A lot of people in this discussion are unaware of the scope of the difficulty and dismissive of the extent of the problem. While the article focuses on the plight of "accidental Americans," the burdens they face are the same faced by all Americans living abroad, and that is not a small number of people.
The number of American citizens living overseas is somewhere between 6 and 9 million last I read. That is around 2% of the total population of Americans, and more than the populations of 15 states. If you are a regular employee, and do not own property, and do not own a business, you can mostly get by with some extra tax paperwork each year and filing FATCA. (Which you had better hope someone tells you about, because the penalties are extreme if you mess it up.) If you can get a local bank account, you can live a relatively normal life, and this is what I see being pointed to by people in this discussion as the usual case. It is not. Nearly everyone falls outside this case eventually, the penalties are harsh, compliance is difficult, and it is all unnecessary.
Some examples:
You get married, and you fail to disclose your new spouses retirement account in your FATCA filing. That could cost you five figures.
You make a bit of self employment income on the side, not realizing that self employment income is not covered under the foreign earned income exclusion, and now you owe all of your profit in taxes.
You start a small business, and really, you're just fucked. All profit earned by your foreign business each year is counted as personal income added to your AGI in the US, but not excludable under the foreign earned income exclusion. And if you don't file (a form which, by the way, says at the top that it takes an estimated 100 hours to complete), or file incorrectly, the penalty is 10k a day until the filing is corrected. But at least you are only fucked now - if you already owned a foreign business in 2018, you got super fucked with a 10 year retroactive tax on all your business profits for the past decade. If you think this is an edge case, read some expat news sites. This wiped out thousands of Americans life savings.
I am an expat. I know many expats. The usual case is to find yourself fucked by these rules. Best case is that you spend a lot of time staying informed, hire good accountants, and avoid penalties. But even then things like GILTI can come along and destroy everything you have built.
I know many expats that have exactly the experiences you mention. My question: how can it be changed? It seems to hurt American competitiveness (i read a legal analysis by a US law school which seemed to support this) by putting Americans at such a disadvantage to citizens of other countries living abroad. Anecdotally, when I lived abroad, there were easily 10x the number of Brits or Aussies or Canadians to every American.
Also, there was a report that the revenue generated by FATCA was outweighed 100:1 by the worldwide banking industry’s compliance costs.
So how does it get changed? Why does everyone act like it is a forgone conclusion that it will never change?
The law was meant to tackle wealthy American residents hiding money offshore, not normal people living offshore for whom banking services are “local” to them.
The number of American citizens living overseas is somewhere between 6 and 9 million last I read. That is around 2% of the total population of Americans, and more than the populations of 15 states. If you are a regular employee, and do not own property, and do not own a business, you can mostly get by with some extra tax paperwork each year and filing FATCA. (Which you had better hope someone tells you about, because the penalties are extreme if you mess it up.) If you can get a local bank account, you can live a relatively normal life, and this is what I see being pointed to by people in this discussion as the usual case. It is not. Nearly everyone falls outside this case eventually, the penalties are harsh, compliance is difficult, and it is all unnecessary.
Some examples:
You get married, and you fail to disclose your new spouses retirement account in your FATCA filing. That could cost you five figures.
You make a bit of self employment income on the side, not realizing that self employment income is not covered under the foreign earned income exclusion, and now you owe all of your profit in taxes.
You start a small business, and really, you're just fucked. All profit earned by your foreign business each year is counted as personal income added to your AGI in the US, but not excludable under the foreign earned income exclusion. And if you don't file (a form which, by the way, says at the top that it takes an estimated 100 hours to complete), or file incorrectly, the penalty is 10k a day until the filing is corrected. But at least you are only fucked now - if you already owned a foreign business in 2018, you got super fucked with a 10 year retroactive tax on all your business profits for the past decade. If you think this is an edge case, read some expat news sites. This wiped out thousands of Americans life savings.
I am an expat. I know many expats. The usual case is to find yourself fucked by these rules. Best case is that you spend a lot of time staying informed, hire good accountants, and avoid penalties. But even then things like GILTI can come along and destroy everything you have built.