No time for a blog post today, so read this interesting news story about a federal watchdog slamming the IRS for alienating expats with FATCA and other laws. If you're unfamiliar with the IRS's undeclared war on expats, you can read some of my past posts regarding FATCA.
Or if you're familiar with OVDI, the Offshore Volunteer Disclosure Initiative, you might think it's a good time to catch up on past taxes you didn't know about. Except then the bill hits you. If you've lived abroad and didn't know you still had to pay taxes to the US, you could be facing $8,000 to $16,000 just to file your back taxes, and that's just the tax preparation cost, not the cost of potential taxes or fines that the IRS might levy against you.
People need to be very careful about OVDI. If you go in you are basically accepting the IRS appelation of "criminal". Most folks who have woken up to the citizen-based taxation/FBAR/FATCA nightmare are not in any way shape or form liars and cheats and tax evader. They genuinely had no idea. I just had someone on the phone yesterday and she was clueless and genuinely shocked to think that she wasn't compliant with her US obligations. A lot of scared people out there right now. Good places to get info are ACA (American citizens Abroad) or the Isaac Brock Society in Canada. The latter actually put out a press release about the latest OCDI program. Worth reading.
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