FATCA News For US Expats

For three years now, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has moved to deploy a massive dragnet to stop tax cheats from stashing cash offshore. The crackdown hinges on identifying every account held by every American anywhere in the world, no matter how small. Collect everything to nab and punish relatively few big law breakers. The […]

If you have a bank account anywhere outside the US, starting in 2015, chances are you will receive a letter saying that your bank must hand over the details of any American accounts, including yours. The letters vary with the country and with individual institutions. But the overall message is that the IRS is about […]

“FATCA was created in part because of the fear of the United States government that the globalization of finance would give far more people the opportunity to hide their money. It was becoming very clear that it wasn’t going to be just the very wealthy, but that it could really be the middle class and […]

Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 7 A.M. EDT, April 3, 2012 New U.S. International Data Sharing Agreement Could Mean Big Trouble For Americans Living Abroad International Tax Accounting Firm, Bright!Tax©, CEO to Explain and Offer Straight Forward Solutions, Live, on the Overseas Radio Network New York, NY: What happens to US expatriate tax payers when the IRS […]

FATCA is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act Under FATCA, certain U.S. taxpayers holding financial assets outside the United States must report those assets to the IRS. In addition, FATCA will require foreign financial institutions to report directly to the IRS certain information about financial accounts held by U.S. taxpayers, or by foreign entities in […]

Suddenly, some expats are waking up in a cold sweat. They have always had to file tax returns and disclose foreign accounts on a form called the FBAR, although in practice many didn’t. But now Fatca means they have to be more rigorous or face huge fines, in the knowledge that the US authorities could […]

Beware the sledgehammer used to crack the nut. In this case, the nut is the U.S. government’s laudable goal of catching tax evaders. The sledgehammer is the overreaching effect of legislation that is alienating other countries and resulting in millions of U.S. citizens abroad being forced to either painfully reconsider their nationality, or face a […]

A California businessman has pleaded guilty to concealing a foreign bank account at an Israeli bank on his 2007 tax return. Moshe Handelsman of Saratoga, Calif., pleaded guilty Wednesday to filing a false tax return for tax year 2007. According to the plea agreement, between approximately 1993 and 2000, Handelsman, a U.S. citizen, used three […]

The United States Treasury Department is now actively working with more than 50 nations to share Americans’ personal financial data that will reveal who is tax compliant, including American expats living overseas. The effort is in support of new FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) laws that require foreign financial entities to report Americans’ account […]

” … What this means to Americans living overseas is that gone are the days of living off the grid. If you’re not up to date with your required US tax filing and FATCA and FBAR reporting, very soon you will most probably be receiving greetings from the United States and the IRS … “ […]