On November 30, 2021, the Fifth Circuit parted ways with the taxpayer friendly decision of the Ninth Circuit that non-willful penalties are capped at $10,000 per FBAR filing instead of the $10,000 per unreported bank account argued by the government. District courts in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Texas had all ruled in the taxpayer’s favor that non-willful penalties were capped at $10,000 per form.  In United States v. Boyd, 991 F.3d 1077 (9th Cir. 2021), the Ninth circuit reversed the district court’s per-account determination and made the per-form cap the law within the 9^th Circuit. United States v. Bittner, No. 20-40597 (5th Circuit), was on appeal from a taxpayer friendly decision reducing the $2.7 Million dollar penalty to $50,000 based on a $10,000 per form cap on non-willful FBAR penalties.  Although not guaranteed, it appeared that the momentum was in the taxpayer’s favor for an affirmance of the reduction.  However, the Fifth Circuit reversed the favorable district court decision and held that the “$10,000 penalty cap therefore applies on a per-account, not a per-form basis.”