and a prayer.
File3520 is a guided interview that asks plain-English questions and produces a completed, print-ready form. The same result, a fraction of the cost. Learn more about Forms 3520 & 3520-A.
$10,000 or 35%for a trust transfer or distribution reported late, left off or wrong, whichever is greater, up to the amount involved (§6677)
$10,000 or 5%for a pension or trust you’re treated as owning, when its Form 3520-A is late, missing, incomplete or wrong, whichever is greater, no more than the value you own (§6677)
up to 25%gift penalty, 5%/month for 5 months (§6039F). The IRS no longer assesses it when a late form arrives; an examination still can
4 paths + plan historygifts, owners, beneficiaries & trustees in one tool, plus a record for foreign retirement plans
What it covers
Four filing paths and a plan history, in one tool.
Form 3520, Part IV
Foreign gifts & inheritances
Report gifts or bequests exceeding the annual thresholds: more than $100,000 from one nonresident alien individual or foreign estate (adding together gifts from donors related to each other), or $20,116 (2025) / $20,573 (2026) from foreign corporations or partnerships, adding in gifts from foreign persons related to them. Usually no tax owed, but the report is mandatory. Enter amounts, identify the donors, and generate a print-ready Part IV.
For U.S. persons who create or put money or property into a foreign trust (Part I), or are treated as its owner under the grantor trust rules (§§671–679), a foreign pension or retirement account included. We walk through Parts I and II and produce the companion Form 3520-A: balance sheet, income statement, and owner statements included. Workplace pensions an employer pays into are covered too. Read as a §402(b) trust, there is no Part I, and you’re treated as owner only of the part your own contributions fund, once they exceed your employer’s and if the grantor trust rules are otherwise met.
Received a distribution from a foreign trust? We apply the throwback rules, track accumulation distributions from year to year, add your earlier ones back into each prior year’s income, from this trust or any other, and auto-generate Form 4970 when the tax applies. Payouts from a workplace pension that you report as pay need no Part III.
For a trustee filing the trust’s own Form 3520-A: balance sheet, income statement, and beneficiary/owner statements. If the foreign trust does not file its own Form 3520-A, the U.S. owner must complete and attach a substitute to their Form 3520: the trust owner path produces one.
One record of a foreign pension or savings plan, built from your statements and transaction histories. It works out whether you own part of the plan, what goes on Form 3520 each year, and your basis for later payouts, using exchange rates for each date.
On its own
A year-by-year record to keep, with a PDF and a spreadsheet you can hand to your preparer.
With your Form 3520
Link it to a return and its figures fill the form, with a check before you mark the return final.
Set up for UK pensions, Australian super, KiwiSaver, India’s EPF and NPS, and Canadian TFSAs and FHSAs, with a general method for any other plan.
Received a foreign trust distribution and a reportable foreign gift in the same year? Part III and Part IV go onto one Form 3520 for that filer and tax year, with one set of header answers. Each foreign trust still gets its own Form 3520: the form says so at the top of page 1.
Entity & individual filers
Not just for individuals. Partnerships, C-corps, S-corps, trusts, and executors can file with entity-specific handling: fiscal year support, the right tax return number on line 1k (1120, 1120-S, 1065, 1041…), and signing-title fields.
Full document package
Every filing generates a cover page with filing instructions, the completed IRS form, and supplemental statements when entries overflow the printed form. Gift returns, distribution returns and Form 3520-A add a worksheet showing how the figures were worked out.
Built for accuracy
Every figure on your form traces to your entries.
Throwback-rule calculations, Form 4970 accumulation distributions, §668 interest charges. The engine handles them end to end. You enter the facts; the worksheets show how each line was worked out.
“Did I get the throwback math right?”
The engine shows its work on every line so you can verify the numbers before you file.
How it works
Three steps, plain English the whole way.
1
Answer the interview
We ask what happened - a gift, a pension, a trust, a distribution - and route you to only the parts that apply.
2
We fill the form
Your answers map onto the actual IRS lines. No jargon, no blank boxes to decode.
3
Print & mail
Download a completed, ready-to-sign PDF. These forms are paper-filed; no e-file account required.
Pricing
Simple, transparent pricing.
A fraction of what a preparer charges for the same form. No hidden fees. Try the demo to see how the interview fills out the PDF.
Plans are billed yearly and renew until you cancel. You can change or cancel your plan from your account. If a plan ends, you can still download your final forms and export your data. We keep them for at least three years and email you before anything is deleted: see the Privacy Policy.
Get started. See how it works in a few minutes.
Walk through the interview, or try the demo to see a finished return.