Short answer: for a straightforward case, preparer fees for a complete Streamlined Foreign Offshore package land around US $2,000–$2,500. That's not the only cost (there's also any tax owed and late-payment interest), but the preparer fee is the line most people want to pin down first. (Quick-answer version with a cost calculator here.)
This post breaks down where that number comes from, what pushes it up or down, and which "costs" are actually costs of waiting rather than costs of filing.
The three things you're paying for
It helps to separate the bucket you pay the preparer from the buckets you pay the IRS. Conflating them makes Streamlined feel scarier than it needs to.
1. The preparer fee: your only negotiable cost
Everything in this bucket goes to the firm preparing your package. For a typical case the components look like:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Federal return, per year × 3 | $650 × 3 = $1,950 |
| State return, per state per year | $150 × however many required |
| FBAR bundle, 6 years (up to 24 accounts total) | ~$100 |
| Form 14653 non-willful certification | Usually bundled into the package price |
That puts a "simple" case (three federal years, three state years, one basic FBAR bundle) at roughly $2,500 total. Our pricing page covers what drives that number up or down; the actual figure is quoted case by case.
This is the number that varies by preparer. You have some shopping latitude here, though the differences between competent providers are usually small.
2. Tax owed to the IRS
This is tax due on the unreported income, after applying either the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) or Foreign Tax Credit (FTC).
The FEIE (up to $130,000 per person for the 2025 tax year, the years most people are filing now; $132,900 for 2026) or the FTC may reduce or eliminate US income tax, depending on the complete facts. The FTC credits qualifying foreign income taxes only, is limited under section 904 to the portion of US tax attributable to foreign-source taxable income, generally computed separately by income category; excess credits generally carry back one year and forward ten, subject to exceptions. Self-employment tax, income-category differences, PFICs and foreign corporations can each change the result.
You still owe tax if:
- You had US-source income that wasn't on a W-2 or 1099 (rental, self-employment, capital gains from US property)
- Your foreign country's tax rate is lower than the US equivalent and you exceed the FEIE
- You have significant passive income (dividends, interest, capital gains on foreign securities)
- You own a foreign corporation subject to GILTI rules (high-earning business owners abroad)
For the majority of "forgot to file my 1040 while working in Tokyo/Bangkok/Dublin" cases, this bucket is small or zero.
3. Late-payment interest: mechanical, not penal
If tax is owed on any of the three years you're filing, the IRS charges statutory late-payment interest from the original due date. Rates are set quarterly and, under IRC §6622(a), compound daily. Historical rates have ranged from roughly 3% in 2016–2021 to 7–8% in 2023–2025, so the effective rate on old balances is a blend.
Rough order of magnitude: a $500 tax bill from three years ago might accrue ~$130 in interest. An older balance from several years back can accrue interest well into the hundreds or beyond, depending on the quarters involved; the IRS publishes the quarterly rates and the only reliable figure is one computed against your actual due dates. Large tax liabilities from far-back years get expensive, and daily compounding means they grow noticeably faster than simple-interest math would suggest.
What's NOT in this bucket: failure-to-file penalties, failure-to-pay penalties, accuracy-related penalties, information return penalties, and FBAR non-willful penalties. Failure-to-file, failure-to-pay, and accuracy-related penalties are percentages of the tax owed, while penalties for information returns (such as Forms 5471 and 8938) and FBARs are normally $10,000 or more per year per form. Streamlined waives these penalties for a qualifying non-willful filer. There is no acceptance step: the IRS does not acknowledge the submission or issue a closing agreement, and the returns stay open to examination like any others.
What pushes the preparer fee up
The flat rate breakdown above is for a clean case. Several factors move it.
Multiple states. If you maintained domicile in California, New York, Oregon, Virginia, or a few other "sticky" states during your expat years, you owe state returns too. Each state × each year = one line item. A Californian with three back years owes three state returns (~$450 in fees) on top of the federal side.
Foreign corporation ownership (Form 5471). If you own 10% or more of a non-US corporation (common for consultants who set up a local company), each year adds $400–$1,200 to the fee for the 5471 preparation. This is the single biggest fee driver because Form 5471 is one of the heaviest forms in the code.
Foreign mutual funds (PFICs). If you bought Japanese mutual funds, or any non-US ETF, or a foreign money-market account, you're in PFIC territory. Each PFIC needs its own Form 8621 per year. Fees scale with the number of holdings; can easily add $500–$2,000 if you held several.
Rental properties abroad. Schedule E per rental per year. Add $100 per rental per year. Plus, if you've been depreciating the property improperly, there's cleanup work to establish basis.
Lots of foreign accounts (FBAR). The FBAR bundle base fee covers up to 24 accounts across the six years. Beyond that, fees go up, typically +$350 for the 25+ account bracket.
Self-employment. +$100 for Schedule C / SE each year. Plus Totalization Agreement work if applicable.
Unusual or complicated non-willfulness narrative. Most Form 14653 certifications are straightforward ("moved for work in 2014, didn't realize filing continued to be required"). Ones that turn on a disputed fact pattern (prior CPA advice, partial filings, mixed-willfulness periods) need extra care and may push the fee.
What pushes the preparer fee down
Not much, honestly. The number of years (3 federal, 6 FBAR) is fixed by the program; you can't shorten the window. Quotes below roughly $1,500 are common, and a lower price is not by itself a warning sign. What matters is scope: ask in writing which years, whether the FBARs and the certification are included, and what happens to the price when a Form 5471, a PFIC or a state return turns up.
The one realistic way the price moves down: if you've already gathered and organized your documents cleanly before engagement. Some preparers charge less for "assembly-ready" packages.
