Effective July 1st, all FBARs–Form TD F 90-22.1, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts–must be efiled. You must use the BSA efile system to efile FBARs. This includes amended FBARs.
(One exception would appear to be individuals coming into compliance within the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative or the Streamlined Disclosure; those required FBARs to be submitted on paper. Of course, this is the government making rules, so anyone looking into those programs at this date should likely get their tax professional to find out the answer. I sent an inquiry to the IRS but haven’t received a response yet. I’ll update this post when the IRS responds.)
One other current rule about the FBAR: Tax professionals currently cannot file an FBAR for clients; it’s against the rules. FINCEN (the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), the government agency that handles FBARs, is looking into allowing 2013 FBARs (filed in 2014) to be filed by tax professionals. Until then, we can create the information that you need for the FBAR, but we cannot file it for you.
One piece of good news requiring the BSA efile system: It appears that it now works with most Internet browsers.