My parents have an account in Hong Kong that was set up to receive the inheritance $ from my mom's parents when they passed. The account has been idle except when they visited in Hong Kong in 2003(?) and use some of the $ for spending $ while they visited.

They never filed any FBAR or FORM 3520 because they weren't familiar with the forms and they knew inheritance $ is not taxable. The account balance did earned interest (account balance is about $150K) but they never received any tax forms from the banks.

My question is if they filed the missed FBARs and amend their tax returns (I have a feeling there won't have any additional tax liability even if the interest from the HK account is added since they are retired and has no other source of income except social security), will they be tagged with any penalties?

The IRS has been lenient about imposing fines for failure to submit the FBAR requirement. A phone call to the IRS FBAR Hotline at 1-800-800-2877 should get you an answer s to how far back they should go to submit the forms for past years.

Thank you very much for the feedback. I will call and find out!