This is a duplicate of a submission I made 2 weeks ago.<p>Anyway, as an American abroad, I think about this periodically. Like the author, I never owe anything in taxes, but the stress and expense from making sure paperwork is correctly filed each year is really awful. If I mess something up on my FBARs, non-willfully, I would be fined enough to completely bankrupt me, the fines being way above the value of the accounts I might somehow misreport. How can you misreport an account? Well, you could use the wrong currency exchange rate, or you might not have access to information required on the form so you have o guess, or you could think that accounts with a balance of 0 all year do not need to be reported (turns out they do). Or maybe you think that an account with money for a loan does not need to be reported because it is not really your money (you do). And so on. Every mistake costs you 10k/account/year. It is true insanity.<p>Also, I currently have no tax deferred way to save for retirement because my employer funded pension account here (it is essentially a 401k, just based in Norway) is treated as a regular investment account by the IRS. So, I have to pay taxes on any gains each year on my pension. Luckily, this has always been below the standard deduction, but in some years, it will (hopefully) not be. I also cannot make any contributions myself to the account or else it turns into a PFIC (which is a Very Bad Thing).<p>That being said, I am hopeful that FATCA will be repealed, or at least revised so that it does not threaten to bankrupt middle class Americans with the ridiculous fee structure and recognizes foreign pension accounts. I do not want to give up my US citizenship, but will be forced to if something does not change in the next few years.