Page:Bittner v. United States.pdf/17

Rh incurring any penalty. He doesn’t have to provide any detail about his accounts, just correctly disclose how many he holds. See also Brief for American College of Tax Counsel as Amicus Curiae 15–16 (Brief for Tax Counsel).

Nor is this the only incongruity the government’s theory invites. Consider someone who has a $10 million balance in a single account who nonwillfully fails to report that account. Everyone agrees he is subject to a single penalty of $10,000. Yet under the government’s theory, another person engaging in the same nonwillful conduct with respect to a dozen foreign accounts with an aggregate balance of $10,001 would be subject to a penalty of $120,000. Id., at 14–15.

On the government’s view, too, those who willfully violate the law may face lower penalties than those who violate the law nonwillfully. For example, an individual who holds $1 million in a foreign account during the course of a year but withdraws it before the filing deadline and then willfully fails to file an FBAR faces a maximum penalty of $100,000. But a person who errs nonwillfully in listing 20 accounts with an aggregate balance of $50,000 can face a penalty of up to $200,000. Id., at 14. Reading the law to apply nonwillful penalties per report invites none of these curiosities; the government’s per-account theory invites them all.

The government does not dispute any of this but replies that the per-report interpretation risks an anomaly of its own. After all, the government observes, the BSA affords the Secretary considerable discretion in formulating reporting requirements. So much so, the government contends, that the Secretary could require a separate report for each account and in that way effectively achieve a per-account