The U.S. State Department has responded to a complaint over the recently-increased fee for renouncing one's American citizenship, which was filed last December by a coalition of so-called 'accidental Americans', by noting that it had increased the fee to reflect a rise in the government's renunciation processing costs, according to court documents seen by the American Expat Financial News Journal. 

Eleven years ago today, in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Obama signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act into law – buried inside a domestic jobs bill known as the HIRE Act.

There's not much to say about FATCA that we and others didn't last year, when we marked the anti-tax evasion law's 10-year anniversary, as not a lot has changed about it since then.

In what some campaigners for fairer treatment of EU/American dual nationals, particularly 'accidental Americans,' today hailed as a significant development, U.S. Treasury officials are reported to have agreed to meet with their EU counterparts to discuss FATCA-related issues, including those that these dual nationals are struggling with. 

Europe's accidental Americans say they're cautiously optimistic that a recently-announced follow-up to last week's ECOFIN discussion on FATCA may at last yield results – at least in the form of an agreement by top EU officials to prioritize the accidentals' concerns, as these officials prepare to meet in coming weeks and months with their counterparts in the new Biden administration. 

In what campaigners for a fairer treatment for Americans and "accidental Americans" affected by the extra-territorial U.S. tax law known as FATCA are hailing as a potentially major development, the EU's Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) is set to discuss the legislation – and its problems for Americans abroad – at a meeting next week. 

Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra told a mostly online hearing of the Dutch Parliament on Wednesday that he could once again confirm a Dutch Banking Association (NVB) assurance, revealed earlier this month, that no "accidental Americans" bank accounts in the Netherlands will be closed this year.

Six well-known French Parliamentarians have called on French President Emmanuel Macron to take action with respect to the "tax and banking difficulties" the country's estimated 40,000 'accidental Americans' are "still" struggling with, as a result of the 2010 American law known as FATCA.

Banks in the Netherlands have said that they will not close the accounts of what are known in that country as "unintentional Americans" for the rest of this year, the country's Minister of Finance, Wopke Hoekstra, told fellow lawmakers on Tuesday – even if these individuals fail to provide these banks with such information as a valid U.S. Social Security Number or Tax Identification Number, as requested. 

The EU's Data Protection Board is to "again look into" the degree to which the processing and transferring of the personal data of European citizens to the U.S. by EU countries, in compliance with the U.S. tax evasion prevention law known as FATCA, could violate the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU official has said.

A lawyer who is representing the Paris-based Association des Américains Accidentels (Association of Accidental Americans) in a recently-launched lawsuit aimed at stopping Belgium and Luxembourg from transferring the personal data of certain European citizens to the U.S., has given an in-depth look into the complex and often frustrating situation facing certain EU citizens with legacy U.S. citizenship roots to a well-known English-language presenter, on a major Belgian radio station.