What other firms charge for Streamlined
Comparing quotes is harder than it should be, because providers publish different things: some price the whole package, some price a base and meter the rest, and one publishes in euros. Here is what the three most visible expat-tax providers show on their own pricing pages today.
| Provider | Published Streamlined price | What that covers | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greenback Expat Tax Services | $1,750 | 3 years of returns, 6 years of FBARs | Greenback's own unbundled list price is $2,445 |
| Taxes for Expats | $1,450, or $1,650 if income exceeds $100,000 | 3 years of federal returns, 6 years of FBARs | Base price excludes the non-willfulness certification, which is an additional $300 for SFOP or $500 for SDOP |
| MyExpatTaxes | EUR 749 | Software-prepared, reviewed by a tax professional | Priced in euros; the dollar equivalent moves with the exchange rate |
Three things are worth reading out of that table rather than just the numbers.
The spread is narrower than the anxiety suggests. Full-service Streamlined charges cluster between roughly $1,450 and $1,800. If a quote sits far outside that band in either direction, the useful question is what is included, not whether the firm is cheap or expensive.
"Flat fee" does not always mean one number. Two of the three adjust for income or meter add-on forms separately. A foreign corporation, foreign mutual funds, or rental property can each move the final bill regardless of the headline. Ask what happens to the price when a Form 5471 or a Form 8621 turns up, and get the answer in writing before you engage.
A software-prepared package and a preparer-prepared one are different products at a similar price. The cheapest option here is software with professional review; the others put a person on the file from the start. Neither is wrong, but they are not the same purchase, and the difference matters most on exactly the cases where the non-willful narrative has to do real work.
Prices retrieved from each provider's own pricing page on 11 August 2026: Greenback, Taxes for Expats, MyExpatTaxes. Providers change prices without notice; this table is reviewed quarterly and the retrieval date above tells you how stale it may be. We are not affiliated with any of them and receive nothing for listing them.
The costs of not filing: usually bigger than filing
It's worth naming these because people sometimes delay Streamlined thinking they're "saving money." The math almost always goes the other way.
FATCA fallout. Foreign financial institutions are generally required to identify accounts carrying US indicia and report certain of those accounts, in most countries to their own tax authority, which passes the data to the IRS. Entity, account and jurisdictional exceptions apply. Some banks are closing accounts of US persons who can't produce a W-9 or current filing. That's a practical cost.
Once the IRS has initiated a civil examination of your returns for any year, or you are under IRS Criminal Investigation, Streamlined is no longer available. A notice such as a CP15 or CP504 is not automatically that: it needs prompt review on the facts rather than being read as the door closing. Non-willful FBAR penalties become statutory ($10,000 maximum per year, adjusted for inflation to currently over $16,000 per year, per the Supreme Court's 2023 Bittner decision). The willful FBAR maximum rises to the greater of $165,353 (the current inflation-adjusted figure; $100,000 is the unadjusted statutory number) or 50% of the account balance per violation. Both of those are ceilings the IRS may assess up to under 31 U.S.C. §5321(a)(5), not amounts it must assess, but the ceiling is what you are exposed to once Streamlined is off the table, and it dwarfs a $2,500 preparer fee.
Stress and ambiguity. This is real but hard to price, and we are not going to pretend to a number for it. An open compliance question does not resolve itself, and it gets more expensive to fix as more years stack up behind it.
A worked example
Mike, American, living in Osaka since 2017, never filed US returns because he "paid Japanese taxes." Has a salary job plus one local checking account and a modest local savings account. No rentals, no businesses, no investments outside the local bank. California domicile before he left.
Mike's Streamlined package:
- 3 federal returns × $650 = $1,950
- 3 California state returns × $150 = $450 (Mike might owe California residency money too, but the returns are required regardless)
- FBAR 6-year bundle (2 accounts, well under 24) = $100
- Form 14653: included
Total preparer fee: $2,500
Mike's IRS bucket: likely small. Japanese salary is well within FEIE; local bank interest is nominal; FTC covers any small amount. Maybe a few hundred dollars of California state tax if the state argues he never broke domicile. Interest on that: small.
Total out-the-door: ~$2,500–$3,000. One-time. That covers the filing itself, after which he is back on the normal annual filing cycle (which runs about $650/year going forward for just the federal return).
What to watch out for
Preparers who won't give you a fee before engagement. Expect a scope-plus-fee estimate before you sign anything. If a firm will not put a scope and a number in writing, ask why before engaging.
Flat-rate claims that don't account for your specifics. A single flat price quoted for "any Streamlined case" without any questions about states, Forms 5471, PFICs or rentals tells you the quote has not been scoped to your facts yet. Ask what falls outside it.
Attorney hourly rates on preparation work. Most of a Streamlined submission is return preparation, which preparers do at preparer rates. Tax attorneys typically charge $400 to $800 an hour, and that rate buys something specific: legal analysis and attorney-client privilege over what you say while the facts are being worked out. Whether your situation calls for that, particularly where willfulness or an open examination is in play, is a judgment about your own facts. What is worth avoiding is paying an hourly legal rate for data entry.
Getting a quote for your case
If the "typical case" description doesn't quite match your situation, send us a short message describing the shape of the complexity: country of residence, whether you own any foreign companies or real estate, which state you came from. The contact form passes it to our partner firm, Capital Tax Limited, who comes back with a line-itemed quote based on what you actually need rather than a generic "starting at" number.
If your situation is the typical case, check your eligibility and Capital Tax Limited will follow up with a quote and next steps.