A group of "accidental Americans" responded to the dismissal, on Friday, of their legal challenge of the U.S. government's citizenship renunciation regime, by filing an immediate appeal.

The Paris-based Association of Accidental Americans (Association des Américains Accidentels) is calling on its members and other accidental Americans – as well as other U.S. expats frustrated by the United States' citizenship-based tax regime – to join its campaign in support of efforts (by others) who are understood to be planning to launch a legal challenge against CBT, within the next few months.

The European Union intends to "ask about the posibility [of] a more permanent solution" to the problems Europe's "accidental Americans" are continuing to struggle with as a result of the 2010 U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act this week, when the latest in a regular series of bilateral meetings between the EU and U.S. is set to take place, an EU official has said. 

Exactly how much the U.S. government is justified in expecting American citizens looking to expatriate to pay to do so was extensively discussed and debated during yesterday's hearing in Washington, D.C.'s E. Barrett Prettyman District Courthouse, by the legal teams representing both sides in a two-year-long legal challenge of the current U.S. citizenship renunciation regime. 

In one of the most potentially significant moves thus far by the U.S. government aimed at helping so-called "accidental Americans" and other expats who have been struggling since 2010 with their tax reporting obligations, the U.S. State Department has announced its "intent" to reduce the fee it charges those seeking to renounce their citizenships to US$450, from its current US$2,350.

The U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court judge in a long-running challenge by the Paris-based Association of Accidental Americans and 20 "accidental American" co-plaintiffs has agreed to hear "oral arguments" in the matter on Jan. 9, according to the advocacy organization and its lawyers.

The news that banks in the Netherlands will not, in fact, be obliged to begin requiring their U.S. person account-holders to have U.S. Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TINs), such as Social Security numbers, as of Sept 1, has (unsurprisingly) been welcomed by such TIN-lacking U.S. persons in that country.

(Particularly since Sept. 1 came and went more than a week ago...)

The back-and-forth between the Dutch government and so-called accidental Americans who happen to be Dutch residents and citizens has resumed within the last few days, with a "Fourth Progress Letter [on] FATCA" having been issued on Monday by the country's State Secretary for Finance, Marnix van Rij. As usual, a response was immediately forthcoming from the Netherlands Association of Accidental Americans (NLAA) – which, again as usual, insisted that in fact, "no progress" on FATCA had yet been made. 

To the disappointment of many accidental Americans in France, France's Senate on Tuesday night "adopted an amendment aimed at deleting" an addition to the government's latest Finance Bill which would have required the U.S. government to "reciprocate" with respect to the information it currently requires French banks and financial institutions to provide the U.S. about the accounts of their American citizen clients, in compliance with the U.S. tax evasion-prevention law known as FATCA.

Members of the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions (PETI) will spend next week in Washington, DC, as part of what is being described as a "fact-finding mission" aimed at finding "concrete solutions" to the FATCA-related problems that "numerous EU citizens and their family members" are being impacted by.