Boyd v. United States — was the Ninth Circuit's 2021 ruling the precedent that led to Bittner?

United States v. Boyd, 991 F.3d 1077 (9th Cir. 2021). Jane Boyd had failed to file an FBAR covering 14 foreign accounts. The IRS imposed 13 separate non-willful penalties (one per account except one consolidated). The Ninth Circuit held the IRS could impose only ONE non-willful penalty per annual report, regardless of the number of accounts. The court reasoned that 31 USC § 5321(a)(5) refers to a 'violation of any provision of section 5314' — and the relevant 'provision' is the requirement to file a single annual report, not the requirement to report each account.

Boyd put the Ninth Circuit at odds with the Fifth Circuit, which in United States v. Bittner, 19 F.4th 734 (5th Cir. 2021) had approved per-account counting. That split set up the Supreme Court's Bittner review and 2023 resolution in favor of the per-report view. Both Boyd and the Fifth Circuit's Bittner remain useful examples of the theories the government and taxpayers still use in audit and Appeals — even though the Supreme Court has now resolved the legal question.

If your case is in the Ninth Circuit (California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands), Boyd is binding circuit precedent on top of Bittner. That doesn't change the legal outcome — the Supreme Court's Bittner is binding nationally — but it adds a regional authority chain when negotiating with IRS Examination and Appeals. Cite Boyd alongside Bittner. The combined citation signals to Examination that the per-report counting is doubly settled in your jurisdiction.

Boyd was a NON-WILLFUL case. It does not affect willful FBAR penalty counting (still based on the willful statutory framework). Boyd was a single-year case — your multi-year exposure still requires per-year analysis. Boyd does not address reasonable-cause defense; you still need to articulate facts year-by-year. Boyd does not change the statute of limitations (still 6 years under 31 USC § 5321(b)(1)). And Boyd was decided pre-Bittner inflation adjustments — your current per-report ceiling is $16,536 for assessments on or after January 17, 2025.