Few American expatriates who follow the goings-on in Washington will have been surprised to notice that the words "FATCA" and "FBAR" weren't uttered during yesterday's House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee hearing, featuring National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins...

Fresh from delivering the National Taxpayer Advocate's annual doorstopper of a report to Congress, NTA Erin M. Collins will address some of the issues currently challenging U.S. taxpayers in a House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee hearing next Tuesday.

The IRS needs to change its regulations with respect to American taxpayers' obligations to report on their overseas account holdings by "eliminating duplication" of the FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements, as well as by "excluding accounts maintained by U.S. persons in countries where they are bona fide residents," National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins has told Congress, in her annual report.

Erin M. Collins, who was named last March to succeed Nina E. Olson as National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA)  at the U.S. Treasury, forcefully called this week for the harmonization of FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements for overseas taxpayers – which she noted the IRS had failed to do until now, in spite of previous NTA recommendations, as well as those of such other stakeholders as the Government Accountability Office – in her first annual report to Congress.

The U.S. Treasury Department and IRS have named an ex-KPMG executive to succeed Nina E. Olson as National Taxpayer Advocate. 

In her 2019 Annual Report to Congress, acting National Taxpayer Advocate Bridget Roberts said the U.S. IRS needed to significantly raise its game with respect to the way it carries out its role as the nation's tax collecting agency.

But to "truly transform the organization" – which, she noted in a  five-page preface to this year's NTA report, Congress effectively called on it to do last year when it passed the so-called Taxpayer First Act – the IRS "needs to rethink the way it operates", starting with "a culture shift".

Soon-to-retire National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has stepped into a growing debate in the U.S. about whether the IRS should expand an existing option to enable taxpayers with simple tax matters to file their federal returns online, and for free.

Nina Olson, who has spoken out forcefully on behalf of American expatriates a number of  times in recent years during her tenure as the IRS's National Taxpayer Advocate, has announced that she will be retiring at the end of July.

The National Taxpayer Advocate's latest Annual Report to Congress largely ignores the struggles American expatriates have been facing, an examination of the various documents that comprise it reveals.