In 2010, when President Obama signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act into law – hidden inside a domestic jobs bill few still remember, called the HIRE Act – Rebecca Lammers had been only been living in London for a few years, although she'd done a couple of semesters of college abroad (in Ecuador and London).

In November of 1993, Peggy Creveling arrived in Bangkok, Thailand, to meet up with her husband, Chad, whom she'd met at the well-known U.S. military academy of West Point some years before.

As she explained to me recently, he was busy that day, working on the Stanford, University internship that had brought him there. Left to her own devices, Peggy decided to explore the city, by herself, on foot.

News that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act has now been signed into law by President Biden has seen a burst of articles and website comments about what the additional US$80 billion in funding that it provides for the Internal Revenue Service could mean for Americans living abroad.

As this and other media organizations have been reporting for years, such expats are already struggling to deal with the myriad tax complications and expenses that go with living abroad as an American citizen, as a result of the combination of the U.S.'s citizenship-based tax regime, and such mostly-recent laws as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. So the prospect of yet more IRS scrutiny has prompted many to worry...