Last month's trial over the constitutionality of the Canadian government's enforcement of America’s FATCA legislation was, of course, hugely important for American expats around the world, all of whom are waiting, or perhaps should be, to hear how the court ultimately rules. For some, though, it was also a chance to study the gavel habits of a country other than the United States, and then sit back and wait for the gavel imagery that almost inevitably follows such events.

 As last week's trial over the constitutionality of the Canadian government's enforcement of America’s FATCA legislation ended on Friday, the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty (ADCS), which brought the case on behalf of two individual plaintiffs, said an appeal would ultimately follow, "no matter who wins."

A trial in which a group of Canadian/American citizens are seeking to challenge the constitutionality of the Canadian government's enforcement of America’s FATCA legislation is set to begin on Monday in a federal courthouse in Vancouver, British Columbia, and will be broadcast live via a "webcast", according to sources involved in the lawsuit.

A U.K. government official responded to a written question on the matter of so-called 'accidental Americans' posed by a British Member of Parliament by noting that they weren't "created" by FATCA, but rather, that the 2010 legislation "created a mechanism for the financial accounts of overseas U.S. citizens to be reported to the U.S."

Washington may be shut down for both the Christmas/New Year holidays and as a result of President Trump’s government-wide shutdown aimed at strong-arming Congress into approving his US$5bn plans to fund a wall along America’s border with Mexico.  

The eight-year-long effort by organizations representing American expats around the world to convince the U.S. government to abolish FATCA appears likely to soon find itself in the middle of another battlefield.

After more than eight years of lobbying Congress and the White House, opponents of the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act are cautiously welcoming news that the Internal Revenue Service has issued a proposal to make major changes in that legislation and certain other reporting requirements that have made life difficult for Americans living outside of the U.S.

 President Donald Trump didn’t show up to an event held yesterday on the Île aux Cygnes (Isle of Swans) in Paris, to which he had been invited – but then, he didn’t make it to a scheduled wreath-laying ceremony to honor French and American World War I dead at a French cemetery  the day before, either. 

United States prosecutors registered their first-ever successful prosecution under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, after the former chief executive  and chief business officer of a St Vincent and the Grenadines-based bank pleaded guilty to "conspiring to defraud the United States by failing to comply" with the legislation. 

The efforts by Fabien Lehagre’s Association des Américains Accidentels and other Europe-based groups of accidental Americans to seek the assistance of their local governments in their battle against the U.S.’s extraterritorial tax claims on them are the latest in a number of similar campaigns in recent years by other similar unwilling holders of U.S. citizenship.