Americans resident in certain countries where the tax year is different from that of the U.S. could be in for some fresh tax planning complications, and possibly an unavoidable double tax on income earned in these countries, U.S. tax experts have been warning, if President Biden's Build Back Better bill is passed as it's currently written.

The U.S. government on Thursday published its latest quarterly list of the names of Americans who have renounced their citizenships, and as expected, due to  the fact that renunciation-processing is difficult at the moment, owing to the continuing Covid-19 lockdown in many countries, only 228 names appeared.

This compares with 660 in the final quarter of 2020. If all four quarters of 2021 saw only 228 names listed in each, it would total only 912, and represent the lowest annual number of renunciations since 2009. 

Without really meaning to, many American expatriates as well as tax industry experts, lawyers and others have become experts on the subject of FATCA over the past decade-plus that it's been around. 

So we thought it might be fun, for a change, to mark the occasion of FATCA's coming into force eleven years ago today, by compiling a list of eleven impossible-to-resist questions about it, in order to test just how well we've all been paying attention!
See below...

As American expats and their tax preparers come down to the final stretch of the Oct. 15 Foreign Bank Account Reports (FBAR) deadline, concerns are emerging over whether the data they’re about to send to the U.S. could, at some point, fall into the wrong hands.

If the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has recently issued a call for a songwriter to come up with a melody celebrating the paying of one’s income taxes, we aren’t aware of it.

Back in 1942, though, Irving Berlin apparently didn’t even need to be asked to write I Paid My Income Tax Today, according to historical records...

Americans who are tax-resident in the UK, and who have recently received Economic Impact Payments from the U.S. government (or who receive them in the weeks and months ahead), will not have to pay tax to HMRC, London-based U.S. tax expert David Treitel says.

A U.S. taxpayer has been hit with almost US$13m in FBAR penalties, following a U.S. District Court ruling in Florida earlier this month, in what experts say is one of the largest individual FBAR assessments ever.

Nine additional speakers – including American Citizens Abroad's legal counsel Charles Bruce, Dunhill Financial's Brian Dunhill, and Waverton Investment Management director Andrew Vaughan-Payne – have been added to the line-up for the Democrats Abroad U.K.'s  first-ever "Tax Day" next month.

If the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has recently issued a call for a songwriter to come up with a melody celebrating the paying of one’s income taxes, we aren’t aware of it.

Back in 1942, though, Irving Berlin apparently didn’t even need to be asked to write I Paid My Income Tax Today, according to historical records...

The U.S. government may still be largely shut down, but non-U.S. resident Americans who have U.S. tax reporting obligations may now be able to kick off the 2018 reporting season by filing their 2018 Foreign Bank Account Reports, as the official FBAR exchange rates have just been published.